RAM and HDD Upgrade for MSI Wind U-100

Usual warning - my directions are for my use only and if you choose to follow them, any voiding of warranty or damage caused are entirely your own fault.

What you need to do is first of all image the existing hard drive. Because I was using a 320GB drive from a Western Digital Passport external USB drive, I was able to use the USB interface from the "new" drive on the "old" drive. Basically I removed the 80GB drive and plugged it into the circuit board of the passport drive and then used ghost to image to my other laptop the original drive as image files.

I then swapped the drives around and restored the image back to the new 320GB drive.

OK so here we have the Wind with all the rear cover removed. The RAM is a cinch to install and you can see that it is already done in the photo shown.

The standard 80GB drive has to go however. Why did MSI use a 80GB drive I hear you ask? Blame Microsoft as it is one of the licensing limitations for Windows XP on the Wind - 80GB max HDD size and 1GB max RAM size.

Where the screw driver is point is a screw to remove the wireless card. This will expose the only screw holding in the HD caddy for the HD.

With the wireless card removed, you can see where the HD caddy is mounted. I have already removed the screw and now the drive is ready to be removed.

Just pull the drive forward towards the top of the picture and it will come out.

These two screws will need to be removed to take the top caddy bracket off.

Once the caddy/bracket has been removed, replace the drive and from the same position as the original, screw the caddy back on.

Push the drive back on to the sata connectors on the Wind motherboard and then put the screw back for the locking of the caddy back to the motherboard. Basically everything is now in reverse from before.

Put the wireless card back in its slot and secure with its screw.

Your Wind is now ready to go with the new HDD.

Put the cover back on and power up. Presuming that the imaging went well, it will boot up as before but now on a 320GB drive!