DFW Computer Integration

What do you do when a drive screw will NOT come out?

Drill it out!

It seems like a very high percentage of laptops that come into the shop lately exhibit a litany of bad repair shop techniques employed.

This particular laptop came in this August in a non-functional condition. It had been dropped one time too many. When I turned it over to remove the bottom cover, I immediately noticed two screws were missing. They don’t just fall out on their own. They always have a coating of blue Loctite to prevent this from happening. So when screws are missing, it is always because someone took them out and did not replace them. This is always a sign of sloppy / lazy workmanship. A long time ago I learned to use a screw organizer for laptops, as the screws are in all different lengths and sizes. So I use a plastic palette tray to keep track of the screws. You put them in the exact location they came out of from the laptop and it is really easy to get the correct screw back in the correct place when you reassemble.

I also collect screws from machines sent to recycling. This was I can add back missing screws on machines I repair.

This computer also had a broken screw mount inside that came rattling out when I opened it. Overall, this computer had been badly abused.

So I needed to remove the drive in order to recover the data. This is generally fairly simple. Especially with a PCIE M.2 drive like this one. Only one screw secures the drive, so take it out and you have the drive free.

Not this time.

The ONE screw in the entire machine that was not loose or missing was the drive mounting screw. No way was it coming out. After getting the OK from my client, I carefully selected the exact size drill bit and drilled out the screw. That took all of about a minute.

I connected the M.2 card to my recovery machine and retrieved all the data for transfer to a new computer.

Another success story.