MSATA is NOT the same as mini PCI Express!looks VERY similar to a – but it’s not compatible!are typically used for your WiFi and Bluetooth modules, and yes, some manufacturers ( and early models for example) even use a modified for SSD purposes. But again: it’s not compatible! Step 2: Get your tools. An old towel to work on (prevent scratches). Pry tools to open the case. to USB adapter. Disk imaging software.
Philips #1 screwdriver. USB DVD Drive (for recovery and/or OS installation). A few pounds of patience I always find it a good practice to start with preparing my work area and having the necessary tools handy. In this case, to prevent scratches on the screen, I typically use an old towel to work on.To pry the casing open properly, I grabbed a few pry tools (typically used for opening iPods, cellphones, etc) from as well – this is what I got and for the price (app. $7 for 10 of them) it’s well worth it. Note that most of these tools can be used once maybe twice before they wear down, so a set of 10 is always handy.
Pry tools for opening cellphones etc.The to USB adapter is needed to clone to original 32Gb SSD to the new. This appears the only way to make your recognize the MyDigitalSSD – sad, I know. I’m not sure if it has to do with the very small partition found on the original SSD.I used to clone the drives by plugging the in the mSATA to USB adapter and connecting the USB connector to the. The boot cd allows me to “ migrate” the old disk to the new one. Step 3: Clone the original SSD to the new SSDLike I said before; I used to clone the drives. The process is straight forward:. Connect the to the mSATA to USB adapter and plug the USB connector in your.
Boot from the CD. Use the “ Migration” option to clone the internal 32Gb SSD to the newOnce cloning is completed (took app 25 minutes), close the windows and shutdown the tablet PC.
Note If you skip this step, your might not recognize the drive and might not even boot normally (some unreadable comments will be displayed – barely visible). If this happens, that a update might be needed. Unfortunately I cannot confirm this.Formatting the instead of making an image (MBR) did not make a difference.Cloning the original disks DID make a difference – I’m open to ideas; feel free to place them in the comments.
Step 4: Opening your Acer Iconia W500OK, personally I find this the tricky part, and before you begin a reasonable basic understanding on how these cases typically click together will save you headaches later on.Most of these kind of cases are “clicked” together, meaning; two parts (front and back) are pushed together until little hooks click into little openings, holding both parts firmly together. Now when taking those two parts apart, we want to prevent that we rip those little openings, below you see an enlarged picture of the opening part. Hooks: A is the back-side, B is the screen-sideIn the sketch above, side A (backside of your ) is being clicked on side B (the screen side). In the red circle you will see that the “ pin” of side B clicks into the opening of side A to hold both parts together.Imagine what would happen if we would simply, with some force, would lift side A away from side B the openings would break as shown in the image above.To take this properly apart we basically have to shove side A (in the sketch) to the right, so that the pin of side B no longer has a hold of the opening.
This process has to be done all around as show in the images below (don’t even think of simply lifting the back once you have done 3 sides – you will damage some of the openings of that last side).OK let’s get started. I started by opening the SD-card latch to have easier access, I used the pry tool to gently push between the front and back side as shown below. Acer Iconia W500 – Inside view Step 5: Replacing the SSDCompared to opening the casing; this will be easy. However, be warned that you should never touch any of the gold contacts, and that working with a so called ESD strap is strongly recommended! Static charges can cause damage beyond repair.In the previous image, the inside of an, you will see a red box and an arrow on the left side of the picture – this indicates your current (32Gb) SSD drive.
First remove the philips (#1) screw in the lower right corner of the SSD. Next remove the silver sticker covering the SSD – you don’t need to completely remove this, just remove it enough so that you can remove the SSD. Finally remove the SSD, place the new SSD, place the silver sticker back, and put the screw back in. Now comes the exciting part; does the recognize the new SSD?Time to close the back up before trying to boot it (if you’re like me and first want to make sure it all works before closing the casing up – so we don’t have to open it again – make sure you know what you’re doing!).
Gently put the back in place and press the sides back together by putting a slight pressure on the edges, moving around, possibly more than once, until there is no clear opening left between the two sides. Step 6: Getting Started with your new SSD First Boot – Into the BIOSTip: Connect your keyboard and USB DVD drive first!
You’ll need it!:)During the first boot, we would like to go into the BIOS. On you this is done as follows;. Press the Windows button (left corner, below the screen) and keep it pressed. Press the power button until the boots.
Release the Windows button when you see a cursor in the upper right corner of your screen. Press F2 to enter the BIOS (or press F12 to see the boot priority menu – if enabled in the BIOS)In the BIOS modify the boot priority so it will boot from your external USB DVD drive first and save the settings. Note:During recovery from the DVD I did experience some strange lockups which required a reboot, and I had some instances where the bootmanager appeared “corrupt” – a simple reboot fixed that.
At one point I had to go into the Windows boot options (press F8 during boot) and select “ Start Windows normally” to get things going. But in the end things went just fine the full disk is automatically utilized by Windows 7. Other Windows versionI had installed on my old 32Gb SSD which didn’t like booting from the cloned SSD – but at least the BIOS recognized the drive.I used the (free while availability lasts) to reinstall – by removing all partitiones during setup.Other Windows version will have to be installed the same way. Hello everyone!As we know Iconia W500 is not a very new “tablet” and people are probably spending their money on a newer tablet if they’d every buy one today.But for all those who got a W500 I just wanted to share my knowledge so that people could take part.I recently bought a new mSATA for my W500, in hopes of getting some more space.
I also wanted to choose one which had a decent speed (Read/write) so I finally choose this one:Kingston SSDNow mS200 120GB mSATA (SATA 6 Gb/s (SATA3.0), 550MB/520MB/s read/write, LSI SandForce 2241)I got it home today, unpacked it and opened up my Iconia W500 (as everyone knows it takes some time and patience).I replaced the HDD’s (took about 1 minute) and put back the back cover.Started the tablet and as many people have been saying before “Saw some very dimmed digits/texts in the top screen”, not to worry thou! I just shut the tablet down, hold the Windows key while pressing the start butting to be able to enter the BIOS, switched the boot order and installed Windows 7 from a USB stick. Took about 7 (yes read it again 7 minutes) to install Windows 7 onto the machine.I am right now in the progress of downloading some drivers and everything seems to working very well! I’ll post a screenshot soon, with the read/write from bench32 so everyone can take part!Thanks for a great guide! You really made it easier for me:)!Mathias. Hi, I have tried the given suggestions. I bought a KINGSTON 120GB SSD (SMS200S3/120G), and a USB micro SATA to SATA adapter.
Unfortunately the Iconia tab does not working with this type of SSD mSATA. Any suggestions?It looks like that the BIOS does not recognise this SSD, because some strange characters are showing up on the screen.When I reformat my existing SSD mSATA (SDSA5DK) 32GB the adapter and computer works well.PS: I have a Acer Iconia W501 and the BIOS is the latest version.I am wondering if anyone would have any suggestions?ThanksMick. Hi Hans,Today have successfully upgraded my tablet using a Crucial CT120M500SSD3 120GB M500. I used Windows 8 system recovery to image my old drive, Windows 8 no less. It was a little bit hard opening the case, the corners were the pain, luckily I didn’t break any clips.Initially when I installed the new ssd, I couldn’t boot in to the Bios, blank garbled screen!
Good thing I didn’t put the case back together. (I used a bit of tape to hold the tiny switch down so I could start Windows)I then put the original sdd back in & then was able to get in & set the boot to USB CD rom. I then put the new ssd back in. I used an external CD drive with Windows 8 image recovery & a usb hdd which had the Windows 8 image.
It then took about 30mins to restore Windows, with no problems at all.This is my Windows score before & after.primary HDD went from 6.6 to 7.8, strangely the Graphics went down from 3.9 to 3.8. Hey all!Just followed the directions above (to step 5) and upgraded my older W500 32GB tablet with a new MySSD 240GB drive ($170 from Amazon). I used EaseUS Todo Backup Free to clone the drive (Sector by Sector copy) and then installed the new drive. It worked immediately (still as a 32GB drive and the little system partition), then I just expanded the unallocated space using windows disk management.
It booted right into windows, logged right in, and after installing the new drivers, I have plenty of breathing room now! I didn’t even have to restore or fix the windows installation, or alter any BIOS settings. The hardest part was separating the covers, but I managed that without breaking any tabs (45 minutes or so), since I knew what to expect.Flawless.
Just to say a BIG thanks to the author of this article, my Acer Iconia Tablet W500 is now up and running with a crucial mSATA M500 120 GB drive.It wasn’t as hard as I expected, this is for all of you who live in the UK (as I do)The Pry tools can be got from Amazon or EBay, the mSATA to USB was a little more difficult to find, but found one on Amazon UK (My Digital SSD mSATA to USB3.0 Bullet Proof SSD Enclosure)Here are the costsThe mSATA SSD 120 GB £65.00mSATA to USB3 £17.18Pry Tools £00.99Total for the lot £83.17The tablet is running a lot snappier, a BIG thanks to allGeorge Duthie. After reading your article the upgrade with smooth!I purchased a CT240M500SSD3 – 240GB, mSATA Solid State Drive, from Part Number: CT240M500SSD3To perform the clone I used Acronis True Image 2014 (Clone Disk Option)and two from Amazon.comI did break a couple of the tabs opening the case even though I was determined to be patient and not do so, but the case went back together well even so.I had already had Windows 8.1 Pro installed on the old drive with all the updates performed. After power up the W500 powered right up with no issues!Thanks for this article. It was VERY helpful!Dan. Seeing as how you were able to perform the cloning op with Acronis (I use that at work), and after having read over the feedback from the others here, it occurs to me that there’s really not a problem with handling these installations as a normal imaging job using your choice of tools, provided those tools go the lengths needed to get the job done.I’ve been researching across the day, today, what route I would need to go to upgrade the SSD on my W500. Having worked with this system across a multitude of operating systems, I feel pretty confident that it’ll simply be a matter of (1) installing the drive, (2) initializing the drive via Gparted, (3) either imaging or scratch-building the OS loadout, and (4) verify system sanity & performance.
With the initial article mentioning hidden partitions and such, I quickly realized that the author isn’t an IT industry veteran like myself. While there’s nothing wrong with that we each started somewhere and learn at our own pace, in my line of work “I don’t know why that happened” is never an acceptable answer, especially when Google is available for data-mining out the correct answer. And I say this with no intent of offense simply just to point out that further prerequisite knowledge or training will go a long way toward gaining insight into issues when they occur.I will likely do things this way:1. Create a backup image of my existing drive before starting, using CloneZilla (pointed to an NFS target share on a NAS)2. Remove the case according to the instructions above, and replace the drive; Close it all back up properly.3.
Using Gparted (live-USB), boot up and initialize the new drive. Using CloneZilla (live-USB), boot up, and restore system image taken from original drive. Provided system boots without error, shut system back down and reboot up on Gparted.6.
Re-size system partition to desired scale. Create second primary partition to use remaining space (use 1-to-3 or 50/50 ratio for sizing partitions; Modern OS’s can have up to 4 primary partitions on 1 physical drive, so make the 2nd partition a primary, not an extended which would have to contain a logical; set boot flag on 1st primary partition, if not already set, and ensure that 2nd partition.does not have. the boot flag enabled. Verify all is working as expected. If so, begin migrating user tree structure into 2nd partition to split system files from personal data, and complete loadout of system as desired.As you can see, I prefer to use Open Source licensed tools, but to each their own there so long as it gets the job done, what difference does the vendor’s name (or lack thereof) make? (none at all)All in all, it seems to me that the only reason these drives won’t come online right away is either (a) because the BIOS needs updating, (b) the drive needs to be initialized to have a meta structure created to house the headers of the file system and master boot record (aka, MBR), or (c) due to foregoing performing a backup image, instead opting for a scratch-build. I suppose that’s one of those ‘your own mileage may vary’ kind of things.
Still, I can’t wait to upgrade mine!:)StygianAgenda. Hi StygianAgenda I most certainly prefer open source tools as well, but at the time I did this upgrade on my SSD, none of the available tools seemed to be able to pull it off. Now granted; this could indeed be because of the lack of initial meta structure on the SSD (I believe MySSD addressed this) or outdated BIOS.At the time I did do the most recent BIOS update, but that didn’t address the issue unfortunately, maybe a newer BIOS will.Please let us know if your plan of attack works, as it sounds like the right approach to me, I’m sure others will benefit from your findings!hans. Off hand I would say that you cannot install a second drive (internally). I do see some solder points next to the SSD slot, highly suggesting that the PCB design was made with 2 SSD slots in mind. However, adding a connector there is not easy and that’s all under the assumption that these pins are actually connected So my guess would be: Not possible.You could consider a USB drive or maybe one of those USB drives with WiFi built in like,. They’re available in several sizes (I’ve seen 500Gb, 1Tb and 2Tb), and some even double as an emergency charger for your phone (build in battery can be used to charge your phone).hans.
Update:I’m happy to report that my upgraded W500 has continued to run flawlessly. It’s run almost nonstop since the upgrade was performed in February.I’m a weather chaser (hobby) and this runs my software for that, and I’ve even installed a full version of MS Office on it so I can manage my documents. There’s WAY more room with the 240GB drive than I’ll ever use.My suggestion is that if you don’t plan to store a lot of pictures or video on this, you may consider saving some money and going with the smaller drive. Then again, I remember the days when I figured I’d NEVER fill a 250MB hard drive after upgrading from my 40MB lol.Dan. Amiga 2000 was my first computer and what I was referencing as well. Great machines.
Hated to give mine up. Those days we couldn’t even imagine a tablet that could outperform exponentially what we had then in our big ugly boxes.I love photography, unfortunately I’ve not done much in the last years.My W500 is just a perfect size to use in my truck to keep up with the radars and such. Otherwise I’ve moved on as well.
But the fact that others are still looking at the upgrade means they are still churning away.I got my feet wet on the old Apple IIe’s. I remember upgrading our ram from 12k to 24k I think, and feeling like we were in heaven, along with moving from cassette tape storage to disk drives, and color monitors rather than green screens. Yeah, we’ve come a long way baby. How far can I get in this lifetime?
Can’t wait to find out!Dan. Haha.Yeah I remember my first computer, a kit, the Ohio Scientific C1P, 2 K memory. Followed by a ZX81 with 1Kb memory. Even with 1Kb you could runa game, amazing. Later I had a Commodore 64 (that computer made the biggest impression), and the Commodore Amiga series (500, 2000, 1200 and finally the 4000/030) until Commodore went belly up.
I never really adjusted to the Windows PC’s, had a Mac LC for a while netx to my Windows machines, and eventually switched all the way to Mac when Apple started using Intel CPU’s so I coul run Windows (work) and Mac (fun).I noticed that newer tablets do not perform much better than the W500 at a much higher price. Strange.So I can totally imagine people sticking to the W500, I actually might put mine up for sale. It’s upgraded to 128 GbSSD and runs Windows 8.1 now.Still do like that little computer though, but it’s mostly laying in a corner, just like all my other Windows computers.hans. I finally got the money together and bought a MyDigitalSSD 240GB 50mm BP4 Eco mSATA SSD SATA 6G – MDMS-BP4e-256 on Amazon for $109 it should be here on Monday (loving Amazon Prime, so excited!).
I’ve done research before to accurately explain how to replace my current SSD, and they just don’t do it for me. Upon purchasing the drive tonight, I again began searching high and low for a descriptive way to replace my SSD, and I came across this website. I just want to personally thank the author for the amount of detail put into describing how to take the tablet apart. I would probably have an epic fail moment if I try to do this myself, and will literally die if I break one of the pins inside. Thank you.It is the most annoying thing when I go to save a simple notepad file, and I get a message that says that there is not enough space to save the file, and we’re talking a file of a 1Kb here.
Then I find that when I go to my C drive, I literally have 0Kb of space left! How is that even possible? Once I close down everything though, my HDD space goes from 0Kb to 200MB! Astonishing. It’s worse than trying to balance a checkbook, and that’s easier to do in comparison! I am currently running Windows 8.1, and I think I would like it a lot more if I had more than 200 MB of space on my C drive at any given time, hence the necessity for more storage. I just have a couple of questions, however, after reading the comments (very helpful btw), I came across a couple of people who have been able to use the utilities that came with their version of windows to clone the current SSD. What I’m wondering is can I just use a USB stick to copy the files necessary to clone my current SSD, or do I need to use an adapter?
My other question is, if by some chance I need to update my BIOS, how do go about doing that? What version number should I look for?
I’m sorry to put so much on you at once, but I’m a very pro’s vs. Con’s kind of guy and I want to make sure that ALL of my bases are covered before I do anything. I love my Acer, it was the best purchase I’ve ever made.
I plan on using it until I can’t anymore, and while it isn’t a hard tablet to find, I don’t have the money to replace it should I mess something up. So while it still has some life left, I’d like to actually use my tablet, and give it a little more breathing room. Thanks in advance.Nicholas.
Hi Nicholas!Great to see you here and thank you for the very nice compliment – it makes it worth writing more articles.Disk space is indeed a headache under Windows.Cloning the disk worked best by cloning it straight to the replacement SSD. In my setup I experienced that the new SSD was not even recognized after replacement (others seem to be more lucky though).
So I couldn’t even start a windows setup or restore after inserting the new SSD.If you computer does recognize the new SSD right away, then copying needed files to an USB stick should work. Well, not Windows itself or installed applications of course. It’s worth a try hans. Updating the BIOS should never be a bad thing.The reason why I cloned my disk was because in it’s empty state, the BIOS did not recognize it properly.I assume that the bootblock of the disk is critical for the BIOS to recognize it properly.If it recognizes the new SSD right away, then I’d do a Acer recovery (with de disks that came with your Acer) or even better: a clean Windows install.With my cloned disk, I was able to login right away but then again: this is Microsoft, so you might run into activation issues, although I highly doubt it, since everything else remains the same.hans. I received my new 256GB MSATA SSD in the mail yesterday (apparently USPS delivers on SUnday?), and installed it after I got home from work.
Let me tell you, I was so stressed to the max about doing this. The last time I had to perform surgery on any of my devices was when I had to replace the SIM card slot on my cell phone, and although it still works to this day, my unsteady hands almost ruined it. Once I calmed down, I read your guide, and got the back of the tablet off with ease, pulled back the tape, took the old SSD out, replaced it with the new one, and finally replaced the tape. I kept the back cover off just in case anything went south.At first boot I saw the Acer logo, then I saw all of these very small, incomprehensible, very dim letters on the screen, but I remembered one of the comments from above said if that happens, just restart the tablet, and it should work fine. They were right. My tablet recognized the hard drive immediately! I was getting weird stares from my wife and son when I was cheering like we had just won the superbowl again lol (Sorry non Seahawks fans – 12th Man Loud and Proud).I could not find any kind of software to clone my original SSD to a flash drive, so I plan on purchasing an adapter to do that soon.
I couldn’t find any of my Windows 8 media either, so I used the Acer recovery disks to install Windows 7. I never realized how much I liked Windows 8 until I’m not using it, I still look for my charms bar from time to time lol.Upon doing some research, however, I found that there are many options for this MSATA to USB adapter. What adapter did you use? Where did you buy it from?I cannot thank you enough for writing this article, it has really helped me to give my tablet more usability, and some much needed breathing room.Nicholas. I bought a Toshiba 128GB SSD for my Acer W500, and a USB 3.0 external case for the SSD. The next step — clone the internal 32GB SSD to the new one — is the problem because the W500 cannot see the external SSD. It shows up on my Dell and Gateway PCs running WIN8.1, but not on the W500.
My son’s older Dell running WIN 7 can’t see the external drive either. I need to replace the battery on my W500, so I’m waiting to open the case until I get the SSD swap ready.Any ideas on how I can get the SSD recognized by my W500?Thanks,Jimbrooksie1. Wow, I had begun to think that I was the only person on Earth still using a W500then I found this post.
I love my tablet and will likely use it until it fassl apart. I had upgraded some time ago with a Crucial 120GB SSD and Windows 8.1 and I haven’t looked back.I find that this version of Windows is much easier to use because of the APP based programs that are available, and it typically runs a bit faster than Windows 7 did. I didn’t really use any of the ACER Bloatware (ACER Ring, etc) so the only thing I did was download the drivers from the support web site and go to town. The only problems that I have are that the screen auto-rotation and built in microphone no longer work.
No big problems, so I just roll with it.Long live the W500!Tarl. Hi,thanks to all involved in helping!Today I managed to exchange my 32 GB SSD and to install an Samsung Msata SSD 256Gb. I broke to openings, but the tablet closes nevertheless.Before installing the new SSD I created a partition with Geparted live and then cloned the original SSD with Clonezilla live (thanks to StygianAgenda!) to the new drive.Win 7 had no problems with the new SSD, but of course it still had the size of the original SSD, so I used windows device control to enlarge the partition.Now I can work with the W500 as if it were a real desktop pc.Thanks again.Stephan. Thank you very much for this guide. Thanks to it, I was able to upgrade my Acer Iconia yesterday so that it now has a usable amount of storage space.I did my upgrade slightly differently than what your guide and others here seem to have done. I bought two mSATA SSD enclosures for about $10 each.
The new SSD I bought was a 128GB MyDigital SSD BP4e (about $60). I downloaded and installed EaseUS Todo Backup Free 8.2 on my desktop computer. I installed the new SSD in one enclosure, and opened the Acer, removed the SSD and installed it in the other.
I then hooked up both to my desktop. Before EaseUS would recognize the new SSD, I had to go to Control Panel Administrative Tools Computer Management Disk Management, select the new SSD and then choose the option to install an MBR. After that, the clone operation was simple and straight forward. It took about 35 minutes. When it was done, I went back into Disk Management and expanded the partition on the new SSD.
Finally, I installed the new SSD in my Acer and everything is running fine.Greg. So, I bit the bullet and did the Windows 10 upgrade.
I have to say, I’m loving the new OS, but I get a fairly regular Blue Screen of Death. I get an error that says my computer is gathering information and will then restart and that if I want more information I can search DPCWatchdogViolation on the internet.
I haven’t determined the cause of the error, but research leads me to believe that a clean install vice upgrading is the only consistent solution. I haven’t tried that yet, but I will comment again if I do.
Other than that, though Windows 10 is great.Tarl. Hans, YIPPEE, YOU’RE MY HERO! Over a year and half ago I found your article on upgrading the SSD in an Acer TAB W500. I had received one for a Christmas present (at my own request) and after I got it thought I’d made a major mistake. The 32 GB storage was just far too small.
I started searching for some way to upgrade it and found your great article and all the comments. “Omigosh,” I thought, “This is way beyond me.” But an inadequate computer wasn’t much good to me either.
I bought a 256 GB My Digital BP4 mSATA 6G SSD and companion MyDigital USB 3.0 enclosure. I read of every word of your article over and over and also every post to the article.
Acer W500 Tablet
All the different approaches left me with my hair standing on in with trepidation. Yet I even bought some pry tools, so after about a month of fearful fretting I took a deep breath and took the W500 case apart. Amazingly I didn’t break a single one of the little hooks and latches. I could now see where the 32 GB SSD was and what it would take to replace it. But it still took me about a year to whip up enough nerve to actually follow through with a lot of steps I had absolutely no experience with (or confidence that I could actually do.) This time I followed your article only, plus looked up some guidance on disk management and partitioning in David Pogue’s massive WINDOWS 8. THE MISSING MANUAL.
With my new larger SDD installed in its USB enclosure I used a free version of Macrium Reflect to clone a copy of the W500s 32 GB SSD to my new SSD. Plugging the new 256 SSD in its enclosure into my computer I discovered that, while it showed up in Disk Manager, it wasn’t detected in file manager as a drive. When I bought the SSD from MyDigital it came with a thank you letter that had a support phone number.
I called it immediately and great, helpful guy named Doug told me that it needed to be initialized and walked me through how to do it as I followed him on the phone. But while it now read as a drive it also had a 192 GB “unallocated” partition, which he showed me how to activate. Last night I once again read your instructions, and again this morning.
I once again managed to open the W500 case without breaking anything, removed and replaced the 32 GB SSD with the new larger one. I temporarily taped the case mostly closed, blocking the tiny on/off switch in the corner with tape so I didn’t have to snap the case together to fire it up. I got a message that no drive could be found, but went back to your instructions and installed the two Recovery DVDs that came with the W500. Once Windows was reinstalled, along with a bunch of Acer bloatware that I will never use, I restarted the computer and, Glory Hallelujah, I now have a wonderful whole new little machine that I will be able to load up with the my favorite programs.
I am immensely happy and proud of myself. I also am enormously grateful to you for guidance and being there when I needed you. When I first started thinking about replacing this SSD I went to the Microsoft Store where my wife bought the W500 for in the first place. It came with a promise of some short term technical support that I hoped could help me. When I told them what I wanted, they told me it couldn’t be done, which was the primary reason I was so apprehensive about trying to do it myself.
I owe you many thanks. You’ve made the “impossible” possible.Dickpaetzke.
Did this over the weekend with aand enclosure. I used “EaseUS Disk Copy Home” to copy of the hard drive. After that all i had to do was switch out the old hard drive for the new one and expand the partition to the full size and it just worked. I did not even have to use the repair disks.Then I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10, which feels stable enough, every now and then it can be a little sluggish to respond to the first touch input in a while (like the first touch in an hour).
/windows-8-clean-install-12-580712163df78cbc28c81943.png "Bz467")
Over all the only real issue i am having is with the auto rotate feature, i can not get it to work, I know it has something to do with the g-sensor but there are no drivers for it for 10. Beyond that one or two of the Acer programs seem to crash on starting (i want to say one may be the devise controller). Any suggestions about the g-sensor or some of the programs that may be crashing would be appreciated. For now I think Windows 10 is worth keeping if for nothing more that a testing system for my code.Other than that every thing worked like a dream.Travis. Hi Travis,thanks for posting your findings!
It’s always great to hear about more SSD’s that work well.As for your Windows 10 findings; I’d assume this is a driver issue – like you already guessed – maybe Acer will make a Windows 10 version available?Not sure if the apps are really needed though (I haven’t used my W500 in a year now, due to a lot of traveling and moving).For now I would not know where else to find the proper drivers. If it’s a USB device though vendor and ID of the USB device might enlighten us and point to the same hardware use elsewhere (and hopefully with a driver that is Win10 compatible).hans. Most of these devices are internally connected through the USB ports. I know my Mac does, and I have another Acer laptop which does the same. Neither here nor there haha, Acer should provide a driver.I did see, suggesting a BIOS update or even reverting back to an older Video driver. I can see that the results appear mixed. But might be worth a try.My first attempt would be trying the latest (old) Acer drivers.
Default it came with Windows 7 drivers, and after that Windows 8 drivers have been made available, not sure of you tried those yet. Here is.From what I have read: You’d need a suitable Sensor driver with fitting AMD video driver. But I have not tested Windows 10 yet. Still waiting for the download hans. I still use and love my Iconia Tab. I am traveling on business now, and I brought it with me.When I did the Windows 10 install it took a long time to complete, and I thought it had frozen more than once. After it completed, mine was pretty buggy and would crash every few hours with a Watchdog error.
I did a full refresh (which has the same effect as doing a clean install) and it works perfectly. The screen rotation is the only thing that didn’t work afterwards.I even found an old Microsoft Office 2003 cd and installed it,too. Yes, I plan on keeping my Iconia for a long, long time.Tarl. Hi Malcolm,Thanks for posting your experiences! Awesome!Mine is running Windows 10, not at a stellar speed, but it works good enough for most tasks and yep, screen rotation is not working, something I still have to look into, but a feature that I rarely use anyway.Can I ask you what browser/OS you have used to post here? I’ve noticed a lot of CSS classes being added, and was wondering if this is created by a specific browser.
Or did you maybe type the text in another program first. Just trying to see if I can improve this editor hans. Hello HansI am jealous of your Windows 10 installation – so far I am on third attempt after two messages at 83% “0xC1900101 – 0x4000d The installation failed in the second boot phase with an error during the migrate data operation.”I will follow “more of ” the online advice and suppose if it comes to it an instal without data may work. Its certainly taking a lot of time though.To answer your question – I used word (office 365) to write the posting – My browser is firefox 44.0.2. I use word like this and for trip advisor and other sites, so that way I can check spelling and format -or so I thought.
I was quite embarrassed when I saw the posting – a lot of carriage returns and wierd layout. On pasting it in the text was coloured ornage and quite large, I changed that, but the format I didnt see until after it was posted.I hope that helps.Thanks for asking and thanks again – awesome site, I will be a regular visitor.Have a good day!Malcolm. Hi Malcolm,I’m traveling at the moment, but when I get home, I’ll see what I can find on my Acer – not sure if I installed anything extra. It has been a while that I did the upgrade (from an USB stick).As for editing with Word – yeah that’s what I kind-a suspected. Word has a reputation of doing these kind of things.Two ways to fix that:– Some browsers offer a “Paste and Match Style” option to paste text, this strips all CSS/HTML,– Paste the text in Notepad, Copy it again, and then paste it in an online form, which will also strip CSS/HTML.I tried cleaning it up a bit, I’ll give it another try in a minute. No problem.hans.
Hello HansA final update, I managed to upgrade to Windows 10 by taking the option to install ONLY windows 10. (no APPS and No data)The five plus attempts to install with data and apps failed and probably took in terms of elapsed time in excess of 25 hours.Therefore wherever possible I would suggest anyone also upgrading their Iconia to take this route first rather than waste a lot of time with trial and error. There is no one right solution(suggestions tried range from remove the Virus checker to install all microsoft upates)Now, in Summary this Acer Iconia tablet is really impressive, my partner says its better then her Surface pro. And with the accessories we had, I think it is. The Keyboard is great and the connectivty is in advance of a lot of portable devices.It is clean, fast and responsive and having installed office 365 has everything I need. I am so pleased we took the plunge and again it is all down to this web site and posts.Maybe the screen rotation doesnt work – I havent even tried. The device now works as required thats all that matters.Thanks to allMalcolm.
Acer Iconia W500 mSATA SSD upgrade success with new Macrium Reflect Free disk imaging softwareMy wife’s beloved W500 was showing its age (and original design limitations) throwing up “insufficient RAM” and “failure to create swap file” errors every time she would try to use it for the most mundane tasks. I suspect this was the result of years of Microsoft updates to its 32-bit Windows 7 Professional OS using up most of the available space on the original 32 GB SSD.Knowing from other posts that an upgrade to the actual RAM was not a viable option and determining that the original 32 GB SSD hard drive was essentially full, I decided to embark on the road to an mSATA SSD upgrade.I am posting here in order to provide an update regarding disk imaging software that eliminates the need for the original recovery disks and provides an easy upgrade path for others.
Hi, so long without a post here, I hope somone can help me.please I need this upgrade. Well the case is:I recently bough the Sandisk X300 MSATA 256GB and afther I changed it in my W500 it is recognised for the BIOS, I follow the steps and boot from the CDs of restauration, it starts good, load the files of windows and show the green windows of restore, but just a few seconds when it started to copy the fyles from the restore disk apears a window that says:There is insufficient space on the disk for the temporary files required for this operation” and then the instalation stops, I press enter and then took me to another black screen that says: ” windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:1.Insert your windows instalation disk and restart your computer2.Choose lenguage settings3.Click “repair your computer.”status: 0xc0000034 – the error codeInfo: An unexpected error has ocurred.
—- -I did it like four times, I restart form the disk, I cheked the BIOS boot order and its correctI serch the error code, 0xc0000034, and it seems to be present on the instalation of upgredes of service packs of W7 and W8,The reason according some sites for this error: The Boot Configuration Data file is missing some required information.You’ll need to use the recovery tools on your installation media. If you don’t have any installation media (like a disc or USB device), contact your system administrator or PC manufacturer.Also for that I found searching for this error the problem generaly apears on winsows 7 Upgrades of service pack 1 but how can be that if this is a empty SDD without SO alreadyI think that maybe there is not partitions asigned on the new SSD Disk but not sure.So Im gonna try windows media instation or use a image of my disk from a clean instalation of W7 or maybe W10 but I guest that clonning the old disk to the new with an enclosure adapter have to work, it is right? But I want to save money, so if is possible to use other alternatives to fix it please tell me.and if the only alternative is clone the SDD what enclosure adapater is compatible with the Sandisk X300 MSATA 256GB.well, I hope this revive the activity here, guest many people still using the W500 well. On advence, thanksAXEL. Hi Axel,it’s been quite a while that I played with my W500 but by the sound of it, it might be that your SSD is not recognized properly.As an alternative yo could try making a large partition on the SSD first with for example the free (or USB stick).You can create this CD or USB stick, and boot from it. Then create one large partition (for example NTFS or FAT).After having done that, try the installation of Windows again – you would then also see if the size of the disk is what it is supposed to be.hans. Axel,If your existing (old) SSD drive is still available, I suggest you consider cloning the old disk to the new SSD rather than using the recovery disk approach.
It would mean the additional purchase of an external disk enclosure such as the Sabrent I used for my upgrade. If you follow my step by step approach described above, you should have success. The BIOS on my unit had no issue recognizing the new SSD and I ended up with all the existing programs, files, and Windows updates still intact.The hardest part of the entire process was getting the case opened without damaging too many of the plastic tabs.rawl747.
Hi Axel!Good to hear you’ve got things to work!As far as I know, the free Windows 10 update is still active (see ) – after upgrading, make sure to use the “Disk Cleanup” utility, and click “Clean up system files” so you can clear a lot of space. Windows stores everything you’d need to revert back to the older Windos version and this would remove that, which saves several gigabytes (almost 10 Gb if I recall correctly).As for 250 Gb resulting in 200 Gb, yeah that seems like a lot of “loss”.
You could check with GPartEd to see why this is. Maybe there is some space used as a recovery partition. I know Windows, these days, makes a lot of partitions during install.hans.
The unit was part of a trade lot of tablets that the boss purchased a few years ago but never got round to dealing with. I found it in a box whilst looking for something else. I was going to fix it for myself and buy it from the company i work for and found this site doing searches for info about the unit.
I noticed some posters were curious about the 2nd slot and as I have all the necessary equipment and experience to carry out soldering one i decided to do it.As for the ‘bios’, this unit never came with the keyboard and i believe i need the keyboard to be able to use F2 to enter the bios. Is this correct?Roger M. I figured out the F2 for bios, i plugged in a standard USB keyboard and it worked OK. The BIOS has nothing that relates to the 2nd slot so i dug a bit further and found bad news for anyone that is thinking they can try it and get it to work. I don’t have a schematic diagram for the W500 so i started looking at schematic diagrams of boards that that use the same principle of using the pcie slot for ssd.
I noticed they are connected to the hhd points on the main controller chip. Using a multimeter I started checking various points on the PCB and found that the 2nd slot is wired differently than the 1st one.It is therefore my conclusion that Acer has deliberately made it so the 1st slot is used primarily for an SSD and the 2nd slot is primarily used for the 3G phone module that you find in the W501 versions. So sorry W500 users, it’s impossible to use the 2nd slot as a 2nd SSD.Roger M. It would seem this comment section restricts how many replies to one post you can respond to.
To follow up on from your question Hans, without a schematic diagram of the PCB it will be impossible to know the functionality of the unused connectors on the PCB, i think i saw 3 when i removed the PCB. The other alternative would be to use a USB port hub but having it so it is hard wired to one of the USB’s internally (soldered).
In theory when the W500 boots up in to Windows, windows should automatically detect the port hub and anything that is connected to it, just like if you was to plug it in via the usb connector on bottom of the W500.The problem with do that though is space. The back cover fits snug on the unit and thus you are severely restricted on space. The only space that can be used to the small area where the 3G module sits and a elongated gap at the top of the unit by the battery. All parts, the usb port hub and the usb pens would have to be extremely small (PCB size) because all their plastic housing and usb metal connectors would have to be removed and replaced with soldered wires.If you know of any very small usb port hubs and usb pens (PCB size NOT plastic housing size) then let me know because i could wire them into this test unit i have here. At least it will prove proof o concept.Roger M. Yep, the comments are displayed nested, and I wanted to avoid that it would become unreadable.I guess there is room for improvement there of course I do have a really tiny USB hub laying around somewhere, not sure how big the PCB would be though. It looks like – mine is very old and just USB 2.0 of course.
I’d assume you’d want to use a hub so the external USB connector can remain functional?As for storage, well ripping apart one of or might result in something useful. But the first one or kind-a make the whole effort not even worth the effort, as it is almost flush with the casing to begin with hans. Good news, your idea works. I managed to find the schematic for the W500 and thus proceeded to work out how i can add a USB pen. I used the data pins that are used for the 2nd pcie connector. Soldered the tx and rx of the USB to those pins and the +5v and GND to a chip that is used to supply power to the internal USB’s. I also had to add a tiny component on the other-side of the PCB, a small coil.
Here is a pic of it wired togetherIt took Windows a bit of time to sort itself out because you have to remember that I am going through what should be the 3G module connector but after a bit, windows detected it and displayed as drive H::)This is just proof of concept that it will work, and it does:)Roger M. The beauty of the usb hub concept is why restrict yourself to one large usb stick when you know 4 of them will work? If price is the main concern due to the high prices of 256Gb and above usb pens then yes just using one large capacity usb pen becomes very practical.In terms of storage space the possibilities are now endless.
In Theory you could have 3Tb of storage, mSATA of 1Tb (provided W500 allows 1Tb of mSATA) and 4 usb pens of 512Gb. How ridiculous would that be on a W500:). There is so many options available. I also found during my investigation that there is another unused USB point i can use which is that of the SIM. Looking at the schematic it uses similar pinouts to that of the 3G pinout. All i would need to to is solder another 4 wires and coil and that would then provide 3-4 more usb pens depending on what usb port hub is used.So yeah, just think, a large capacity mSATA ssd, two usb port hubs with 8 high capacity usb pens!!!!
Madness:)Roger M. I’ve looked at the possibility of adding a 3G module to a W500 and can say it will be extremely difficult because the W500 is not fitted with any of the components for 3G. Having the pcb schematic i am able to see what components are required BUT the pcb does not have any component markings on the board. So when i look at a resistor that is required, the schematic will say R36 or something like that but there is no way of knowing where R36 is (R36 is being used as an example, it is not a real ID). The time consuming part is using a digital multimeter to work out which solder joint on the PCB relates to a part on the schematic.Buy the time someone with the electronics knowhow has managed to work out what component goes where, they will have to purchase all the parts, pcie connector, sim holder, numerous resistors and capacitors, transistors, the costs involved in parts and labour make the job uneconomical.Roger M. Well i am now officially part of the W500 club:).
I bought a cheap unit off ebay. Using the test unit at work gave me the desire to get one and oh boy am i glad i did. I’ve upgraded the mSATA to 128Gb and installed Windows 10. The cpu supports 64bit so i am using that version. Yes i am already aware that the G-Sensor will not work in 64bit due to there being no 64bit windows 10 drivers for it but that’s not a big concern.I’ve been using it for a few days now and with Windows 10 this thing rocks:) (test unit is Windows 7). I am so glad i purchased one now.Roger M. This is a picture of the completed 4 port usb mod on my W500.
At the present moment I have only wired in one usb connection which i am using a wireless dongle, you can see it the bottom right of the picture. I wanted to use a wireless mouse while being able to have the tablet propped up. As you know, this cannot be done if you plug usb devices into the bottom two usb ports. At some point i will finish off wiring in the remaining ports on the USB hub.My new project was to see if something similar could be done with a W501 (3G module) but alas this is not possible. I purchased a cheap unit off ebay and once i removed the back I noticed there is no room to put the modified usb hub or any of the wiring or modified usb devices because all the areas I use in the W500 are now taken up by a) 3g module b) connecting wires for modules antenna and c) the antenna’s themselves in the W501. Oh well, can’t have it all our own way:)Roger M.
Hi Ben,I’m confident a 256Gb mSata will work as well.
(To view a larger image with a more detailed description tap or click a thumbnail.)Love it or not, the newest version of Microsoft’s flagship OS – Windows 8 represents an entirely new direction and focus for the software giant. Because of the tablet and touch screen interface revolution, Microsoft realises that it must adapt or die as many of it’s competitors in the industry have had to do over the decades. Redmond may not have the same mojo it had in the past, but it is still a formidable company with vast resources and knows that it must work hard to remain relevant in a world of shrinking PC sales. The new Windows 8 interface formerly known as, is an acknowledgement by the company that the PC will not be “king of the mountain” forever.Released gratis to the public by way of freely downloadable Consumer and Release Previews, these pre-release Windows 8 versions gave many IT professionals, developers, and enthusiasts the opportunity to become familiar with the new OS. Many chose to install these on PC hardware, and a smaller percentage chose to install on tablets running Windows 7.
Being a tablet fanatic, I did both and installed on a run-of-the-mill desktop machine and on an.My key discovery was that Windows 8 requires a massive amount of free space to install. If you choose to upgrade your own Windows tab, I highly recommend you clean your drive as much as humanly possible before attempting the install. 15GB of free space is about the minimum amount of free space you can have and still install Win 8.If you use Internet Explorer either on your Windows 7 or “upgraded” Windows 8 RC tablet, cleaning the helps greatly, as well as uninstalling unneeded apps, and moving the contents from your Documents folder to temporary storage. If you use Chrome as I did, removing the Google folder (found in C:Users YourUserNameAppDataLocal), will mostly likely free massive amounts of space as it did on my tablet.Upon clearing a minimum of 15GB of storage space on your tablet, ensure you have a blank USB stick with at least 3 GB of free space and follow the screenshots above to upgrade to Windows 8. NOTE: If you are attempting an upgrade from Windows 7 instead of Windows 8 Release Preview, use to download the Upgrade Assistant.Part two of this series will cover the installation and steps performed immediately thereafter.