This is the chronicle of working on a laptop with no vision. Now, just as a disclaimer, I do actually have some usable vision, but I'm not looking when I do this because well, it's not really usable for this type of work, so while I'm not totally blind, for the purposes of this, I might as well be.

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I got a second laptop for $200 and found out that it had a hard drive with a weird propensity to just randomly shut off but then spin up again. I decided to change it out, so I took the thing apart and changed out the drive, only to find out the one I changed it out with was bad. I do it again, and put another one in it, which seems OK, so I put Windows on it.

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Here's where the nonvisual aspect comes in. You see, having proper tools is kind of essential because if you can't do things visually, you have to do them via your sense of touch. With me having normal screwdrivers that are not magnetic, that becomes a slight issue. The hard drive screws into this metal cage, that in turn screws to the bottom of the laptop's case. It does this to keep the drive in place. The only issue is that when you don't have vision, you need the magnetic screw driver to sort of hold the screw while you gently probe for the hole. Not really likely though with a nonmagnetic screw driver.

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I had to do something though, so I took a strip of electrical tape and ran it from the edge of the drive to the board that handled I/O on the right side of the thing. I went on a trip though, taking it with me, and was careful with it, but. I got home and it worked fine, so I shut the lid causing it to go into sleep mode. When I went to use it the next day though, it kinda didn't work. I opened the lid and NVDA started babbling about something then it went straight to the EFI menu.

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I knew what happened, I didn't want to take the machine apart again but I knew exactly what happened. A little square of tape didn't hold the thing and the drive vibrated itself off the SATA slot on the board. I ended up pulling it apart again and by this time, lost the other screws so couldn't screw the drive down if I wanted to. So I had to find another solution. I confirmed the drive did indeed unseat itself, so I plugged it back in. I was rummaging around, trying to find something I could do. I found an old windscreen from a mic I didn't use anymore, and I took it and jammed it behind the drive in such a way that the drive couldn't come back that way, because it was butted up against the plastic retainer that held the sub board for I/O on that side of the case. I then ran a longer strip of electrical tape. It runs from the sub board all the way across the hard drive and stops on top of the SATA slot. It should hold the windscreen in place and the drive down.

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The only trouble is that I get into a problem and look for a solution, half the time never really thinking through all the implications of the thing. One property of electrical tape is that when heat is applied to it, it tends to expand. When it Is cool again, it will contract. This can be exploited to form really tight seals.

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You can test this, it's really easy. You might even be able to do it with a hair dryer, but I've never tried. What you do is roll out some tape, affix the one end to something else and pull out six or more inches. Then you take a lighter and run it under the tape. You don't need to get the flame right on the tape, just the heat coming off it will do. You can now pull the tape even further.Once you stop applying heat, the tape will start to take its old form again slowly. There is a more dangerous aspect though, the stuff can and will burn , which is why if you try that little experiment, be careful and do it somewhere you can contain the fire if you accidentally start one. That's why I thought maybe a hair dryer might work, because you get heat without fire, but I don't know if it is enough heat.

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The thing is though, hard drives can and do tend to get hot. I mean, in a desktop I had, the thing got so hot you couldn't even touch it, and it would shut off because of that. So now I have made a ticking time bomb. If the laptop's hard drive gets too hot, the tape running across its surface could expand. In the best case scenario, it just loses effectiveness, but in the worst, it could actually start to smolder and smoke, maybe even catching fire if the drive really does get that hot.

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So now I have to be careful to try not to let the drive get too hot. I've made a ghetto ass repair and who knows how long it will last, or if it will blow up in my face. If I had proper tools in the first place, this would not have happened, because I would have screwed the hard drive in place and never would have needed to use tape, and electrical tape is what I happened to have at hand.

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Also, if you want to work on laptops, my first bit of advice is don't, but if you still want to, be adventurous, it helps. Also be very very careful. SO many things require finesse, like the little clips you have to peal up but can't be too rough, or the little ribbon cables that have the microconnectors that you have to be careful to not break and plug in just right. Also don't touch the PSU because the caps on the thing would be nasty if they discharged on you.