Disabling the hard drive

Hi guys

I just bought the D150 model with hard drive and 1GB RAM. Is it possible to disable the HDD and to boot form either and SD card or an USB stick ?
I am thinking about saving some power while I am not near a power source.
Is it possible to remove the disk and to boot from the same disk used as external USB disk ?

 

I also have a AA1 D150-1920 (red) and I have booted from the SD card but I have not yet disabled the HD but I am planning to try it let you know. Well I did it. I took out the hard drive and set the BIOS to boot from the SD card reader and it worked.

 

Yep ! I did it too. Using the Backtrack USB bootable image.
At this moment the netbook is reporting "no bootable device" ..apparently something happened with the partition on that drive.
I can see the drive in the bios screen but the partition seems not to be bootable neither present, I am going to try some tools to recover that partition if I can.
The strange thins is that I can not hear the disk any more although I didn't do anything special to disabled, I didn't reach that point, for the begining I just wanted to see
if I can boot BackTrack from USB and it worked.

My initial question was refering to completely disable the HDD to avoid or limit the power consumtion. I don't think that it is possible, I put the question without to have the device in front of me.

Now I have to clarify if the HDD is gone or it is just the partition. I love the black finish and it was the last one in store. I hate to start running between stores to see which one has one in stock.

 

Update: the HDD seems to be in perfect shape, I run UBCD for a USB key and the Western Digital Utils (Data Life gurad diagnostic) was able to test the disc and it found no errors.
I tried some partition recovery tools available on the same UBCD and one of these tools could see the partitions which were overlapping (??).

I called Acer and they promised to send me the recovery CDs. I hope I will be able to use them to restore the system to the factory default ...

 

If you are referring to disabling the HD with the BIOS then it is not possible with the BIOS the D150 was shipped with.

 

What if I remove the HDD from the netbook and install it in an external case. Can I start the system from there ?

 

Yes.

 

I removed the HDD repeatedly while experimenting with various Ubuntu installs to an SDHC card. This is one of the significant design improvements over the original AA1 design, which was locked down. With the HDD removed, the D150 is lighter, and should get better battery life. My only concern would be if Acer intended the HDD to function as a heat sink (seems unlikely, but who knows) as it gets quite warm during operation, and the drive bay gets just as warm with the drive removed.

After downloading and applying updates, Ubuntu 9.04 desktop leaves about 1.5gb free space on an 8gb SDHC; Ubuntu NBR closer to 4gb. With the way memory prices are dropping, you should soon be able to find a 16gb SDHC for under $30, and that would make a very nice environment for Linux.

Now that I'm done experimenting, the HDD is partitioned between XP and Ubuntu, but I still have the SDHC card for "just in case". The D150 can boot from the SDHC with the HDD in place (but of course, you lose the card slot).

 

Does dissemble HDD form my dead Acer will kill waranty ? I need to backup my data before sent it back to Amazon....

 

On a D150, I can see no way this would void the warranty. Two screws secure the HDD access cover; with the cover removed, the drive just slides out. No stickers, or any other warnings.

 

Thank you very much for respond.

 

I have A150 I forgot add this information. Any chance to disemble and took off HDD in safe way ? What about avoid warranty ?