Okay to Remove HDD without Removing Battery?

[euless]

Hi

I just swapped out the hard-drive on my Z51-70. The battery is connected to the motherboard with a tiny connector. It took me a long time using my finger nail to unplug this connector. This connector looks frail, probably won't stand up too many connect-disconnect.

When I do a parts swap, is it okay to do it without disconnecting the battery?

Thans!

[Enig]

I would say disconnecting battery is best practice - this way you also absolutely sure it’s turned off.
That being said I have rarely bothered doing so myself when just dealing with HDDs or RAM, and have yet to break anything doing those swaps - maybe I'm just lucky

But, when you say 'parts', I think that is a far too general, there is loads of 'parts' in a laptop I would never touch without disconnecting battery first. LCD cable being the first that comes to mind - And yes a long long time ago I did exactly this: Forgot battery was in there, tried to re-seat LCD cable, and got some very pretty sparks and a very dead board.

[axur-delmeria]

Removing the battery is necessary as a safety measure.

[TPFanatic]

Does your machine have a BIOS option to disable the internal battery til next AC power connection? Thinkpads do.

I've even pulled 2.5" drives out of powered on laptops, and in t42 days the Southbridge would disconnect the drive data connection for you haha. But this is not recommended because partial connection could cause a short and toast the motherboard, and that is expense and could be a fire hazard.