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Watch before attempting! Be sure to read all steps before attempting. Strongly advise getting the "Essential Electronics Toolkit IF145-047-1" from Ifixit.com if you are lacking proper tools for working on tiny screws and prying apart stubborn and fragile plastic stuff.
Don't complain about the video to me. I did not create it. He kinda glosses over the connector part of this process in my opinion. All the connectors are the latching ribbon style except a few that are male/female pin types.
The one connector that kind of scared me was the video connector which has a little flexible ribbon handle to pull it off vertically from the main board up close to the hinge area. Putting it back on is kind of spooky too but I had no real problems with it.
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM
PC3-12800 Non ECC Unbuffered 204-Pin SODIMM
The above 8GB memory module was sourced from memoryamerica.com, but you may find better deals elsewhere.
The pictured module is the original 4GB one in use prior to upgrade.
SanDisk 128GB SATA 6.0GB/s 2.5-Inch 7mm Height Solid State Drive (SSD) With Read Up To 475MB/s- SDSSDP-128G-G25
Above SSD was sourced from amazon you may find a better deal elsewhere.
Actual original SSD is pictured. However box shown is the upgrade SSD box.
Make a backup of existing SSD so you can restore the chromeos image into the new SSD. The backup is done with the "Chromebook Recovery Utility" from chrome web store as shown in 1st image. You will need a empty 4gb thumb drive.
Write an empty partition table on your new drive before installing it. You will need a linux system with a usable SATA interface and the gparted software to perform this step.
The drive will not be recognized by the system without this empty table!!!! Second image is the "gparted" software screen shot.
You merely need to point the gparted software to the new raw device file and the partition table will be created if it does not exist (it should not if this is a new drive). If it DOES already exist you should clear it so that chrome can initialize it correctly for you later (hint: delete key press to remove a selected existing table row).
You can even perform this prep step for your new upgrade SSD with your chromebook. You would need two things: #1 a working crouton install either on your existing SSD or on a removable SD card (basic Crouton install tutorial). Please note that I am not sure that crouton will fit on the stock SSD drive as I've never tried it. And #2 a USBSATA device like this: USB 3.0 + USB 2.0 to SATA Cable Adapter for 2.5" HDD/SSD Hard Drive
Perform the operations in this step BEFORE installing your upgrade parts into the chromebook!!!!!!
You will be prompted on your first bootup to the new drive for the media to restore onto your upgraded SSD device. You should have created that in the step 4 above before you actually upgraded your hardware. If you did not create the backup you will have to reinstall your original SSD and start over. I told you to read all the steps didn't I ?
The images show you where to look to see if your upgrades are working in the chromeos system URL. Just threw this in FYI
If all is well, like my screen shots indicate, you can install crouton and ubuntu and virtualbox and do real computing with your chromebook now!!!!!
WiFi-Direct