New Vostro Lineup (3350, 3450..)

Wouldn't bother if I were you. I posted a whole thread about those updates last week, but apparently noone gave a flying toss. And whoever the moderator is obviously didn't think it was worthy of a sticky, even though this is meant to be a dedicated vostro forum.

 

I saw it, but when I got around to thanking you it was already edited. I'm really surprised no one said anything or stickied it. I guess that's the internet for you.

 

Has anybody had any problems booting off of an eSATA external drive on the Vostro 3350? For the life of me I can't get it to boot. It just goes straight to booting up Windows off my HDD

I have my boot order set to
eSATA, USB, CD, HDD

I'm certain it isn't the drive itself, as I've been booting off this thing for upwards of 2 years now. It boots just fine with other computers.

Maybe I'm missing something?

 

Try hitting F12 during post to access boot menu and choose that drive from there, regardless of current boot order. Also, I've seen on a Latitude, that once an eSATA device was removed, the boot order would get rearranged.

 

No I've tried that too. It just goes straight to the next device (in this case, through the list to my HDD). The boot order doesn't change though. I've also checked that I have the latest version (and only version) of the BIOS.

I have a hard drive dock at home that also has eSATA. I'll give that a try tonight, I didn't think to test eSATA boot with that. Hopefully this is just a problem with my drive enclosure!

 

How do you power your eSATA device? Do you have an eSATAp cable or do you use an additional USB cable to provide current? If it's the latter, then USB 3.0 ports are not functional (not even providing current) until the OS loads proprietary drivers. On the other hand, if your eSATA device was not powered up, then it wouldn't even show in the boot menu, so I'm guessing you have an alternate power source. In that case I have no idea...

 

"Well glaze my nipples and call me Rita" (thank you Stephen Fry!)

I'll bet that's the problem. I have a Y-cable USB, and I always use the power-plug to provide power to the drive. Given that the 3350 only has 2x USB 3, and 1x eSata/USB, you can guess which of hte USB ports I'm trying to draw power from.

The strange thing though, is that when my notebook turns on, I can feel the external drive spinning meaning that there *is* some power going to it. But the green power LED on the drive doesn't remain on, instead it seems to blink at a constant rate. Normally the green LED is solidly on when the drive is working. Perhaps the sign that there isn't enough power going to it.

I have an AC power adapter at home. I'll try that out later on tonight, see if that makes a difference.

Well, I do see my eSATA drive in the boot menu. I double checked that it's not a drive issue, by successfully booting off this eSATA drive from two other computers (my own Dell SXPS 1645, and my desktop).

Might be time to invest in a eSATAp cable. Less clutter too

 

Updates to my last post.

It turns out that it may indeed be the USB 3.0 ports that are causing my problem. Using my externally powered hard drive dock over eSATA, I am able to boot off eSATA. However, when I return to my portable drive, the USB cable that I normally use (nearly identical to this one) seems to have trouble drawing enough power to the portable external drive. However, when I use the dedicated USB power cable that came with the portable external drive enclosure (exactly like this one), I am able to boot off of eSATA, and the green LED is constantly on. This means that the dedicated power cable is doing its job, and for some reason the power cable built into the Y-cable isn't.

It seems that these USB 3.0 ports do supply power on system boot, they just must not function as USB 3.0 ports until an OS is loaded.

 

The problem with USB 3.0 is that Intel did not yet implement this standard and therefore there's no on-board USB 3.0 controller. Instead computer manufacturers use an additional controller on a separate little board, which is not supported without drivers.

As for the power, well, I did a test with a USB LED lamp: I plugged it into USB 3.0 port while in Windows and then restarted the laptop - the light went off and didn't come back until Windows was halfway through loading. I guess that doesn't mean there's no power at all, but apparently not as much as there should be.

Anyway, yes, get an eSATAp cable - it's so convenient

 

Hi guys,
I am thinking of buying the Vostro 3350 with the bellow configuration:
Intel ® Core ™ i5-2410M 2.3GHz
4096 MB 1333 MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [1 x 4096]
500 GB Serial ATA hard drive (7,200 rpm)
6490M HD graphics card with 160 + cores ultra GDDR5 memory
8x DVD + /-RW Drive including software
Internally backlit keyboard - USA / International (QWERTY)
Integrated 2.0 megapixel camera
8-cell Lithium-Ion battery (80 Wh)
European - Dell Wireless 1702 (802.11b/g/n) + Bluetooth

It has 100euros discount until Tuesday and free shipping until the end of the month so the final price is 831.81 euros.

This is on Dell's Netherlands website since I am in the Netherlands.
I work in the university and I mainly do software programming. I am not so interested on games but I would like it a little bit fast and with long battery. I think this Vostro has these characteristics.
I would appreciate any feedback and opinions and I would also like to ask if it is a problem that it comes with Dutch Windows. Is it possible to install the English version with the same licence key? And in the future upgrading the ram with another 4GB will be possible with normal dimms or I need anything special from Dell?
Thank you very much!