Precision 7560 & 7760 Owners' Thread

Yes, but you'll have to source a new display cable along with the display panel to make the switch.

 

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I currently have an M6700 Covet which will only run in safe mode because the AMD Firepro M6000 card is dying. I've got another one coming from eBay, but I can't do much with the machine in safe mode, except back my data up. (Haven't looked in the BIOS for hybrid graphics, but I will).

So, if for some reason the A4000 card I'm getting with my soon-to-be-delivered 7760 dies for some strange reason, am I going to be in the same situation with the 7760, even if I have hybrid graphics enabled? This is a real concern for me, since I use my M6700 for general business as well as CAD, which is the primary use case. Right now, I'm having to run my business using an old Toshiba C855, and that ain't fun (replaced keyboard twice, slow processor, horribly inadequate screen resolution, slow wifi, etc.)

I realize that the video card dying is probably not going to happen, but after my recent adventures with the M6700, it has me concerned.

 

Thanks!

 

M6700 supports hybrid graphics only with NVIDIA GPUs. However, you can remove the dGPU card and the system will boot up on integrated graphics.

With your 7760, if something happens to your A4000 GPU, you might still be able to use the laptop fine with the Intel GPU. (CAD performance may be pretty pitiful though.) I guess it depends on exactly what the issue with the A4000 is, and if it prevents the system from booting. With hybrid graphics enabled, the Intel GPU drives the internal laptop display, and you could set it up such that the A4000 is never used at all.

 

Thanks!

Yeah, I tried removing the card, and the screen would not work. Of course, I haven't tried enabling hybrid graphics. Is that required for it to work without the AMD GPU? As far as I know, the system boots. I just can't see what is happening.

Good to know about the 7760.

 

Thanks!

 

You can't enable hybrid graphics with the AMD GPU installed. The option will not even appear in the BIOS unless you have an NVIDIA GPU installed.

The only thing that I can think of would be to reset the BIOS while the AMD GPU is not connected to force everything to default (which should enable the Intel GPU). You can do this just by unplugging the coin-cell battery for a few seconds. Not sure if this would actually solve your problem.

 

My machine will be delivered with a 1TB drive. I purchased a 500GB SSD that I want to use as the boot drive, because like you, I like to have my system drive separate from my data drive. I still have half my 256GB SSD empty on my M6700, so the likelihood that I will fill the 500GB drive up is minimal.

Can Clonezilla live allow me to shrink the 1TB drive so that the image will fit onto the 500GB drive? I would very much like to try to do this cloning job (on another computer) before my initial boot.

 

I would probably install Windows on the 500GB SSD first to create the partition table and the other partitions on the new, empty drive.

I strongly recommend using Windows to shrink the drive. I would use the tool in Computer Management->Disk Management. Right click on the relevant partition, select Shrink Volume..., and choose the amount to shrink. Choose a partition size that leaves enough space for the other required partitions, e.g., "System Reserved" and "Recovery".

Once the partition is small enough to fit the available space on the 500GB SSD, use CloneZilla to copy an image of the partition to the smaller SSD.

Another approach is to adjust the partitions on the 1TB drive such that they fit in the first 500GB, then use CloneZilla to image the entire drive, and write the image to the new drive. I'm not 100% sure the partition table will be correct, so check it carefully if you try this. This approach worked when I imaged a 256GB drive to a 2TB drive, i.e., the partition table knew about the larger drive without my having to do anything, but I've never tried going the other direction.