Alienware m17x r3 changing hard drive?

I ordered a m17x r3 and it's coming in tomorrow. To get a great gpu I had to make basically everything else the stock things so it would fit in my budget. Just wondering can I just take out the stock hard drive and put in my hard drive/ssd using that caddy? And where can I order a second hard drive caddy?
Thank you very much.

 

I did just that. Swapped and reformatted. And it comes with the second caddy-or at least both of mine did.

 

As pmassey31545 stated, you can move your HDD into the 2nd HDD bay.

I'm also moving this thread to the Alienware M17x subforum

 

Just be aware the screws on the caddy are captive and have c clips on the back. I managed to lose every c clip in the machine when i removed the caddys. Fortunately I recovered them all.

John

 

You don't need to order as extra caddy,the spare bay has everything you need to install another HDD or SSD,that's how i did it,use it as boot drive & the 750gb as storage.Just be patient with unscrewing it for the first time,really really tight screws...

 

Does putting the OS on the SSD increase the speed of overall sytem dramatically? How fast does your laptop boot right now?

 

The difference is noticeable,although there are a lot of little tweaking to do
to get the best out of the SSD,there is an entire thread dedicated to that.All in all,it is still a significant upgrade over the HDD.My boot time using Crucial M4 is 20 sec or less,most programs pop open almost instantaneously,not to mention the system becomes mouse-fart quiet.

 

Anyone know what brand and model HDD's that Alienware uses in these laptops?

 

Quite a few, Toshiba, Samsung and a few others I think. Those are a few I can name

 

anyone know if i could put a HDD in the second caddy and then do a clone disk and then run the system off the new HDD? And then formatting the original HDD to use it as a storage drive?

all without removing the original drive.

 

yeah you could......only if your BIOS isnt setup as RAID....make sure you are running AHCI/ATA...before you clone

 

Most people do not highly recommend cloning from HDD to SSD,there are a lot of risks involved.& the SSD should be installed in the secondary bay(HDD slot 1) if you are considering SATA3 or OCZ Vertex drives.

 

I did a clone of the HDD to SSD. Resized the SSD partitions to fit on the SSD and it is working GREAT!!!!!! Just my experience.

 

I did that (cloned the HD to the SSD) on my ASUS as well but the clone did not properly align the SSD when laying out the data. Didn't seem to make much difference until I say how much better the WEI was after a fresh install onto the new AW r3 I just got. Not sure it matters but that's what some of the hardware experts in our office pointed out.

Cheers,

 

My WEI index for the hard drive is 7.9

 

Awesome, so it worked great for you. That's the same WEI I have on this r3 after a fresh install. It was 7.5 on the G73. What did you use to clone it? I used Arconis.

I'm enjoying this AW. Someday, I'll spend the time to take it apart to replace the DVD drive with a BD-RE.

Cheers,

 

Yay, got my m17x today, swapped out the hard drive and just finished reinstalling windows 7. This is sure a great system that I am very pleased.

 

EASEUS drive clone free. And I too will install a BD-ROM one day. BTW, good for you.

 

Glad to have you aboard,since your harddrive installation is done,if you still do not have the 6970m or 580m,that should be your next goal.

 

Thanks, I do have the 6970m though, it works like a charm.