When I send my old laptop back, does it need the original hard drive installed!

Right now I am anxiously awaiting for my r2 to come from Dell and when I get it, I will have to send my r1 back. My r1 has a 500 gb hard drive in it but the laptop currently shuts off after about 2 minutes of turning it on. I have plenty of games and personal info on the hard drive so I was thinking about just taking the hard drive out and replacing it with another.

My main concern is sending Dell my old r1 with all my personal info on it. I guess I could just put the hard drive in my MacBook and try to reformat it but I was wondering if I could just use the old drive in my new r2 and buy a new drive for the r1 that I will send back to Dell. Then again, i dont want to owe dell 200 plus for a 500gb hard drive. Hope this makes sense and thanks to anyone who can help.

 

yeah you can just swap it out no problem.

 

As long as the hardware specs of the exchange return computer Dell receives from you are equal to, or better than, the specs when they shipped it to you, they will not have a problem.

Personally, I would not spend the money to buy a new hard drive to send to Dell. I would transfer the data by putting it in an external case, or the 2nd drive bay of the M17x-R2 & after the data is transferred, I would run a drive wiping program on it & put it back in the M17x-R1 for return. That is basically what I did when I received my M17x-R2 in exchange for my old notebook that was a shock hazard.

 

As long as the HDD in the R2 that dell sends is the same specs as the old HDD, than I wouldn't worry. However, if you put the old HDD in the new R2, than you'll probably have to update drivers and such. Migh be easier to just backup the stuff you need, and transfer that to the new HDD, than run a wiping program on the old HDD.