15' XPS 15 HDD question...

Hey guys, I'm looking to pick up an XPS 15 for the B+RG LED screen. My sig shows you the two laptops I own, but I can move my E14 solely to be my work/school machine, my m17x solely for my gaming machine, and then this XPS as my "in bed" machine.

(I'm a laptop addict, you have no idea).

Anyway, my question before I pull the trigger is about the HDD. I'm going to put an SSD in there, but I don't want to pay Dell $600 for another Samsung SSD, plus in this machine I'd only need the 120GB SSD. What I've heard, however, is you need to do a serious teardown to get to the HDD in the XPS 15. I find that ridiculous. Can anyone confirm how difficult (or easy) it is to access the HDD? Only thing holding me up. Thanks.

 

I just realized the title is stupid. Don't know why I put 15 in there twice, my apologies.

 

It took me about 5 mins to replace the hdd with a ssd (first time). I used a crEdit card. I understand your apprehension but it's actually very simple changing the hdd.

 

It's easy.
You undo one screw below the battery, there are two push tabs to help push the palm rest assembly off, undo the ribbon cable clamps for the trackpad and buttons and then you have access to the HDD bay.
If you're the sort of person that knows what an SSD even is then you haven't got a thing to worry about

 

Ahh okay, thanks. Nah I've changed hard drives many times in laptops. I was reading a review that scared me (I think it was notebookcheck, I'll have to look again) where it mentioned that changing the hard drive was very difficult because it required removing a huge portion of the laptop with, I think they counted, 13 screws. I was like "whaaaat?"

I might have misread it then. But thanks for the reassurance.

 

Are there any teardown vids or pics of this? I'm getting my XPS on Monday and I want to have some sort of guide just to make sure I don't brick anything.

Also, is it absolutely necessary to have a grounding wriststrap for this? I've changed HDD's many times in laptops without using one, but actually having to go digging around inside this thing is making me think I should order one.

 

There ya go straight from Dell
Really is simple.

 

Dell has the best breakdown guides. They have helped me out numerous times.

 

Okay guys, I have my machine and I just installed the SSD and Windows, +all the drivers off the disk.

After all is said and done, I'm still getting an unknown device showing up in Device Manager. Only available information is that it's on a PCI Bus. Everything I can think of I installed; Wifi card, audio, video, chipset, webcam, touchpad, etc.

Is there any commonly missed driver you guys can think of?

 

How about the memory card reader?