Upgrading the L702x Hard Drive

I just found that the dell upgrade HDD for the L702x is only SATA 1.5. So I am assuming they cheaped and made that the stock hard drive. So upgrading is a probability.

Some have said that the L702x should support SATA 3. I haven't confirmed this, but if I do purchase a drive from newegg (a samsung 2.5" 640 GB 7200 Sata 3 is only $80). What is the easiest way to transfer the stock loaded drive over to my new HDD? Or do I have to reinstall windows from scratch?

My main thing is that the Dell recovery partition has served me well a couple of times on my old M1710, so I'd keep it if at all possible.

I really would like a SSD, but I can't see running the OS and all the programs I use off of anything less than a 350GB drive, and that doesn't even appear to be available for less than $1,000. So that will have to wait till next year.

 

A follow up question however would be though, With dual drives, do you install programs on the secondary drive to keep the SSD usage down and not inhibit the OS speed on the SSD?

I appologize for my lack of knowledge on this subject. Haven't really kept up with dual drive operation, since before now it wasn't as common on laptops.

 

You could clone the drive using Ghost or Acronis. That would keep your recovery partition in tact.

For the SSD question, really depends on how big the SSD is. The more it is filled up, the slower the performance.

I would minimum get a 120 GB SSD for OS and your most used applications. Then store all your data on the 2nd drive.

 

Thanks. It has been years since I ghosted a drive, but I'm sure I can manage. I was looking at the good and bad of that partition, but it also includes all of the bloatware. I would like to be able to create my own partition someday to do the same thing if possible, but that could be easier to do with the dual drives.

As for the SSD, I don't know what the % of free space should be for performance, but I would assume that 50% would be ideal. and looking at my current drive, I am using about 100 GB, but could easily make that 150Gb to 200 GB if I put everything I wanted on it. So i would like to have at least a 350 GB drive, but that is just too much money right now, if it is even available. I am thinking I could organize better, and a 256 might work, but that is every bit of $600, and I don't think I can justify that expense this year. Maybe for Christmas, I'll treat myself to one if it has been a good year.

 

Well I advise against cloning unless you just clone the recovery partition because sometimes it isn't aligned right when you clone. That results in excessive writes to the cells thus degrading performance quicker.

 

I think I am going to wait till SSDs go down in price to deal with this, and by that time, i will probably do without the partition. I just don't know that either the Sata III or hybrid drives are an economically feasable upgrade right now, and a fresh install later being able to go to a sizable SSD would be the best bet.

Thanks for the input though!

 

fbickley, don't give up on ssd's just yet. You don't know what you're missing. I would recommend you try a 128GB ssd from tigerdirect along with your other factory drive in the 2nd HDD slot. Put the OS and programs on the ssd, put files and other stuff on the 2nd HDD. You will be fine running the ssd at almost full capacity. My benchmark performance actually increased after loading over 60GB worth of OS and programs on my 128GB ssd drive. If for some reason you don't like it, you can return it to tigerdirect for full money back guarantee. (Newegg doesn't offer this.)

 

You've sold me. I am going to pick up a 250GB here so I can install it immediately when my 17 arrives.

Question is, which one to get? OCZ, Kingston, or Samsung. I found a good site with a nice guide, but I can't tell what is right with all the new stuff out. I would like to be right around $500 if not cheaper. But if it rocks, I'd go a hair higher in price. And it sounds like firmware upgradability is an important thing as well. Where did you get your vertex 3?

 

going with the Kingston SNVP325-S2B/256GB from newegg. Hopefully it suits. I just don't trust the crucials given the reviews, intel is a PIA to ugrade firmware, and the Vertex has bad reviews in the older models.

Kingston seems to be pretty well recomended, it comes with a decent toshiba controller albeit slower than vertex, and the extras are nice and Kingston has a decent warranty. Hopefully it will suit me until the big and faster drives come out next year.

 

I use acronis at my shop. The 2011 version does not have cloning enabled in the demo verson (they got smart...), but if you can find the 2010 demo...

It works great. easy interface. I like it better than ghost.

 

The question is it worth cloning or doing a fresh install?

 

I personally do a fresh install because I want to get rid of the bloatware dell installs from the factory, along with the recovery partition I personally don't need. If you've spent some time removing programs, cleaning up the OS, and adding programs, it may be worth your time just to clone the existing to the new ssd. Remember, if you do a fresh install, you will have to download and install all the drivers for every component. This is tedious, takes a while, and can be complicated to someone who doesn't normally do this, as dell's drivers aren't named correctly, so you must personally keep track of what every driver is. I make subfolders to replicate dell's online driver download interface, and place every single driver in it's own folder to make sure I name it correctly.

 

I have had to do that before, but you are right. It is tedious, and I had issues with the touchpad on my old 9300.

I don't mind getting rid of all the bloatware, especially since you can do it over time. The question is much will that take away from the life of the drive, and how big of a deal is the partition. Is it possible to clone only the OS partition, and leave out the recovery partition?

 

You shouldn't have to worry about the life of the drive. From what I've read, most ssd's on the market are designed to last as long as your new laptop. You can leave out the recovery partition when performing a backup in most paid programs, such as acronis. Make sure you keep the small 100/200MB system partition dell puts on the drive for the MBR, otherwise the drive will not be bootable. If you do a fresh install, you will remove those two partitions and only have 1 single partition with everything on it. This is the way I prefer to have it. This is only if you formatt the hdd and align it correctly before installing windows. If you don't formatt and align before the fresh install, it may install that small system partition for the MBR.

 

I may need to pm you for some phone consulting when all of this arrives.

What is the MBR? (Never mind, I found it) Hopefully all of this will be easily discernable when I use the cloning program. I beleive it is arconis that comes with the Kingston Drive. The other issue is aligning. I am not sure how that all works. If it seems easy, I'll go with it, otherwise it i'll be doing a clean install.

On the fresh install though, is the software available that dell provides? For instance, I got the Creative SoundBlaster X-FI MB 1.2, and I don't know if that will will be available again.

I guess the issue is the last time i did a clean install, it had been done numerous times on the same system, and all the best drivers were available in a forum. Nobody seems to have the L702 yet, so I may have to make myself one of the early guinee pigs.

 

My XPS 15 just arrived and the Soundblaster CD came with it for future installs, along with the dell drivers CD and Windows 7 DVD.

 

Perfect. I am planning on doing a clean install, and can always revert later if I have problems. I think that you are right in having a single partition is the only way to go on a SSD. Partitions are basically useless and just take up extra space. I'll do my backups on my second drive.

On the clean install. You just plug in the new drive and start it up with the windows cd in the slot right? I have done clean installs, but always from a system that was already running, never from a blank drive. I hope the bluray writer opens.

 

Yes, I usually go ahead and change the boot sequence in the bios before starting the install just to make sure, but it should revert to the optical drive when it doesn't see any bootable media on the hdd. Make sure when doing all this (deleting stuff, installing the os, etc.) that you don't have any hdd's or flash drives hooked up to the laptop besides the ssd. This includes the second hdd you took out of the main tray. This can somehow cause them problems later on, up to and including being erased. Do the install with only the ssd hooked up. Then, when you get everything up and running, install the other (oem) drive in the 2nd hdd bay.

 

I was thinking that would be the thing to do. Thanks for the confirmation. I still have to look at which bay is the primary bay as well. I think that is on the L701 thread though. I was also going to wait to install my extra Ram as well.

As a preperation though, I was going to see about setting up an iso on usb flash drive just in case there is any issue with the blue ray writer functioning properly from the bios. Are there any issues setting that up from a 32 bit computer first though?

 

First, there should be no problems with using the blue-ray drive, as it is just a UPnP device just like all the other hardware these days. (I had no problems with this scenario on my L501x and it's blue-ray drive.) Secondly, you should have no problems doing the install from a usb flash drive if you prefer. I've made many 64 bit OS iso's and installed from a flash drive, using a 32 bit computer to set everything up from. I would try the optical drive first for simplicity, and for some reason if that doesn't work, then prepare to make a bootable usb flash drive with the OS on it.