XPS 15 L502X - SSD SATA III Questions

Hey Guys,

I should be receiving my XPS 15 tomorrow (hopefully) lol and I want to add an SSD drive.. I am not a technical guy so I have few questions:

1) What is the Best SSD brand to use.. I am looking for a 60 or a 120 GB just for booting..

2)Can I keep the older hard disk and install the new SSD

3) Does Dell xps 15 ( i7270) support SATA III 6 GBps and how do I install the SSD in the device.. do I need to buy special cables and stuff ?

 

You can swap out the drive fine, if you got the l502x (which you must have if you have that Sandy Bridge CPU - 2720QM), you have SATA 3.

Best brands are Intel, Crucial, Samsung. Don't even blink at OCZ.

You will have to put the old HDD in a caddy in place of your optical drive if you want to have both drives. The 15" only has room for 2 drives total, one being the larger optical. You won't need anything for replacing the primary drive aside from a screwdriver and patience, but you will need the aforementioned caddy for the second drive if you want to keep it in the system.

 

so Basically I have to remove the dvd and buy a new Caddy and put the old 750 gigs drive in it then install the new SSD in the empty spot that was used before for the old drive.. do I need to buy cables? and when I connect everything do I need to connect to a specific port or the system will make it SATA III by it self?

 

The ssd will be in sata 3 mode by itself, just make sure its also set to AHCI mode in the bios (should be by default) and not IDE or legacy. Im not familiar with the 15 but if you want two drives then yes you will need a caddy for the second drive and put the ssd in the original slot.

You dont need cables unless you are putting your hdd in a esata dock or using a external drive (which i recommend) for installing drivers easily.

As for makes i have a crucial m4 and can only say good things apart from to update it to 0002 firmware to stop freezes. But as Matt said OCZ or (sandforce drives) have a lot of problems atm so best to stay away. The m4 is nearly as quick as a vertex 3 but more reliable.

So to me the m4 is a good balance between performance, reliability and price. But also take a look at intels ssd's.

 

I've had an OCZ Vertex 3 in my L502 for a few months now, and have had zero problems.

See my other posts about the install and win7 loading for more info.

 

You need AHCI or RAID/AHCI to get hot swap ODD capabilities. OCZ is a brand I would avoid; a poor reliability track record and they were caught scamming customers with 25 nm flash NAND vs 34 nm and not telling customers and actually making them pay the difference (eventually they scrapped that program). Stick with Intel, Samsung and Crucial. 510 series from Intel, M4 from Crucial are best bets.

 

Hi
Excus me, i have the same question but i have a l502x with QuadCore Intel Core i7-2630QM, 2600 MHz & Mother Board HM67, doas this laptop support sata 3 too? i wana buy a ssd & a caddy, pleaaaaaase answer..
Tanx in advance.