Inspiron 17R SE - Dual Hard drives

Hi,

I read in the service manual that this laptop can hold 2 internal 2.5 inch drives along with a 32gb mSata SSD.

I also know that a common configuration in this laptop on the dell site is to combine a 1tb 5400rpm 2.5 inch HDD with a 32gb mSata SSD.

Now, that being said, would it be possible to install a full blown 2.5 inch 120gb SSD along with the 1tb 5400rpm 2.5 inch HDD in both Hard drive bay and still have the 32gb mSata SSD to cache information from the 1tb 5400 rpm HD only?

I would like to install a 120gb SSD for the OS partition, and use the 1tb and 32gb mSata SSD to work together as my DATA partition.

Is this possible, if so, how?

 

Hi,

I bought a Inspiron 17R SE with 1TB HDD but without the 32GB mSata SSD.
In addition to that, I built in a 256GB Crucial M4 SSD for Windows in the second HDD bay.

I don´t know, if it´s possible to use the 1TB, SSD and mSata together, but in my opinion it´s not necessary to use this mSata card for DATA.

 

I absolutely know it's not necessary to use the mSata for data, but it would be useless to have the mSata SSD to cache stuff from the Corsair Force GT SSD. So i wonder if i can use the Corsair SDD as the primary OS hard drive, the 5400 1tb HD as the data hard drive, and the mSata to only cache stuff from the 1tb HD.

 

I don´t know exactly how this cache is configured, but in case of doubt you can remove the mSata and wait for a solution by Dell.

 

Assuming both drive bays run on SATA3, you should be able to. You might have to move the 1TB drive to bay 1, and the SSD to bay 2, but it should work. It's just that sometimes the caches will only work on the primary drive, so you'd swap them, then set to boot from the second drive, and cache the first.

 

I will play around with this once i receive the laptop and will keep you posted if it's possible, unless someone from Dell shows up and tells me otherwise...which i doubt.

 

Ok... since i got my 17SE today, i could start thinker with it...

Obviously, i had to replace the wireless card in this because it doesn't support Wireless-N on a 5Ghz spectrum. So i installed installed my Killer 1102 laying around and removed the included Centrino wireless. Once this was done, it was time to tinker with the hard drives...

I didn't got my SSD delivered yet. so i used a laying around 500gb 2.5 HDD and installed it. I used my Acronis True Image 2012 to clone the disk and resize the partition, and....

... once completed i got into the Intel Smart Response Technology software and as i taught, you have control over which drives you want to accelerate, so all you have to do is to install your SSD as your main drive, then install the drivers for iSRT and then install your HDD and enable acceleration only on your HDD (not the SSD, useless to cache an SSD with SSD...). And Voila!

Works like a charm...

 

Oh... and let me tell you one thing...

It really makes a difference to have the 32gb mSata card to accelerate the 1TB HD... believe me. I disabled the acceleration and then rebooted, and instead of taking 20sec to boot... it took over 1 min... everything was slow to start... once started it was ok, but still, everything that access the disk seems slower... so this is a useful feature.

 

Of course it makes a difference, but I do agree that it's not really needed when you have a full blown SSD besides your HDD anyway.

 

This. I am very curious if this will work. I still am a month away from buying this laptop but I would like to buy a SSD to boot Windows from it but I would also like to still make use of the mSATA 32 GB SSD to speed up the 1 TB HDD for the secondary drive.

I don't honestly care which hard drive bay I install the SSD just as long as it can boot from it. If the mSATA is hard coded to speed up only the primary drive in drive bay 1 then so be it and I would leave the HDD in drive bay 1 and install the SSD on drive bay 2 to boot from it. Anyone with this laptop know the ins and outs of this system?

 

I will be able to answer your question later this week when i receive my 120 SSD. I am planning to do exactly as you describe, which is to boot off the SSD and get the 1TB to be accelerated with the mSata SSD. As soon as i get a result, i will post back here.

 

Cool man. Looking forward to hearing back from you.

 

Where is the second bay at as I have just purchased one and would like to install the second drive.

Thanks

 

Yes you can do it. I have mine setup in this way.

 

Question:

The maximum size mSATA for SRT is 32GB not 64GB on the 17R-SE?

Intels website says SRT support up to 64GB but maybe that's just for desktops or the 17R-SE has BIOS limitation?

 

Hi, i have the same laptop and i couldn't setup RAID. I bought a mSata 64GB from Crucial yesterday. After installing it, i tried to chang the Sata operation AHCI mode to IST mode, then what i got is blue screen. I don't know if i should re-install my window or not. Is there anyway to fix that, edit registry maybe?

 

I read that if you have more than 8GB of RAM you cannot use the mSata drive, so I will add a 128GB SSD as the primary drive, and use the 32GB mSata as a normal (fast) drive for programs that don't change much, then the old HDD as the secondary data drive. This way I can use ACHI to keep TRIM support on the SSD & get he best of both worlds. Just have to make sure the BIOS i A08 or lower (else there may be issues).