How many SSD and HDD slots are available in Alienware 17 R5?

I have purchased an Alienware 17 R5 laptop. I was planning to buy additional SSD to install in my laptop. But I got conflicting information throughout the internet including Dell sale representative. I am completely take aback with this amount of confusion.

I have bought a laptop with "512GB PCIe M.2 Class 50 SSD + 1TB 7200RPM HDD".

On checking the Alienware 17 R5 Specification document( Alienware 17 R5 Spec Doc) I confirmed to myself that there are 2 SSD slot, 1 HDD slot and 1 Intel Optane slot. Is this right???

Please help

 

Please refer to page 20 under "Storage" on the Specification document link you provided.

"Your computer supports one hard drive and three solid-state drives."
- One 2.5-inch hard drive [ Up to 1 TB ]
- One M.2 2242 solid-state drive [ Up to 1 TB ] (SATA drive)
- One M.2 2280 solid-state drive [ Up to 1 TB ] (PCIe NVMe)
- One M.2 2280 solid-state drive [ Up to 1 TB ] (PCIe NVMe)

So, what questions do you have regarding your purchase?

 

You can add any PCIe SSD from Samsung 960 pro/evo or even 970 pro/evo or even WD Black nvme will be compatible. I don't know about Storage limit but you need to confirm it. Usually storage size shouldn't be a limiting factor.
Its better to get Pro series since some users who bought 960 evos said in samsung ssd forum and dell forums that ssd wasn't detecting at all. Then again Pro will be a good investment.
For sata drives its better to choose Crucial MX500 in m.2 or 2.5" since they are better price-perf ratio. Unlike 850/860 evo models, m.2 versions don't have FW updates like 2.5" SATA.
Then again, you might have to opt for lower capacity drives since in India its really expensive.

 

Thanks Vasudev

 

Thanks mate

 

Do you think Dell still whitelist drives based on capacity?
IDK, why Dell limits PCIe Capacity to 1TB when EVO drive has 2TB drive. If it was Skylake then I'd believed it. On 8th generation cpus, those limits are absolute crap.

 

Thats whats puzzling to me... Maybe their board restricts to 1TB... And I completely agree with you... Maybe if an oppurtunity knocks, I will try installing a larger ssd and check how it might affect anything ...

 

No I doubt they restricted it.
970 pro has 1TB only as max capacity. EVO's naturally been a hit or miss on most laptops and only pro's had 100% success rates.

 

I don't know about the date of this machine's release, but at that time is it possible that 1TB M.2 drives were the max capacity on the market, so that was put down in the manual?

 

Its been few months that's all!
But Samsung 960 pro was present in 2017 and not actually new.

 

Strange...

I'm no Dell apologist, but sometimes systems are designed many, many months in advance, or the technical writers copy and paste from previous models... But you would think someone could come back and check these things before it is released.

Perhaps @selvaracp will get a larger capacity drive and post back his findings.

 

They don't whitelist storage (that utterly stupid practice is unheard of since circa 2006) - they just do not ship it with larger drives. You can use drive of any size you want as long as it fits and has correct protocol (if the slot you put it doesn't support both SATA and NVME).