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    A couple of Zbook 15 G2 newbie questions (drives, adapter, carrying)

    Discussion in 'HP Business Class Notebooks' started by Dan Wells, Apr 4, 2015.

  1. Dan Wells

    Dan Wells Notebook Enthusiast

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    Mine arrives on Monday, and I'm doing much of the configuration myself (I've been fooling around inside computers for 20 years, many of them much harder to work on than the Zbook, so I'm not at all worried about physically adding RAM and drives).

    My starting configuration is the F1M38UT (high-resolution display, 256 GB PCI SSD, no other storage). I have a Samsung 840 Pro 512 GB SSD that is certainly going in there, and I've ordered a drive carrier for the optical bay plus 16 GB of additional RAM (the Corsair that folks here recommended).

    I'm trying to choose between a 1 TB SSD (Samsung 850 EVO or maybe SanDisk Extreme Pro or Samsung 850 Pro) and a 2 TB Seagate/Samsung hard drive for my third drive. It'll be used to store my photo library (I'm a landscape photographer and photo teacher), which will also reside on a RAID and on OneDrive. The images I'm working with most frequently can, of course be copied to the 840 Pro if the library drive isn't a SSD. The PCI drive will be boot/applications/cache, and the fastest remaining drive (the 840 Pro if #3 is a hard drive, the terabyte SSD if I go that way) will hold working files.

    Will my computer come with a bracket for the internal 2.5" bay, despite no preconfigured drive, or do I need to get one from HP Parts? It's not expensive, but it's a bit tricky to get ahold of (backorders). I'm assuming that I want the hard drive in the optical bay if I go that way - the optical bay is either slower than the 2.5" bay or the same speed, correct? There shouldn't be a reason to put a FASTER drive in the optical bay...

    In addition to the drive questions, I want a second power adapter to take with me when I haul the Zbook from home to work. I'm contemplating a 90 watt, because it is much lighter. I don't care if the second adapter charges the computer - I just want to sustain the charge through a workday. What I don't want is an adapter that will throttle my performance. I can tell from HPs specs that a 90 watt won't run the big workstations while charging them (it ships with midrange ProBooks and EliteBooks, which don't have quad-core CPUs or Quadro graphics), but it IS listed as an accessory for the Zbook 15 - I assume this means it'll offer full performance, but not charging and use simultaneously, but I'm not sure this is correct...

    My final question is how to haul this beast? I walk to work most days - 1.5 miles each way. I'm thinking it goes in a high quality laptop backpack, perhaps something from one of the hiking pack companies? I'm having trouble finding something with both a laptop sleeve (especially one not made for a MacBook Pro) and a real suspension system. There are nice daypacks out there that will carry a big ol' Zbook for many miles with no weight issues, because they have cut down versions of real backpack suspensions, but they don't have padded compartments. There are also laptop-specific packs that have padded compartments that will protect a computer, but they have skinny shoulder straps and no hipbelt. So far, I haven't found one that does both...
     
    Dan Wells, Apr 4, 2015
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  2. GosuDesign

    GosuDesign Notebook Guru

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    It should come with a hard drive bracket to allow you to upgrade to another 2.5'' later (if you went M.2 PCIe only)

    Probably best to stick with a larger AC adapter because QHD+ w mid/high end dGPU probably means you're going to be pulling a lot of power since that panel is powered thru dGPU natively - versus iGPU like the lower resolution panels
     
    GosuDesign, Apr 4, 2015
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