Hands on Dell Precision 7710

7710 can only hold one 2.5" drive. If you buy a new one then you will have to replace the one that came with it. There are currently no 4 TB drives that will fit, 9.5mm height max (4TB drives are 15mm).

It also has room for two M.2 drives. They can be either NVMe (i.e. Samsung 970 Pro) or SATA (i.e. Samsung 860 EVO M.2 or WD Black).

For migration, you can use any disk cloning tool. Macrium Reflect is free. If you buy a Samsung drive then you can use the Samsung data migration tool that is also free. If you don't have any data that you care about it might be easier just to do a new Windows install. Microsoft has a free tool that will create bootable USB media for you. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

 

Thanks!
Can I choose any M.2 drives (of any capacity)? Do I need to get any special connectors to put these drives into the 7710?

In total then, the laptop can hold 3 drives? One 9.5mm HDD and two M.2 drives? And all three will be bootable?

I don't have any data on the drive. Will the USB media method you linked take care of the dell drivers that are factory installed? Being in a factory install state after the migration is also good for me.

 

You are correct on the drive count. This system can have three drives total, 2x M.2 + 1x 2.5" SATA, or 3x M.2 (adapter required only for the third M.2 drive). You can boot from any of the three. There is no capacity limit but currently 2TB is the largest capacity for a single drive that you will find available for any of these (well there are 4TB 2.5" SSDs available from Samsung that will fit, rather pricey though). M.2 drives need to be 2280 form factor (80mm long) — This is the normal form factor for M.2 drives, it would be strange to find a drive that was different, but they are out there.

There is no special connector needed to install an M.2 drive (unless you want to install a third M.2 drive into the 2.5" SATA slot). Heatsinks for the M.2 drive should have been provided in the system whether it was originally ordered with such drives or not. The heatsink covering an unused M.2 slot may have a "film" that you need to peel off of the thermal pad when installing a drive.

If you use the Microsoft USB media then you will have to install drivers yourself. They are all available on the Dell support site, but really, you don't have to do very much work. There is one thing, if the SATA mode is set to "RAID" instead of "AHCI" in the BIOS (default I believe) you will need to provide the Windows installer with the Intel Rapid Storage driver, extracted. I recommend switching to AHCI instead of RAID if you are setting up a new install, and you do not intend to use RAID. Anyway, once Windows is installed, if you connect it to the Internet and run Windows Update then almost everything will be pulled in automatically. I generally just install the touchpad driver from Dell (to get the GUI control panel with extra options), the ControlVault drivers (if a fingerprint reader is present in the system), the Thunderbolt drivers and firmware, and Dell Power Manager (to select a different fan profile) — IMO the other stuff is unnecessary.

If that sounds too complicated then just look into a tool to clone the factory OS install onto your new drive.

 

A few of my 7710's i7 6820HQ core temps are running at 100 degrees when rendering 4k video in Adobe Premiere Pro. Does anyone have experience with rear vent coolers (e.g. Opolar)? Do they work better than laptop cooling pads? There's some discussion that forcibly sucking more air from the rear vents might damage the original underneath fans??? Thanks.

I'm not sure if I can provide a link, but you can search "Opolar B01E3Q7FS6" on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/OPOLAR-Laptop-Temperature-Display-Cooling/dp/B01E3Q7FS6

 

Basic question.
I got a Samsung 860 EVO NVNe M.2 drive. How do I install it into the laptop? What tools do I need?

Thanks.

 

Just need a small phillips screwdriver... Take the bottom panel off, take the M.2 heatsink off, and install the drive.
Dell has instructions for installing and removing all parts. https://www.dell.com/support/manual...aae6e7-9d06-4c20-82bf-728abc2df3ef&lang=en-us

 

I have 3 x Samsung SSD PCIe drives in RAID 0 on my 7710. The RAID array was created via the Intel Rapid Storage Technology app in the BIOS.
I am having issues with some programs.
I have a new Samsung SSD PCIe.
I want to install the new SSD PCIe replacing one of the old three SSD drives and install Windows 10 x64 on it.

If I replace the old drive in the same slot, will the RAID 0 be preserved? Or will I lose all data?

I believe that it should be ok, but I want to make double sure because I do need to go back to my old drives.

 

RAID 0 is striping, if you remove any of the drives from the array then the data will be lost, right? In a three-disk array, each disk holds one third of the data, and there is no parity information to restore the data if a drive is taken out.

 

I remove one of the three drives but then replace it with the same, unchanged, drive.

 

RAID 0 offers no redundancy. If you replace one of the drives, you will lose one third of your data and the array will be unusable. If you are fine with that, you could reinitialize it and then reinstall Windows from a clean slate.