Latitude E7240 and E7440

I want to know if installing a 1 TB SSD Drive in SATA bay can produce energy / current drain problems to internal power circuitery.

A standard 128 GB SSD drains 0.3 A at 3 volts = 0.9 Watts, a Segate Momentus XT Hybrid 750 GB drive dains 0.7 A at 5 volts = 3.5 Watts, but a 1 TB SSD Samsung 840 EVO drains 1.4 A at 5 volts= 7.0 Watts eigth times more than the basic configuration.

 

Haven't got around to it yet, but I will eventually. I've got to put Win 7 onto it before doing the drive.

Is there anything I should know about swapping in the backlit keyboard? Not having the ThinkLight makes the E7440 hard to use in the dark.

Picked up the brown Tribeca Colombian Leather Vintage Laptop Messenger bag to tote the E7440 around.

 

It will be fine.

 

Does the E7440 run 8.1 alright? If not, I may just leave 7 on it.

 

Don't be suprised, but I guess you won't be able to install both HDD and mSATA in your configuration.

Backlit keyboard swap doesn't require anything else.

Working on 8.1 for few months now on E7440 - no major issues.

 

Mine came with a 512gb Samsung 840 mSATA in an interposer board in the 2.5" bay which I moved to the empty mSATA slot, and then installed an old intel 330 240GB SSD in the 2.5" bay. The only issue I had was that the SSD drive was too thick (11mm?) so I unscrew the metal casing and installed it with just one half of the case. The main problem I've heard people have faced installing HDD/SSDs in the 2.5" bay is the occasional missing SATA cable which usually happens when the mSATA card is factory-installed in the mSATA bay and Dell decides to save 5 cents not installing the SATA cable for the 2.5" bay, but mine already had it. Even the missing cable can be bought from Dell or ebay (I think the part number is HH0YC but don't quote me on this) but that's one extra step that could be frustrating...
I have been living and working fine with 8.1 (with a start menu launcher to make it look like 7) and no problem for me either, but if I had the option, I would keep the 7 over 8 anytime. I am not bothered by 8/8.1 that much that I want to spend the hours downgrading... See this for more info: http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...retrofitting-msata-interposer-into-e7440.html

 

I guess you don't have the Core i3 version.

 

No, I've one e7440 with i7 and one e7240 with i5. Is i3 any different?

 

I'm about 95% sure that E7440 with Core i3 doesn't have mSATA slot - no connector on the mobo.

100% sure that E7240 with Core i3 doesn't have it.

 

Up until a few weeks ago I would have said that it was very unlikely and plain stupid for Dell to make different versions of mobos for something so mundane, but then people here reported e7240/e7440 laptops that didn't have the connector for backlit keyboard on their mobo and having seen that, now I won't be surprised anymore. Just imagine all different combinations of mobo Dell needs to produce and stock to accommodate this all: one for each cpu (that's 5-6, right?) times 2 for backlit/no blacklit, times 2 for SATA connector, maybe times 2 for vPro, etc and you could quickly end up with hundreds of versions...