M4700 Owners Thread

If you are willing to give up the optical drive, you can purchase a caddy that will allow you to install a standard 2.5" drive in its place. You could use this to add an SSD without needing to touch the mSATA port. Any caddy designed to fit in an "ultra-slim" 9.5mm optical drive bay will work, but Dell has an official part for the M4700 that matches the color of the system, maybe someone else can get you the part number.

You can install the SSD in the caddy but it is a SATA-2 port (3 gbps) whereas the internal bay has a SATA-3 port (6 gbps). It would be better to install the SSD in the internal bay and move the HDD to the caddy in the optical drive bay. To do this you'll have to make sure that the caddy can hold a drive that is 9.5mm drive. (Some of them will only take a drive that is 7mm tall, many SSDs qualify but not many HDDs.)

 

Thank you!

So I will need to find the Dell part number for the caddy. Hopefully, someone will post it....

When I eventually acquire the caddy, and move the HDD, will the machine still recognize it as the C;\ drive and boot correctly, before I clone the drive to the SSD?

Is the Crucial SSD a good model, or is there something else in the price range that I should be looking at?

 

My DVD drive is not recognized after I removed it and put it back in again.

I used to be able to get it to work again by running the Control Panel trouble shooter, but now it just cannot be recognized anymore.

My warranty will be transferred in a week, but is there anything I can do in the mean time?


EDIT: I took the optical drive out and put it back again and it seems to be working.

I added the screen shot of the system information. Can someone confirm if this looks normal?

 

Anyone try installing a Intel 7260HMW (Wireless AC card) with success in an M4700? I searched and saw that people had some success with Latitude E6xxx series, but the bluetooth did not work. I was just wondering if anyone attempted it on an M4700.

Also... I asked before but no one responded, regarding the M4000... is it really that bad? I read through the threads about how when running an external monitor and the built in lcd, it will run both using the M4000, making it really hot.. which is a shame that a lot of problems regarding it seem to revolve around poorly written drivers and perhaps some BIOS issues on Dell's part...

I prefer to get the M4000 based on it's superior performance when compared to the K1000m(K2000m's are no longer available on Dell's site), but if the battery life and heat+noise is that much worse on the M4000, then perhaps the K1000m is worth the "downgrade"(since it's weaker in performance) price(costs more to add on). What's your input, should I go with the K1000m over the M4000? I admit, I will be mobile with this laptop(travel quite a bit and I may or may not have an outlet to plugin).. I won't do much gaming, but I will do encoding and rendering. I'm aware of both card's scores on NBR, I'm just concerned about the practicality of the M4000 as everyone seems to praise optimus so much, I wouldn't know as I'm using a thinkpad T500 with a radeon card.

 

My apologies for this post.... But I really need to ask

Will I need to re-install the OS or programs if I clone my HDD to an SSD, and then move the HHD to the optical bay?
WIll I be able to boot from the SSD?
Can I first clone the HDD to the SSD before I move the HDD, and is there a "kit" or cable set that I need to buy?

I am still waiting to hear back from Dell about the caddy for the optical drive bay.

 

If you are able to have both drives connected at once, you will not need a kit or cable. If you can only have one drive connected, you can buy a USB->SATA adapter that will allow you to connect the second drive via USB. Something like this:

Newegg.com - SEDNA - USB 3.0 Dongle for 2.5 / 3.5" SATA III HDD ( Support Win8 UASP ) with Free Hdd Rubber Stand

If you clone the disk, you will not need to reinstall the OS or programs. Some SSDs come with the cloning software that you will need. I use Acronis True Image and it's always worked fine. (I just use the bootable media, which can be downloaded separately, but if you don't have an optical drive you'll probably need the whole thing installed to create a USB bootable drive to use for the clone.)

PC backup software | Acronis True Image

You will be able to boot from the SSD. Go to the BIOS setup and make sure it is set to be your boot drive.

I recommend disconnecting the HDD after the clone, when you boot Windows for the first time from the SSD. (I've had instances in the past where Windows got confused about which disk to mount during the first boot after a clone, when the old disk was still present.) After you boot up the first time you can attach the HDD back again.

 

Thanks. I appreciate your time and advice..

 

AMD has released new driver for FirePro Mobility M4000:

AMD FirePro

 

Anyone with an M4000 in their M4700 notice any difference with the update? Thanks for sharing the update Tseng.

 

This is the first official driver supports Windows 8.1, and it is based on 13.x

Comparing with the driver released by Dell, I found that driver released by AMD to be more recent and stable.,