M6800 Owners' Thread

Really helpful, many thanks to all who responded to my question. There is lots for me to try.

 

Finally, I'm ready to order my M6800, I realized that I need maximum amount of storage, So I will add 2.5 inch 1TB Solid State Hybrid Drive - for Optical Bay [add $98.00] instead of the Optical Drive 8X DVD+/-RW Drive Slot Load.
- Will I need the Optical Drive when I receive my M6800 to install any drivers or software related to the system or the hardware?
- Can I replace the Optical Drive with USB External DVD+/-RW Drive later if I want to recover my system without problems?
- Are you recommend this configuration or keep internal DVD+/-RW Drive?

Thanks.
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If anyone interested:
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You shouldn't need the optical drive as it will come pretty much ready to go from Dell, and any other drivers you need you can almost certainly find online. That said, if you did need the ODD, you could always use an external/USB one no problem. If you get an mSATA SSD, you can get an additional 2TB of storage and still keep the optical drive. That's enough for a lot of people, but if you still need more, and don't really use the disk drive, then there is no reason to not go with a third 1TB hard drive. You could even raid them together for better performance, better reliability, or a compromise of the two, depending on the type of raid you use.

 

Thanks for the reply, You helped me a lot.
I will go with mSATA SSD (256GB) + Secondary HD (1TB) + Third HD (1TB).

 

Also, WD makes a 2tb 2.5 HDD.

 

That drive is a 15mm drive though. Will that fit in either of the hard drive bays?

 

Good point, it won't fit.
Technically there is enough space in the secondary bay, to hold the drive, but the "overhang" would not allow the room for the drive to be inserted.

 

I just happened to have been hard drive shopping recently, and figured that out myself. lol. I had to take the rubber spacer out of the removable tray to fit a standard size drive, so I had a feeling that any larger one for sure wouldn't fit there, and had a feeling it wouldn't fit in the other one either.

 

I also have 2 questions for anyone who may know:

1) Is there a way to change the keyboard backlight time-out? I know on some other dell laptops the quick set or control point application let you do it, but I don't see that as a download for us.

2) Has anyone tried the A07 bios? I'm on A06 and it seems to be fine (except for the sometimes annoying fan rapid on off bit). It just says that it "fixes" ac adapter wattage detection, and I know some other laptops have had issues where that means that if you don't have the "correct" one, it just treats it as if it were a 90w adapter and heavily throttles.

 

You mean a way other than by doing it in the bios?