Precision M4500 Owner's Lounge

nobody has white screen with freeze on the notebook ?

 

Just had a quick question...been reading reviews about the Newmodeus drive caddy as I am exploring options for adding more space to my m4500. Anyone had any recent experiences?

I currently have 1 SSD and have my BIOS set to AHCI, will this pose any problems? Will it be plug and play?

Anyone have any heat issues with 2 drives? I was thinking about second drive being a non-ssd.

This is the one I am looking @: 2nd Hard Drive Caddy DELL M2400, M4400, M4500 Modular Bay [DELL9-2BAY] - $48.95 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

Thanks for any help!

 

I have only noticed this on my ubuntu install when I send the machine to hibernate. It doesnt lock up though, just sits there for 5 seconds or so with no activity, then continues like normal. It doesnt happen often.

 

AHCI will not cause any problems, unless you plan to install Windows XP on the second drive, which would require patching the XP installation CD or having a floppy drive (!!!) on hand. In fact, AHCI is the preferred mode of operation nowadays. In any case, I have my doubts if XP will run at all on the M4500.

Heat issues: I don't know. Since Dell did not design this notebook to have a HDD in that slot, I would keep out an eye for drives that run relatively cool. If you don't need the speed, a 5400 rpm drive might be a good alternative and also give you a bit more battery life).

 

I get a white screen now and then for a few seconds while my system suspends (Ubuntu 10.04), just before it goes to sleep. No freeze though, the machine resumes normally.

I could not make a good statement about Windows 7, because I hardly ever suspend Windows - just start it to play a game and go back to Ubuntu afterwards. The few times I did suspend it under Windows, I had no issues.

 

Thanks! So I should just be able to plug and play (perhaps having to format the drive in windows). I am not planning to do anything relating to XP.

Regarding the heat factor, anyone have any experience running 2 drives in their m4500 non stop? Should I get another SSD? I was originally going to get a WD scorpio drive but am concerned about the heat production.

 

It should be plug and play, you may have to partition the drive first. Either use the GParted LiveCD for that - or go to "Manage My Computer" -> "Disk Management" in most Windows versions. Two SSDs: great for speed (you could use RAID 0), not so great for raw storage space.

 

Thanks so much for your help! I don't intend to run any sort of RAID, just looking for more space

Still wondering if anyone has had any heat issues with 2 drives.

 

I wouldn't fear putting a mechanical drive in. Obviously an SSD generates less heat but I think you're safe either way. If you were going to copy large amounts of data always to the mechanical drive, maybe flip flop their positions. So the mechanical would be in the default drive bay. I don't know that it would make a difference but it is where dell intended the disk to go.

 

I can only speak to the doubt about running XP on a M4500, I've been running a dual boot XP/Win7 for about a year with no issues.

We run a DB program that doesn't work with Win7, so I'm stuck on XP until my company updates it.