upgrading hard drive on the m11x

im going to upgrage my 160gb hardrive to a 500gb

i dont have anything vital on my other hardrive because i know i would be upgrading soon so i dont need to back it up.

so i know how to get the the hd, do i just turn of the m11x pop out the hd put in the new one and run the disc it came with? (i have an external cd/dvd drive)

 

That's what I did 2 days ago, just pop in a new intel ssd hdd and used an external cdrom to install from the supplied cds. The only problem I faced was windows critical updates, at one point I had to re-install windows again because windows update stopped responding while applying patches, it couldn't boot up properly

 

Yup. Just did the same thing myself yesterday. Probably 1 of the easiest upgrades I've done in a long time . The new 500gig hybrids rocking so far .

 

Take a look at this:
YouTube - Alienware M11x Teardown **READ SAFETY PRECAUTIONS PRIOR TO REPLACING PARTS** (Official Video)

 

Bump - my alienware's due in a week, and I'm also thinking of ordering a 500gb 7200rpm HDD to upgrade from the 160gb standard one I customized with the system. I'm wondering two things though:

1) Will upgrading the hard drive void the warranty? What if you put the old 160gb HDD back in the system before sending it in for warranty repair / replacement, will they not notice that you fiddled with anything?
2) What type of hard drive do I need to order? I.e., what specific type / size etc. is compatible with the M11x

Oh also here's something I found that helps for those of you who (like me) lack an external CD drive, but have an external hard drive and are wanting to a reinstall of Windows 7 for your M11x:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/165159/install_windows_7_from_an_external_hard_drive.html

 

Instead of a 500GB 7200rpm drive, have you considered something faster like an SSD, or a hybrid drive like the Seagate Momentus XT? The Seagate Momentus is only $60 more than a 500GB 7200rpm hard drive, but it gives a nice bump in performance.

And:

1) Technically, it should void the warranty on the original hard drive. And technically, a company cannot deny you warranty coverage on aftermarket modifications unless they can provide that the aftermarket modification caused the damage in question.

In reality, Dell won't check, and they won't care. If you send your laptop back to replace a part (let's say the keyboard), then they won't bother wasting their time to see if you swapped out a hard drive or replaced RAM. It's a waste of their time (and money) to try and play "gotcha" with their customers. It's much more efficient for them to just replace your keyboard, and move on to the next unit that needs service.

But before you send your laptop back, always put the original parts back in it. The reason is that Dell can, at any time, simply swap out parts or swap out your entire notebook altogether. If you bought a 160GB 5400rpm hard drive when you originally purchased the computer, and swapped out that hard drive with an expensive SSD, then you have absolutely zero recourse if that SSD were to get shuffled around and disappear.

2) Any 2.5" SATA hard drive will work. It can be a mechanical HDD, a hybrid drive, or an SSD. As long as it is a 2.5" SATA drive.



Oh, and here is a Maximum PC article showing how to install Windows 7 from a USB stick. I got this working on a 4GB stick that I had lying around, when I reformatted my machine recently: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/howtos/how_to_install_windows_7_beta_a_usb_key

 

Thanks very much for the info, + rep. Are you sure any type of SATA 2.5" works though? Like is it SATA 2 drives that are compatible or just normal SATA? (cuz I seem to remember hearing that it's SATA 2)

I have considered going SSD, but the problem is I can't afford it and besides I need the extra space more than I need the extra performance. I am however planning on upgrading to an SSD for this computer a couple years or so down the line when SSD drives drop in price.

 

Try the seagate hybrid drive then

If you were considering the raptor/velociraptor drives, they won't fit despite them being a 2.5" drive. Their height is slightly too big

 

I installed the 500GB Momentus XT in mine. It's really much faster than the 500GB that came with it, specially when doing repetitive tasks (opening software). I don't see much of a difference in gaming, but on the desktop it's definitely there.

 

I personally put my intel 160g SSD in but I found myself not really using the laptop as much as i thought I would so i ended up putting the SSD in my desktop and use the stock 320gig that came with the laptop.

It's not slow by any means, in fact it doesn't feel much different since I don't multitask too much on such a small screen

 

I second the momentus XT, I was going to get one but one of my friends gave me this intel ssd at a price I couldnt deny...

 

I actually saw the Western Digital Silicon Edge SSD just now... not THE fastest drive out there, but it definitely plays in the same playground. 250MB/sec read times, 170MB/sec write times.

Looks incredible for $150 for 64GB drive, $200 for 128GB drive. If I was shopping for an affordable SSD, I'd jump all over that $200 128GB drive.

 

Mine came with the 500gb HD, but I swapped it out with a spare SSD I had. Do you guys mind putting up your HD/SSD crystal marks to compare?

Here is mine with a Samsung 256gb SSD.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 194.921 MB/s
Sequential Write : 142.877 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 157.208 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 92.055 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 12.526 MB/s [ 3058.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 7.259 MB/s [ 1772.2 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 22.630 MB/s [ 5524.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 5.183 MB/s [ 1265.4 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 29.2% (69.6/238.4 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2010/07/23 17:31:10
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)

 

I have 2 questions related to upgrading to a bigger hard drive.

thinkg of upgrading to the Seagate Hybrid.

Q1 - can I use ghost to move my image from standard Sata to the hybrid drive? Would this cause an issue?

Q2 - I created a recovery usb stick. Will this usb recovery work on the hybrid technology?

thanks

 

A1 - Yes, you can use ghost. No problems. The fact that the Seagate Momentus XT is a hybrid drive is of no consequence to drive imaging.

A2 - Yes, this will work. Again, the fact that the drive is hybrid is irrelevant.

 

Maybe it's just me but it seems like 4gbs isn't very much... can it really have that much of an effect? Maybe I don't really have a good idea of how well this thing performs / how much of an effect it has, but it seems to me like the better idea is just to buy a normal 7200rpm 500gb drive and then wait a couple years until SSD drives are cheap to switch to that.

Btw anyone know if this hard drive would work with the m11x?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148374

 

If you are talking about 4GB flash memory on the Seagate Momentus XT, then it has a significant impact on read speeds for any data that is stored there. And the drive uses an algorithm that places the most commonly accessed files there, which will most likely be OS files.

 

The momentus XT is definitely faster than a standard 7200 rpm, and the cost difference is certainly worth it.

While its not as fast as an SSD, the XT does perform extremely quickly with frequently accessed programs and files

 

Well it just seems like 4gbs wouldn't be able to store very much.. but idk, maybe it makes really good / smart use of those 4gbs

Any idea of what programs / files fall into that category?

 

Look at the benchmarks. There's a whole thread on the drive. Half of it is wild speculation, the other half is people sharing their experiences.

I'm convinced enough to give it a try, I don't usually use but a few programs and noticeably faster boot is important to me because I'm impatient.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/484698-seagate-momentus-xt-hybrid-hdd-w-built-4gb-ssd.html

There you go. Have fun reading. Start in the middle or so in order to find the point at which people actually had them for evaluation.

 

Seems there's a newly released firmware for the XT. Not sure what it's addressing yet.

Momentus XT Firmware Update

 

Cool find slickie, +rep

Love my XT, even with its "measly" 4GB...

 

It uses those 4GB for whatever is most commonly accessed. If you load Chrome or Firefox repeatedly, then it will store Chrome and Firefox. If you load Photoshop a lot, it will store Photoshop in that 4GB. Think of it as a very large, flash-based hard drive cache.

 

Windows will also already have those apps loaded into RAM, so there is a point of diminishing returns. For instance, on my desktop PC i have 4G of RAM, of which Windows is using 2Gig to cache with.

I'm not saying that the momentus isn't faster, but what I am saying is that if you typically only run a handful of apps and have enough RAM, you may not notice much of a difference even going to SSD, much less to hybrid. I had an intel SSD for two weeks and then went back to the regular hard drive - for my usage, it wasn't worth the $125 I paid for the 80GB SSD.

 

I upgraded my M11x-R1 hard drive to the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB drive.
First off the drive cost me $129 and tax locally. I tried to do a disk clone using the M11x and external SATA dock with Acronis boot CD and that failed miserably. I would have tried it on my other workstation, but I figured...fresh install of Windows 7 and re-install of apps would be much cleaner.

M11x is my primary workstation/laptop. I use it for all sorts of web, music and heavy use of WoW.

Initially, the M11x was booting up to Win7 login screen at about 43 seconds.
The Win7 installed on the Momentus XT drive boots in about 28sec. This is not instant, but a pretty big gain.

Commonly used apps like iTunes and Firefox load up realyl rapidly...there is more zip to overall loading of commonly used programs. My Wow game play and latency seems to have improved. In 25man icc raid boss fights I can achieve about 20fps wit everything turned to medium. In Dal, I'm getting an awesome 45-60fps just walking around with all that clutter. Before I was sitting at 7-10fps/20-25fps ICC/Dal.

I'm not going to talk about anything bad that could happen to the Momentus XT, but if something does...you will hear it from me.

 

Check out microcenter they had the OCZ Vertex 2 on sale. i picked up the 100gb slipped it in my r2 and bamm!! read was 275 and write was 270. booted up to google chrome in 25sec and shut down in 12. just use a external hd for your music and pix files and games and os on ssd and youll be set

 

With the XT it takes about 43 seconds for me to load the desktop.