Woot! New laptop parts!

Santa surprised me today with 2 4GB SODIMM sticks and a 320GB 7200RPM HDD. So I'm going to beef up the XPS 1530. I have Acronis True Image and that will hopefully ease the hard drive swap. Otherwise I'll just reinstall from scratch seeing that Dell have officially released the 64-bit drivers.

Any tips and such will be appreciated before I do the deed.

I'll report back on how the upgrades went once complete in the next day or two.

 

Ohh Santa was very good to you!

I cant' wait to here how this project turned out for you!

I really need to install more memory. Vista is eating up what I alloted when I partioned the hard drives when I first got my 1530

Good luck to you!


Cin

 

hmmm, i wonder why i don't use my 60gb up so much lol, there is still 47gb FREE!!!! ive had this 1530 since march.... should i get a hdd just for fun lol.

 

I partitioned 50gb for Vista..and have only...you ready for this??

I have only....10gb free!!!

I've spent time cleaning up...and still don't have much free space.

So its, time to add more space...or get a new External HD.

Cin

 

Oh, you can borrow from me, I`ve got 640 Gb primary and 1 TB external

 

500 GB internal, in my 1330.. 2x1TB external.. and an additional 2.7 TB of internal storage in my gaming desktop.. and 750 GB in my triassic desktop.. (A p4 Willamette, no less!)

To OP.. 8 GB rocks.. No need for any paging.. Enjoy..!

 

Awesome congratz! May i ask what are they specs on the drive you received. Im looking for a new HDD on my 1530 and i want to make sure i buy the correct one.

 

i always run out of room... i would live to have 320gb in one of my laptops... i download allot...

 

This is the one I rec'd:

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=32346&vpn=ST9320421AS&manufacture=Seagate

And the RAM (x2) if interested (Santa said it was the cheapest 'she' could find):

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=33080&vpn=F2-5300CL5S-4GBSQ&manufacture=G.SKILL

I'm hoping to do the swap and add the RAM this weekend.

 

Oh Sweetness! I will take you up on that! You can PM it to me, ok!

Oh thank you for posting the links!
Can't wait to hear of your results!


Cin

 

I believe you have to upgrade your BIOS to A11 or A12 to recognize the extra RAM. Good luck and keep us up to date.

 

Yep, I had already updated BIOS to A12 a while ago.

So everything is installed now and running smoothly. Entire process took about 4 hours starting with the hard drive. I could not find my 2.5" HDD USB enclosure so I ended up formatting and re-installing the O/S from scratch. Once all the 64-bit drivers were downloaded and installed I slapped in the 2 4GB sticks of RAM. The XPS booted up without any problem and the memory amount is properly displayed in the system info. The only real difference I can detect with these upgrades is the Seagate hard drive is silent in comparison to the Fujitsu I had in there before. Things do seem a bit faster but that could also be due to a fresh O/S install without any other apps except for the trusty Kaspersky IS.

Overall it was a fun, easy upgrade. Watched the second Narnia movie with my wife during the upgrade/installation.

 

Nice RAM upgrade. I just discovered tonight that Dell is allowing for 8GB on the M1530 and M1330. It's about time that they did this.

 

That's great! Glad everything went smoothly for you on the install.

Gives me some hope when I get ready to mess with my 1530


Cin

 

Dell is officially supporting 64bit vista???? News to me! Good news for sure.

 

Yes, they are finally getting into the modern age and supporting 64 bit.

 

Yes. It made it a whole lot easier to install all the drivers from the Dell 1530 site rather than digging through the forums here for the 64-bit thread with links from various sources. That's what I did previously which was a great way to get 64-bit working but it was a much lengthier as well as hit & miss process.