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    Additional HDD on Inspiron 1720

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by slyn4ice, Jan 14, 2008.

  1. slyn4ice

    slyn4ice Newbie

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    Hey guys,

    I have a few questions about my Dell Inspiron 1720 and I was hoping to get some help here.
    First off (since this is a laptop review site) I just wanted to give my 2 cents on this lappie. The config is as follows:
    Inspiron 1720, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB HDD, 8600MGT with 256MB Ram, T7700 at 2.4 Ghz. I have replaced the original nVidia drivers with the 169.09 batch. I have OCed to 630/540 with Rivatuner and have a very stable performance on most of the new titles (Hellgate London, World in Conflict, etc.). 3DMark06 scores jumped to 4651 at 1280x800 and 4089 at 1280x1024. 3DMark05 jumped to 7483 at 1280x1024. Overall - awesome laptop for the price.

    The first question concerns the hard drive. The laptop supports dual harddrives but unfortunately I bought it from Japan and they didn't have any option of installing a second HDD. The question is: can I install just any HDD in the second tray? Or does it have to be with exactly the same RPM and capacity as the first one? I am planning to buy a 7200 rpm hdd and transfer operating system to it but i am reluctant to do it yet.

    The second question concerns the RECOVERY partition found on the HDD. For some reason it is about 10GB when all it has inside is about 4GB. Is it safe to resize it?

    Sorry to bother you all with such rants but id appreciate any comments.

    Thanks
     
    slyn4ice, Jan 14, 2008
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  2. LordBug

    LordBug Notebook Guru

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    You can install any laptop drive into the laptop. Doesn't have to match whatsoever, but you can only fit in a 2.5" drive in the laptop, not a regular 3.5" PC HDD.

    The recovery partition is safe to resize. No extra data is added to it (I don't think, my machine has never complained about the absence of the recovery partition).
     
    LordBug, Jan 14, 2008
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  3. slyn4ice

    slyn4ice Newbie

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    Wow, talk about expediency hehe, thanks a lot for the reply!! I'll go ahead and resize the partition - Vista is bloating the HDD so I need extra space.

    Thanks again!
     
    slyn4ice, Jan 14, 2008
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  4. slyn4ice

    slyn4ice Newbie

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    By the way, I am thinking of dual-booting with Suse 10.3. So, the question is if I keep the recovery partition how does that go with creating the extra partition for Suse? Any problems?
     
    slyn4ice, Jan 14, 2008
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  5. nizzy1115

    nizzy1115 Notebook Prophet

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    Well you cant add ANY laptop hard drive to it. It needs to be a sata drive. Also, since you did not order it with the 2nd drive, it will not have the caddy to mount the 2nd drive to. You will need to order that from dell.
     
    nizzy1115, Jan 14, 2008
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  6. SteveJonesy

    SteveJonesy Notebook Evangelist

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    ... and the interposer to connect the drive to the motherboard port.

    HDD Caddy - Dell Part Number C7586
    HDD Interposer - Dell Part Number XK231
     
    SteveJonesy, Jan 14, 2008
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  7. surfasb

    surfasb Titles Shmm-itles

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    there is your answer. Pretty cool to know.
     
    surfasb, Jan 14, 2008
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  8. SteveJonesy

    SteveJonesy Notebook Evangelist

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    Just another note -

    Make sure you specify that it's for HDD Bay 2 (not sure whether the part number stipulates that or not) but the HDD 1 and HDD 2 caddys are slightly diferrent. There's a couple of pieces of the casting that stick out and lie between a gap in the back of the caddy but they are not central so they are offset one side on HDD1 and the other side on HDD2. Caddy for HDD1 is a mirror image of HDD2 in that respect.
     
    SteveJonesy, Jan 14, 2008
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  9. RobtRoma

    RobtRoma Notebook Enthusiast

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    I ordered these parts to add the 2nd drive to my Vostro 1700 (basically the same as the Inspiron 1720). They didn't come with the screws to mount the HD to the caddy (M3 x 3mm) or the caddy to the laptop (M2 5x5). The HD to caddy are fairly standard screws but of the 200 or so screws I've collected over the years, I didn't have any that would connect the caddy to the laptop. I ended up getting 20 of them from eBay ($3.99 + $4.99 shipping). Shipping was high but it was the only place I could find them.

    I'll confirm this as well. I did a lot of swapping of drives during my upgrade and found it rather annoying that I had to keep changing the caddies back and forth...
     
    RobtRoma, Jan 14, 2008
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  10. woodg

    woodg Notebook Enthusiast

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    That's still cheaper than Dell USA who want $10.99 for EACH screw. Dell Canada ONLY charges $1 per screw.
     
    woodg, Jan 14, 2008
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  11. texbrian

    texbrian Newbie

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    I order the parts from Dell today to install a second HDD on my 1720 and found why the high price on the screws. The screws are $10.99 , but that is a package of 10 not 1 screw . Just though i would pass this information on for future reference.
     
    texbrian, Feb 17, 2008
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  12. gt3

    gt3 Notebook Enthusiast

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    gt3, May 29, 2008
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