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Hard drive swap-out warranty question.
I just bought my first Dell laptop, which comes with the 1-year limited warranty.
The laptop itself has a 1tb HDD and a 32gb SSD. If I took it to a licensed technician and had the SSD swapped out for a higher-capacity internal drive, would that void the warranty on the machine?
This is my first computer that I've actually bought for myself, I want to make sure I do everything right.
cathaleen
135 Posts
1
November 29th, 2015 08:00
You did not mention the model desktop or laptop that you are talking about so this response is based on guessing your configuration.
Typically systems with a large capacity mechanical hard drive (the 1tb drive in your case) and a small capacity solid state drive (32gb in your case) come with the ssd configured to be used as both a cache drive to accelerate the use of the large capacity mechanical hard drive with the Intel Rapid STORAGE software as well as a way to speed up boot and wake up from sleep with the Intel Rapid START software. The small capacity 32gb SSD is most likely a small card called mSATA (micro SATA). A 32gb drive is not enough space to use it as boot drive. There are 64, 128, 256gb mSATA drives but they are not really worth the expense. Nor is it really worth replacing the large capacity mechanical hard drive with a 2.5" SSD (very expensive for a1gb SSD 2.5" ($400?).
The combination of a large capacity inexpensive mechanical drive and small capacity mSATA is the best of both worlds, large amount of storage at a low price and fast performance of a solid state drive as you often use the same files over and over again and the SSD used as cache makes the system behave nearly as fast as a machine that has only a solid state drive for most users.
All that is to say that you probably don't need to spend money on a upgrade unless you need the marginal performance improvement that it provides, or you simply have money burning a hole in your pocket and want to spend it.
To answer you question about if making changes to your original system configuration invalidates your warranty, the answer is now. However, if you encounter a problem that Dell support feels is related to a part you added to the system they may want you to remove it and restore the system back to the original co figuration to continue troubleshooting... But it is pretty unlikely that this would ever happen.
beamermt79
2.3K Posts
0
November 28th, 2015 13:00
Hello! The SSD is not set up to be a drive like a normal SSD or HDD, but a cache drive. All the drivers Dell installed including Intel's Rapid Storage technology use the SSD to cache frequently used files and programs for faster use. I have heard of people using the SSD as a boot drive or installing a slightly higher capacity BUT I think there is a limit on how high you can go, like 64Gig or something close.
EDIT: By the way I forgot to mention that if you swap out hardware, you will not void the warranty however if you ever need support, you will have to install the original hardware back into the machine. Also if the tech or you damage the computer, your warranty is void.
Wolfymagic
2 Posts
1
November 28th, 2015 15:00
A cache, that's interesting. I didn't think of that. My order hasn't shipped, so I haven't even tried the thing yet. Thank you!