Studio XPS 1645 Hard drive replacement

You will most likely pay a significant premium to have Dell do the work.  Replacing a notebook HD is usually less work than a desktop as the drive is quicker to get to than a desktop you usually have to move out from under the desk, unplug, etc.  There is usually one or two screws holding the drive cover, slide out, replace drive and be on your way.  pretty simple.  I totally get a full SSD not being worth it for your usage scenario, though I cringe at the thought of having to wait on a regular HDD.  But I noticed Seagate Momentus XT 750GB (hybrid) drive on sale recently - worth checking out?

Thanks once again, Lawrence for your advice.

I'll check out the Momentus.

>> though I cringe at the thought of having to wait on a regular HDD.

I assume you mean in terms of usage, right?

dg

I went with the Seagate Momentus XT 750GB (thanks). It'll arrive on Tuesday.

I have both Acronis Bootable Media and an Acronis .tib file.

I think I know what the advice will be, but should I try to restore using the Acrons or do a clean install?

I dread the latter...

dg

Thanks, Tesla.

I'll probably try to restore with Acronis first, but I'm not counting on that. Haven't done a Win 7 clean install in a while. I have the OS disc and there are like four discs with drivers. Is it really necessary to download new ones from the Dell website? The last time I went there for another machine it was a nightmare because of how disorganized it was (and it listed drivers I knew didn't need even though I had entered my service code.

I believe the drivers have to be installed in a very specific order, right? If someone can point me to latest greatest "clean install guide" that would be a tremendous help.

This is the one I have bookmarked:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/software-os/w/microsoft_os/1434.1-1-a-clean-install-of-windows-7-on-dell-systems.aspx

Is this it?

dg

I went with the Seagate Momentus XT 750GB (thanks). It'll arrive on Tuesday. I have both Acronis Bootable Media and an Acronis .tib file. I think I know what the advice will be, but should I try to restore using the Acrons or do a clean install? I dread the latter... dg

Restoring Images (Acronis or otherwise) is always an adventure when changing drive and partition sizes. I think I would try a bare-metal restore (using Acronis boot-disc). If that doesn't work, clean install Windows, load latest drivers, load apps, and install Acronis. Selectively restore any required data files.

It was smart to Acronis image whole machine first (hopefully you had "Verify Image after Creation" option turned on). You really can't go too wrong if you have that Image.

I'm pretty sure the caching part of the Seagate Momentus XT is transparent to the machine and OS (nothing special to do ... other than instructions and/or software that comes with the drive).

OK, I went to this clean install guide and attempted to download the drivers that apply to my system. But I must admit I'm kind of concerned that some of the drivers that were listed might not apply to my system at all.

Is there anything horribly wrong with using the discs I got from Dell when I bought the system?

I followed the advice in the clean install guide referenced above and made individual folders:

There were several folders the guide recommended that I didn't use because I don't think they apply to my system:

It's entirely possible that some of these folder names are actually referring to drivers that are labeled differently on the Dell Driver download page; for example I have Bluetooth, but there wasn't any driver that referred to Bluetooth on the drivers page.

How can I be sure I'm installing all of the drivers I need?

dg

Please provide us your original system configuration (don't post your Service Tag).

Go to http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/ussoho1?c=us&s=soho&cs=ussoho1&l=en

Enter in your service tag

Select Original System Configuration

Maximise components and paste the information:

Thanks so much for the quick reply. Here it is, below. I wasn't sure whether to delete parts of this (I hope pasting it like this is what you meant):

My comment on waiting on a regular HDD - correct, referring to slow latency during regular usage.  I'm spoiled by SSD.  I hope the hybrid drive works well for you.

First - you could always do a full drive copy from the original drive (as it hasn't failed yet).  You would need the ability to see both drives at same time (could use your desktop or laptop with adapter cable (or optical drive hdd carrier if tour laptop model supports such as the Latitude's do).

  - with desktop - old and new laptop drives as slaves drive - use Acronis to do a drive copy from one to the other?

A fresh install woudl be my last choice.  It's not hard, I do lots of server installs all the time.  more desktop/laptop than I care to recall.  no brownie points.  so if you have a decently working system, then why not use a restore of it?  much quicker than the time to reinstall OS and applications - fairly tedious imo

Good Luck

And let us know how the Seagate hybrid drive works in practice after a few days/weeks of use

Lawrence: Thanks. One change of plan though: Went for this instead of the hybrid:

Samsung 840 Series Solid State Drive (SSD) 250 sata_6_0_gb 2.5-Inch MZ-7TD250BW

Not the Pro version, but still it's my first foray into SSD territory...

It wasn't much more than the SG hybrid and since I don't keep data on the boot anyway, I was paying for real estate I won't use.

Wish me luck. :emotion-3:

dg

natakuc4:

Thank you so much for going to the trouble of gathering these links. This is outstanding: a real service that is commendable. I'll be gathering these drivers today; expecting to get the SSD on Friday.

You've saved me a lot of potential grief and loss of sleep.

I use this laptop exclusively when I travel internationally and I'm away for a month at a time, so I was kind of lucky that I discovered the pending HDD failure before I left, while I still have time to address it.

Thanks again. I'll post back when I get it up and running or if I run into any issues (hopefully I won't).

dg

Installed the Samsung last night (a snap) and did a clean install of Win7 Pro. Followed the procedures outlined in the "Clean Install" Wiki and followed the recommendations from natakuc4 for the drivers.

Three issues arose:

1. ITE CIR driver not needed. I'm unclear on what this is, but the error message said I did not have a compatible device.
2. Wireless driver failed, but my network was recognized and the wireless seems to be working fine.
3. The Dell System Software failed. I tried several times and the error message said that I did not have the correct service pack. I assume they mean Win7 and if so that's weird because I had already successfully installed Win7 SP1. I tried the driver recommended above and the XPS 1645 was listed as one of the machines for which this is correct. I searched the Dell site for another driver, but this was the only one I could find. If anyone could help me out with this one I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks again to everyone who helped out: I must say this was a breeze. The Win7 install took less than 20 minutes. Every time the screen said "this should take a while" that step was done in seconds.

I feel like this has created a monster though. Now I must get an SSD for my main machine (XPS 9100). The boot time is under 10 seconds.:emotion-2:

dg

dg

i recommend reading anadtech's most recent article on spare area on SSDs.  short version - your sustained/average IOPS (as well as maximum latency) are greatly reduced when you maintain in the area of 25% spare area (both mfg created plus unused space).  Filling up an SSD and operating that way for any length of time is a really bad idea.  just a word of warning/advice

As for the SSD for the 9100.  YES!   I've got a 60GB boot SSD, the original drive for data, and other SSDs for VMs.  When 60GB SSDs were on sale for $30-40, that seemed ideal for a boot only drive, but companies must have blown out their old inventory, as I don't see those sales any more (only larger drives).  You will get spolied real fast, and it is hard to go back to a regular HDD :(