Dell Inspiron 17R SE Second Hard Drive

Hi Twidget2011,

The secondary bracket will be available with the system only if you have opted for a Secondary hard drive during the purchase. If you have opted for a single hard drive, you will be having only the primary hard drive bracket along with the hard drive. You can place a seperate order for the brackets by calling Dell. The part number for Primary Hard drive bracket is VGHVW and Secondary Hard drive bracket is 80DF5.

The Inspiron™ 7720/17R (SE) has 2 SODIMM memory slots which supports upto 8GB RAM (Maximum).

I hope this helps.

Please let me know in case of any queries.

Thanks and regards
Harish R
#iworkfordell

Regarding the first question: #1 is there a mounting bracket available in the unit to allow the installation of two drive upon delivery?

From reading replies to previous inquiries asking this same question, and the varying responses by both customers and Dell Support, it seems that Dell is VERY inconsistent in whether they include the mounting bracket for installing a second hard drive.  DELL-Harish replied "The secondary bracket will be available with the system only if you have opted for a Secondary hard drive during the purchase", and previous customers in previous posts have mentioned that their 17R SE 7720 did not include the second hard drive bracket, while other customers replied that the bracket was included in their system.

From the Dell U.S. Web site, all four configurations of 7720/17R SE models that Dell offers only include one 1-TB 5400-RPM hard drive, and the extremely restrictive "Customize & Buy" options do not allow the customer to add another 1-TB drive as part of their order.  So if "The secondary bracket will be available with the system only if you have opted for a Secondary hard drive during the purchase" reply was true, then none of the 7720/17R SE models currently shipped would include the second hard drive bracket.

However, I just received my 17R SE 7720 this week and, thank goodness, a bracket was included to allow installation of a second hard drive.  I already had a second 1-TB hard drive that I want to install, so I was very happy that Dell included the second hard drive bracket in my laptop shipment.  The second bracket has the four screws that mount it to the laptop frame, but it is missing the four small screws to mount the bracket to the hard drive (which makes sense because there is no hard drive for these screws to screw into anyway).  I went to my local computer store where their repair department gave me those four screws for free.

A note to people from Dell who may read this:

Dell should just ALWAYS include the second hard drive mounting bracket in all their shipments!!  After all, the customer is paying at least $800+ for this laptop, and Dell should include this inexpensive part instead of requiring customers to go through the hassle of ordering it separately from Dell's parts department.  The "Customize & Buy" options for all of Dell's laptops are now already EXTREMELY sparse and restrictive.  When I purchased a tiny Dell Mini 10 (model 1012) 10-inch netbook from dell.com two years ago (which I still love), I could customize its options more than I could customize these much-fancier  these 7720/17R models.  HP has an "HP Envy DV7-7200 Quad Edition" 17-inch laptop that competes directly with this 17R/SE, and HP offers a myriad of flexible customizations (CPU, display, SSD/no-SSD, hard drive, etc) that Dell does not offer.  Dell used to be a lot more flexible with its customization options, and by restricting customers so much, they may lose more customers to HP.

The vast majority of buyers will never add a second drive to the system - so Dell saves on the cost of the bracket.  As for customizability, HP may have more - but it's the one bleeding customers.  It has fallen to #2 behind Lenovo.  

Actually, if Dell had given customers the option to add a second hard drive during the Customize & Buy"  section, I bet that a sizable number of them would choose that option.  I would have customized my purchase with that option!!  Instead, I purchased a second hard drive from Amazon and added to Amazon's coffers instead of Dell's.

Likewise, there are various inquiries, both on this forum and on the Internet, asking if the 7720/17R-SE can be configured for 16-GB of memory, and Dell Support always replies that the 7720/17R only supports two 4-GB DIMM cards for an 8-GB maximum.  There really should be no technical reason why the 7720/17R cannot use 16-GB of memory; all of the hardware supports it.  I would have also customized my purchase with 16-GB if given that option!

HP lets customers configure their dv7t-7200 Envy /17-inch laptop with either Window 8 or Windows 8 Pro, 3 different CPU options, 3 graphics card options, 8-GB/12-GB/16-GB memory options, 5 different hard drive options out to 2-TB, 6-cell battery or 9-cell battery options, etc, etc, etc.  Dell's Inspiron line used to offer this "a la carte" flexibility just a few years ago.

I would say that Dell now heavily restricts customization options to cut costs; after all, there is a smaller amount of testing and support involved to maintain a very few set of configurations shipped out.  But when I read all of the responses by Dell Support when customers ask about configuring their Inspirons with more disk space or memory, they always reply, "If you want to include more disk or memory, you should consider our XPS line..."   So this really is a marketing decision by Dell.  Their pricey XPS line has a higher profit margin and so they try to nudge feature-hungry customers to buy XPS, not Inspiron.  Serious gamers will still pay for the high-end premium-priced Alienwares.  When you compare performance-per-dollar, the 7720/17R-SE completely blows away any XPS or Alienware laptop (and Alienwares have even higher profit margin than XPS) that Dell currently sells.  But as mentioned, only a few years ago, Dell used to offer many more customization options to their Inspiron laptops.  Now, they have removed all customization options and just tell customers to buy XPS models if they want more features.

Regarding HP being the "one bleeding customers", both HP and Dell have bled customers this year while Lenovo has gained worldwide sales.  For the third quarter of this year, Lenovo had 15.7% of worldwide PC sales (+9.8% growth) compared to HP's 15.5% sales (-16.4% growth) and Dell's 10.%% of world sales (-13.7% growth).  Both Lenovo and HP sold more than 13.5 millions PCs in the third quarter, compared to Dell's 9.2 million PCs sold.  If you just look at U.S. PC sales, HP is #1 with 27% of third-quarter U.S. PC sales, Dell is #2 with 21% of U.S. sales, Apple had 13% of U.S. sales, and Lenovo was a distant #4 with 9% of U.S. sales.

My point is that we now live in an on-demand world, and users demand flexible options for everything.  The days of "you can have it in any color as long as it is white" are over.  BTW, I have never owned an HP computer, while I have bought three Dell laptops during the past five years, along with an older Dell desktop.  But I have used other people's HP laptops and they also make fine high-quality laptops.  And when I ordered my Dell 7720/17R-SE last month, I did look at the HP Envy dv7t-7200 with a bit of... envy...

In my previous post, my comment of:

'The days of "you can have it in any color as long as it is white" are over.'

should instead read:

'The days of "you can have it in any color as long as it is white" are over... unless you are Apple...'  :-)

Apple has an immensely strong customer brand loyalty that Lenovo, HP, and Dell can only dream of... and not all of it is due to objective comparisons of their products.

One more comment about the total lack of customization options for the 7720/17R-SE that Dell sold me...

I ordered the non-3D anti-glare 1080P display because I did not care for the 3D display option.  But by choosing that display, I was stuck with not being able to customize a Blu-ray drive for my laptop because Dell does not offer that as an upgrade option.  The display is beautiful, but my 7720 laptop really screams for a Blu-ray drive option.  Yes, I can use an external Blu-ray drive or spend more to replace the internal DVD drive, but this should have been a customization option; Dell missed out on not letting me customize a Blu-ray drive.  I also wanted Windows 8 Pro, instead of the Windows 8 Core that was only offered, so I got a good $39 deal for Windows 8 Pro from a local retail store.  Again, Dell missed out on extra money that I would have spent on this laptop for both Windows 8 Pro and a Blu-ray drive option.  I would have paid extra for an upgrade to 16-GB of memory, but since Dell does not allow that (BIOS issue?), another missed opportunity for sales dollars...  The 6-cell battery that comes with all 7720/17R-SE models also limits it to less than 3 hours of  power.  The HP dv7t-7200 Envy laptop that competes directly with Dell's 7720 lets the customer include a Blu-ray drive, lets the customer choose either Window 8 Core or Windows 8 Pro, and lets the customer upgrade from 6-cell to 9-cell battery.

I'm glad I found the part number of the bracket here, but unfortunately the spare parts search found no matches for "80DF5". Do I have to look somewhere else? Thanks in advance!

I'm glad I found the part number of the bracket here, but unfortunately the spare parts search found no matches for "80DF5". Do I have to look somewhere else? Thanks in advance!

Phone Dell's Spare Parts department at  800-999-3355   If you get routed through automated voice menus, ask for "spare parts".  They do not have it in stock, but they can order that secondary HDD bracket for you.

BUT... before you call, are you already sure that your laptop does not have a second bracket installed inside?

I know the above phone contact info because I was prepared to order the same "80DF5" second-HDD bracket part if Dell had shipped me the laptop last month without the second bracket.  I already had the second drive that I was prepared to install.  When I received my laptop shipment, the first thing that I actually did was unscrew the back panel and saw that Dell had included the secondary hard drive bracket inside my laptop, and I just needed to get four small screws to mount the drive into the bracket.  Other people have also reported getting their laptop with the second bracket already mounted inside.

I do not have received the laptop yet, but stumbled across this issue and wanted to prepare for the worst. ;)

Thank you very much, I hope I'll receive a spare bracket as well, but will do as you said if I don't receive a second bracket.

There are lots of postings about upgrading to 16GB at

en.community.dell.com/.../20152523.aspx

What is the difference between a 17r and a 17R SE?

How can you be sure your 17R will have a SATA III device controller onthe board instead of a SATA II device controller?  The 1 TB HDD only needs a SATA II while the SDD needs a SATAIII?

Earl Smith

<ADMIN NOTE: Email id removed per privacy policy>

Where are the replaceable covers as well?

Can you send me instructions please what panel I take off so I can check if my Dell inspiron 17R has the 2nd hard drive mount bracket?