SSD disk upgrade - compatibility with Latitude E6420 - E6430

I just wanted to say Thank you  for your post . I had the same issue with a Latitude E6520 .  I knew something was wrong when the innermost screws that anchor the drive didnt  reach the threads in the drive. I tried adding a driver when installing Win 10  and changing the bios with no joy. Once I added the tape and the drive "snapped" in  it was recognized and installation proceeded without incident. Thanks again for your invaluable post . BTW it took two layers of Duck tape to make the drive snap in. 

Latitude E6520

Thanks, ARUEHLOW, for your post!

I bought a  Corsair Force LE SATA3.0Gbps, 240GB SSD, i put it on the disk in the bay of the DELL E6320 and bios did not recognize the disk.

With your post I realize that the bay of the disc is too wide allowing the disc to enter without being connected to the SATA socket.

For me the signal was that the two internal screws of the disk that stopped tightening.

Soo i put the disk in the bay as close to the bolt holes as possible (without tape) and it works.

The BIOS recognized the SSD disk.

You were right. It's really a mechanical problem.

Thanks a lot!!!

whats wrong with people these days when posting on forums?  nobody reads.  the answer was posted on here about the drive not correctly seating in the socket which would make sense and nobody read it..just kept on suggesting endless work a rounds, for a simple problem with a solution,

this happened to me as well and I figured it out before seeing this post.    many of you might save some time if you read posts instead of trying to be the hero and giving answers that arent needed

Alternate Choice: XtremePro 7mm to 9.5mm SSD Spacer Adapter

www.frys.com/.../9049907

UPC #4897054362484, Model #11112, Manufacturer: HON TRON INC.

Funny, this is a plastic rectangular ring, less plastic, a rectangular ring, but for more money.  Maybe, this item traps less heat.  But, a flimsy ring might break more easily, especially as the plastic gets old and brittle over time.

This would be great if it would solve my problem as shown below.  I am not sure it will.  But, it is worth a shot.

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DELL Technical Support Response on May 31st, 2017 on Problem Issue Description Below

The DELL LATITUDE E6420 supports up to 2TB HDD or 250GB SSD.

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Problem: No Boot Device Found on Installing Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD 2TB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5-Inch Notebooks / Laptops Internal Hard Drive (ST2000LX001) to DELL LATITUDE E6420 Laptop Computer, 7mm thick drive, not 9.5mm thick as standard for this laptop.

References:

1. "How to Upgrade a Laptop Hard Drive with Solid State Hybrid Drive (SSHD) Technology"

www.seagate.com/.../

2. "Cloning a Laptop HD" - knowledge.seagate.com/.../007717en

3. 45886: Hybrid Drives Are Not Supported in Acronis Bootable Environment

kb.acronis.com/.../45886

4. 2974: Acronis True Image Home Does Not Support Dynamic Disks or Disks with GUID Partition Tables (GPT)

kb.acronis.com/.../2974

My Computer: DELL LATITUDE - Model E6420

Operating System: OEM Windows 7 Professional, Upgraded to Windows 10 Professional

BIOS Version: A12 (OEM), upgraded to A24, Released May 2017; Note: BIOS only upgrades within Windows 7 Professional (DELL OEM), Attempts to upgrade BIOS under third party, non-DELL, purchased Windows 10 Professional produced an error as wrong or unsupported OS version; I had to use a Legacy disk with Windows 7 on it to do the BIOS upgrade to A24. I did read that FreeDOS might allow the BIOS A24 upgrade, so you can look at that path as well.

RAM: 8GB, VRAM: 500 MB, Considering Upgraded to (DELL Unsupported) 16GB (8GBx2) from Corsair which some forum members claim is possible on the DELL E6420.

Acronis True Image 2017 does not support Hybrid Hard Drives (HHD) also known as Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHD), only pure Hard Disk Drives (HHDs) or pure Solid States drives (SSDs) are supported. Seagate DiskWizard v18 is a lite version of Acronis. That also fails to clone, or backup and restore to Hybrid Hard Drives such as the Seagate Firecuda, Seagate says that the new target Firecuda drive must be mounted internally. But, the computer will not recognize the drive when is mounted internally. It will be recognized on the external USB bus when plugged into a USB port. I also presumed that this drive was 7200 RPM; my current drive replacement is 5400RPM which just does not work for me as a software engineer. The cache is reasonable good; other similar line drives even show availability of 128 MB of cache here on Amazon, twice the 64MB of cache on this drive.

Seagate has an article, "Cloning a Laptop HD" says that the new drive should be placed into the internal bay of the notebook computer, not hooked up to a USB port externally. The claim is that the Master Boot Record (MBR) will not be set or updated correctly. On the DELL E6420, I tried that path with the new Seagate Firecuda drive place in the single internal drive bay and the old drive held external on the USB bus; I also tried the reverse path. And, I tried cloning and backup-restore operations with both drives held externally and Acronis or DiskWizard bootable media held on a bootable USB stick. Seagate DiskWizard version 18 does not work; this free software is a watered down limited version of Acronis True Image 2017, if not a closely related version. Both appear to have unstable recognition of the Seagate Firecuda drive itself.

When adding a new drive, the new drive any existing partition should be destroyed so the drive space shows as unallocated space. The drive should be allocated as an MBR or GPT drive, the latter required for drives over 2TB in size. Also, in cloning a drive, maybe restoring a backup too, the drive must be initialized in the same way as the old drive. So, if the old drive or backup used an MBR initialized drive, the new one must be a like MBR drive. Drives over 2 TB must use GPT. Drives under 2 TB have a choice. One question for me is, "Can an old MBR drive be converted to GPT from MBR before cloning to a drive over 2TB?" This may be possible; but, this is not the problem at hand.

With the DELL E6420, I am able to clone the drives, or restore a backup, so it seems. But, the new drive will not boot. The system reports a bootable device is not found. I tried using a recovery disk created on a USB stick before starting this process. You should create this as it may fixed a damaged boot partition. I did lose the boot partition on my old drive at one point, the USB Recovery stick did fix the old drive I had using the Repair application. Attempting this repair on the Seagate Firecuda produces an error which then appears over and over again every time you reboot with the Recovery stick and the Seagate Firecuda 2 TB drive. The error talks about a missing or corrupted boot file.

This drive did function on the USB bus to where I could use the drive externally as a secondary drive. I presume that I can also buy a secondary drive tray to replace my DVD on the DELL E6420. But, this drive cannot act as a bootable device on my DELL E6420.

In summary, there are too many issues, too many unknowns. DELL's A14 BIOS appeared to fix some error with drive recognition. But, it appears that this problem may still be lingering on certain drives such as this Seagate Firecuda drive. On entering the BIOS Setup, the Seagate Firecuda, when installed, is not seen as available in the list of available bootable devices; too other drives I have are recognized by the BIOS in the Boot selection and priority menu. This would explain why Acronis and DiskWizard are not stable in recognizing the Seagate Firecuda drive. Acronis does not support Hybrid Hard Drives, hard drives that contact some limited solid state flash memory storage capacity used as a cache to most frequently used programs.

If you are looking for a new larger capacity drive as a boot device on the DELL E6420, I would pass on this drive for now.

Note: I believe this drive, Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD 2TB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5-Inch Notebooks / Laptops Internal Hard Drive (ST2000LX001), come with a 64 MB cache buffer for data transfer operations. It also comes with an 8 GB of solid state flash memory storage, adaptive memory that caches programs used most often, so the start up time for certain programs is very quick. Amazon, apparently, in my opinion, is confusing the two caches, one for data transfer and one for programs.

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I have the E6420 in the same series.  I may try that drive.  I understand that there are at least two grades of SSD flash memory, EVO and something else.  I heard from some TSR that the class of flash memory determines the stability of the SSD chips over time.  So, some might last one million writes, others might last eight or ten million writes, before locking down to a read only status or failure of the memory as whole in some way.  Anyway, thanks for that information!

BIOS Version A24 provides the same response using Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD 2TB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5-Inch Notebooks / Laptops Internal Hybrid Hard Drive (ST2000LX001) , a 7mm thick drive on the DELL LATITUDE E6420. BIOS A14 supposedly fixed some drive recognition issue.  This thinner form factor might be the problem.

But, maybe a 7mm to 9.5mm SSD Spacer Adapter will solve the problem.

Try the following:

OWC 7mm – 9.5mm Adapter / Spacer for 2.5" Drives

eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSD95MMSPFL/

or

XtremePro 7mm to 9.5mm SSD Spacer Adapter

www.frys.com/.../9049907

UPC #4897054362484, Model #11112, Manufacturer: HON TRON INC.

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Please see follow-on related post on upgrading a hard drive for the E6420:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/20016074/21007392#21007392

I had the exact issue, my SDD had disk was SanDisk as well, I tried the suggestion and it worked for me, I cut and old credit card and used to adjust the sizes.

Thanks, it worked :)