Installing SSD into Inspiron 15r se(7520).

Hi beergoggles,

Dell does not ship re-installation media any more. You can burn your set of recovery media using the Dell Backup and Recovery application. Here is the video with the steps:

You may use disks instead of USB/flash drive.

Hope this helps. Please reply if you have any questions.

Thank for the reply,

Are you 100% sure that creating the recovery media will allow me to install windows onto a smaller capacity solid state drive as a fresh install??  I want to re-install windows, not recover it

.

Why does dell not ship a re-installation media no more????  

Its a bit concerning as having disks to re-install an operating system is piece of mind in case of a major system failure be it hardware or software!!

Thanks.

Hi beergoggles,

Yes, you should be able to install Windows using recovery media on the a hard drive.

Dell ships a factory image with the system, which is accessible and can be used to restore the system to factory defaults in case of software/Windows failure. If there is a hardware failure, we recommend that you create recovery media to install Windows back.

A manual Operating System Re-Install (OSRI) takes a lot of time to complete the procedure, from Windows re-installation, Drivers and restoring pre-installed software. Recovery media saves a lot of time on it and does that all in one go. You may refer to the link http://dell.to/15WhL82 for more information on it.

Please reply if you have any questions.

OK,

I will give this a try sometime in the next week or two, and will get back to you if I have any troubles.

Thank you very much for your time on this matter,

Mark.

Hi Mark,

Keep me posted with the results, and if there is any assistance that you need from my side, please let me know. I'll be glad to help.

Hello Awais09,

I have also been looking into doing the same as what you want to do, however my laptop was not shipped with the 32gb mSATA ssd like yours was. I need to buy the daughterboard N7JHH before I can even fit an mSATA SSD.

The SSD you have is an mSATA SSD which I believe is capable of SATA3 speeds, it is located on the daughterboard inside the laptop around the area of where the delete key is on your key board, it is a pain to get to as you need to dismantle pretty much most of the laptop to get to it, there are some threads on this forum where people have had some success by using a 128gb mSATA SSD for the OS and keeping the 1TB HDD for saving other files.

Take a look at this link as I think you will find this of interest...    

en.community.dell.com/.../19458679.aspx      

I don't know about any BIOS changes as I have not got that far yet,

if you do manage to transfer your OS to the SSD  let me know as I would be interested to know how it went.

Can I as if you are running windows 7?  or windows 8?

Mark.

Hey Mark,

Thank you for your reply. Yesterday I came across this

en.community.dell.com/.../19501039.aspx

In this thread there is a link to download owner's manual. When I looked at the manual it shows how to change the HDD which is accessed from the bottom door of the laptop base but doesn't show where the SSD is, although there is an image on the thread of the daughterboard and in the manual page 76 it shows how to remove the daughter board but it doesn't indicate where the SSD is/goes.

At the moment I have windows 7 but I'd be upgrading to windows 8 (already bought but not yet installed)

I have also read that you can clone your hard disk partition onto the new SSD using data transfer kit and there are several demo videos on YouTube. But I want to clarify first that getting to the SSD isn't very fiddly and if it is then I want to make sure that I have the correct guide to follow and also don't end up putting in SATA2 if it can support SATA3 or don't end up wasting money on SATA3 if it can only handle SATA2 and get stuck with SATA2 speed.

I'd keep you guys updated of any progress I make.

Cheers.

Hello  Awais,

I'm pretty sure the mSATA can run at SATA3 speeds, have a look in this thread:

en.community.dell.com/.../19498697.aspx

There is no option in the UK for the mSATA SSD, I have taken mine apart to check if I had the connector on the daughter board and it does not, I still have not decided weather to order a daughter board and mSATA SSD or just a 2.5" SSD, it is tricky to get to, as it shows you on p76 of that manual you have to pretty much dismantle the whole laptop, just follow the instructions in that manual and be methodical and not loose any screws, and refer to them pictures in that link I gave you in my last post, I think the hardest part was getting the palm rest of as you need to pry it apart, I used a guitar pick/plectrum for that.

As for getting the OS on the SSD, I am well and truly in the dark there, I have always used the OS re-install disks when I have replaced a HDD before, however as you can read further above, Dell does not supply them anymore, and I have never used any cloning software before either so I have a bit more researching to do yet.

I hope that has helped,

Mark.

Hi Mark,

I see that you are working with Dell Sujatha K regarding this issue. Please continue with her.

hi

anyone have any luck putting an OS on the msata, spent most yf the day replacing the daughterboard only to hit a problem with the recovery disks only allowing me to use a similar size hdd ie a 750gb that came with the 7520, all I want to do is put win 8 on the msata ssd 120gb m500..

googled all night and cant find an answer...