Upgrading i7779 17" Dell Inspiron 7000 series from the original 1TB HDD to a 500GB SSD - couldn't be easier..

You can buy the i7779 with a 500GB SSD already installed "brand new" for around $1200, but I had found an open box i7779 to was too good of a price to pass up ($675 I am pretty sure).  Additionally, this is a 17" 2-n-1 (the largest 2-in-1 on the market - any brand not just Dell).  Also, before I forget, this machine comes with an nVIDIA GeForce 940MX 2GB of Dedicated Video Card! The machine was pretty slow (as expected) with the mechanical HDD for sure, however, I picked up a brand new Samsung EVO 500GB with V-NAND off of an auction site for $80 with shipping included (another no brainer).  

Anyway, Saturday morning, I removed the screws from the back of the laptop (approx 15 screws), took a plastic pry and went around the edges and the back came right off (very easy).  I removed the HDD from the caddy and installed the SDD into the caddy, put the machine back together in reverse order and reloaded Windows 10 from a flash drive.   

I am happy to report this upgrade gave the machine about double the speed it had before (ran testing on userbenchmark.com before and after the upgrade)! 

I do have a question though... I noticed the motherboard has two DDR4 memory slots and is only using one of them for one 16GB module.  I wonder how or if it would run on 32GB?   That may be my next endeavor...  :)   take care all!    - Lewis