XPS 8930, drives upgrade options

Adding extra drives to the XPS 8930 is very easy. There are two drive bays at the bottom of the case.

These area each held in with small screws. Remove those screws and you can take the drive bay out of the case. each bays come out. Screw the drive to the bay and put the drive bay with the drive in it back into the case. Attach a power cable from the PSU and a Sata cable to the drive.

I have an 8930 that came with a 256Gb M2 SSD for the operating system and software such as MS office and a 4TB hard drive for media. I added  another 512Gb Samsung SSD into one of the drive bays.

The 8930 is well designed when it comes to adding extra drives - as long as you don't want to add more than 2 new drives.

Appreciate your answer.

I'll be adding a 2.5-inch SSD and 3.5-inch hard drive down the road.

When you write to put the drive into the bay, will I need to buy screws to hold the SSD and HDD? Will both fit into the bays?

Also, what about the power and connection cable? Will each of those be in the two bays or will I need to buy cables?

Thank you so much!

You will definitely need screws. The 2.5" SSD will not install easily without a 2.5' to 3.5" adapter. You will also need SATA III cables for the drives, but there should be spare power connectors. The SATA cables may require right angle connectors on one end in order not to interfere with closing the side panel. I highly recommend that you remove the side panel and look inside your computer and also look at the service manual.

There is more detail on fitting drives into a Dell XPS 8930 in the service manual which you can find here - p46 to p50:

XPS 8930 Service Manual

Yes - you will need screws to attach the drives to the drive bays. I believe that drives typically use M3 5mm screws like these:

Amazon.com M3 Computer Mounting Screws 

You will also need a SATA III cable for each drive. It is best to get right angled ones like these: 

SATA III Cables 

The end with the right angle goes into the drive and the other end goes intothe SATA port on the motherboard.

There are 4 of these SATA ports on the motherboard. One will already be used by the hard drive that comes with the system. These ports are labelled 4, 5, 6 and 7 on the motherboard diagram on p18 of the service manual. It does not matter which of the spare ports you use.

Note - the cables that I linked above are 11" long. That will definitel reach the drive bay closest to the ports on the motherboard but you may need a longer cable for the other drive bay.

You wont need any power cables - there is an unused power cable in the Dell XPS case that has connections for 2 drives - one for each drive bay.

You also wont need a 2.5" to 3.5" adaptor for the SSD. (I didn't need one when fitting a Samsung 850 EVO SSD in my Dell XPS 8930.) Each drive bay has 2 screw holes on each side for a 3.5" drive and 4 screw holes on the top for a 2.5" drive.

I did not see 4 screw holes on the top of the drive cage for mounting my Samsung 850 EVO in my XPS 8910. I do see a potential problem because the SSD is so thin, mounting the SSD right against the top of the drive cage may cause a clearance problem with attaching the SATA and power cables. Also I don't know if using the mounting holes will align the edge of the SSD to the edge of the drive cage. I used an adapter and still had to adjust the position of it and the SSD relative the top and front of the drive cage because of cable clearance issues.

There may be a difference in the drive cages/bays for the 8910 and 8930.

In my 8930 there definitely are four screw holes on the top of each cage for mounting an SSD.

I have a picture of my system at the bottom of theis thread:

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS-Desktops/XPS-8930-How-I-Fixed-the-Noise-Issues

You can see the Samsung 850 Evo SSD installed in the bay closest to the front of machine. It is at the bottom right of the picture with the blue SATA cable and the power cable labelled "P6" going into it. You can just about make out two of the screws attaching the SSD to the top of the cage - they are either side of the SATA cable. I dont seem to have any issues with cable clearance - although I would recommend a right angled SATA cable. (Even if I have not used one.)

Note that the main point of that picture was to show the new (and much more effective) CPU cooler that I have fitted to my 8930 - so I wasnt really aiming to show the drive bay in detail.

I know the 8930 has an M.2 slot (perhaps two).  Does it support this WD Blue M.2 drive?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820250092

It's NAND, 2280 1TB M.2

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@jason_michaelwrote:

I know the 8930 has an M.2 slot (perhaps two).  Does it support this WD Blue M.2 drive?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820250092

 

It's NAND, 2280 1TB M.2

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I would not think so since it says it's SATA. M.2-SATA is mainly for older laptops. Remember that SATA-3 tops-out at 600 speed.

Yes, the manual PDF shows that the XPS-8930 has a M.2 slot on the motherboard, so it takes a PCIe NVMe SSD (yes, also M.2 form-factor). That's what you want in that slot ... not Optane or old SATA.

Actually, the manuals says "One M.2 card slot for SSD (SATA or PCIe/NVMe)". The "SATA" part could be an error. I've never heard of a motherboard M.2 slot that does both SATA and PCIe/NVMe.

Late to the game here, but that WD Blue drive is working on my 8930 so the slot offers some flexibility.

Thank you for all the great info here regarding adding an extra SSD to an XPS 8930.  I ordered a SATA cable as recommended.  However, when I went to install, the available power cable was way too short to reach the drive bay.  I got the drive working for science, but it's basically just hanging in the blank space above the drive bay.  I'll have to remove it to shut the system and I wouldn't leave it there anyway.

My question is, is there such a thing as an extension cable that would just go from the one connector to the drive?  I tried googling this to find out, but there is a bewildering array of power cables and whatnot out there.

My system came with a 512GB  SSD and a 1TB hard drive and I'm trying to add a second Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (from my old  computer) into one of the empty drive bays.

The power cable to the SATA drive is 15-pins. You need a SATA male to female power cable like this one: https://www.amazon.com/15-Pin-Female-Power-Extension-Cable/dp/B0046DYKVM

Thanks very much!

I just got my XPS 8930 i7, it came with 500MB SSD and 2TB HD. I want to add a 6TB WD gold drive for all my drone videos. Reading your past post looks like I just need a SATA3 cable. Opening the machine looks like power cable is handing there, free with nothing connected to it. This cable is not daisy chained to the other drives. Is this a power supply cable? Connector end looks correct.

Also once I connect the new drive will it need to be configured in the BIOS? or will it just appear as the F drive?

I have seen posts on NVME drives not showing up and not using their full read/write potential when they got them to work. Mine new NVME in my 8920 never did show up anywhere and I sent it back. The sata m.2 drives in these 8900 series units are never a problem.

Yes that is a 15 pin power cable coming out of the power supply hanging free that isn't chained to the other one. You can use that in that bay near the top front for your new drive. You will need to configure that new drive, you can't just stick it in and start using it.

For those of you that are worried about screws and length of cables you can slap those little 2.5" ssd drives anywhere the cables will reach with double sided tape and I never had a problem doing that. You can also raise/lower them easily with household materials...……….fully adjustable. Or you can get around all that by using up the M.2 slot in the 8900 series computers.