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Go to SolutionDELL-Vikram M
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Posted November 29th, 2012 21:00
Hi AXMAN43,
It is possible to add another hard drive to XPS 8500. It has 1 X SATA III port and 3 X SATA II ports. Here is the video on how to add a secondary hard drive:
Please reply for any further questions.
Not sure if the question is if you want to buy an additional third drive at purchase or if you want to add one after you get the machine. If the latter is your question:
The 32GB cache drive would be a msata SSD drive which is on a card that installs into a slot on the motherboard. That would leave you with 4 SATA ports on the motherboard. One to your 2 TB drive with the OS, one to your optical drive and 2 open ports you can use to add an additional hard drive in the HD cage below your factory installed drive.
The other option you would have if your looking for redundancy would be for you to buy the XPS 8500 with just the 2 TB drive and install a larger 128GB or 256GB msata SSD and install the OS on the larger SSD rather than using the smaller 32GB SSD as a cache drive.
I have the same configuration. It is possible to physically install your additional drive using one of the two empty SATA ports on the Mobo(one port used for 2TB, other used for optical). However , when I did this the pc was okay initially but started having intermittent boot problems. I'll keep you posted as this new issue has been reported.
HanoverB
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Posted November 30th, 2012 18:00
That is correct.
If you want Dell to setup the machine, then order the machine with the 256GB SSD that will have the OS already installed + the 2TB hard drive. . Plug and play with full support on their installation.
There are a few changes you need to make in the BIOS in the various steps of a self install, and a search of this site has them in detail. If you are feeling challenged, better to let Dell do it.
However, If you choose to do this yourself, you can buy the machine without the 32gb msata SSD, just buy the 1TB or 2TB drive when you order the machine. The recommended SSD would be the Crucial CT256M4SSD3. You will need some M2 x 3mm mounting screws that may or may not come with the drive. It will run at the specified 6gb/s. CT256M4SSD3 and CT3256232 (XPS 8500 recommended upgrade) are the same drive if you see it in web searches.