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1027383
How to open Dell Precision M4600 back panel
I want to open the back panel of the Dell Precision M4600 so that I can upgrade the RAM and also put in a secondary hard disk. There is no documentation or tutorial for this. Anyone can provide and guide on how to do this? I can only remove the battery but from there I'm lost. I can see 2 screws covering the back back panel but I'm not sure if it's the right screw to remove.
Any help is appreciated.
eduncan911
19 Posts
0
June 8th, 2011 12:00
EDIT: Found the manual!
<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>
To add to urlnotfound's post:
Remove the two screws under hte battery that hold the cover.
Slide, sometimes with a little force, the cover backwards towards the rear of the laptop. It only moves about 1/4", and is completely free to lift off at that point.
Note that there is only one 2.5" HDD place, and it's the hot-swapable one you see on the side (still have yet to figure out how to remove it, the level doesn't seem to do anything - yet). The "2nd HDD" is actually a dedicated "mSATA" slot, which stands for Minicard SATA. It's a tiny PCI-express slot, just like the three you see when you remove the cover. They are very rare to buy though. I really wish I bought the one Dell was offering, cause aftermarket they are next to non-existant. I found only 2 manufacturers, which are the same brands under the hood. But they are only the 50mm size. I want a 70mm site to slot into the WWLAN PCI-Express slot, cause those are available up to 240 GB.
And FYI, mSATA devices with SATA II interfaces can get up to 240 to 250 MB/s read/write! No, there are no SATA III mSATA that I could find. Been searching for a month for them...
Also note that only the two top RAM sticks are accessible here. I'm about to call Dell support to find out where the othe two DIMM slots are (most likely have to remove the bottom board).
urlnotfound
1 Message
0
June 7th, 2011 14:00
I got mine open easily. Close the lid. Flip it over. Keep the opening side with the button towards you. Remove the battery by moving the lever to the right. It had to be pushed harder than I expected. The battery will 'pop' up. There are three black screws inside this compartment. One is on an 'L' shaped piece of plastic to release the hard drive. Leave that one alone. Remove the two screws that are on the tabs that hold the bottom panel on. Once they are out, gently push the bottom of the laptop away. It should just come off. You can then see the "A" and "B" memory slots. Install your RAM.
Reverse the directions to reassemble.
luxent
4 Posts
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June 9th, 2011 09:00
Thanks. I've been looking for this. I wonder if they have a PDF file for this so I can print it out and keep a hard copy.
luxent
4 Posts
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June 9th, 2011 09:00
eduncan911
19 Posts
1
June 11th, 2011 07:00
Now, but they do have the HTML files to download, extract, and have locally:
<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>
JeffPitzen
1 Message
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February 22nd, 2012 11:00
If you haven't found it already, here it is:
Snoopy_WG
6 Posts
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July 17th, 2015 14:00
Just an update to anyone still using their M4600's. I'm still using mine and am upgrading my boot disk (the mSATA mini card) from 128GB to 512GB. I use hibernate all the time and the hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys files can get pretty big.
The catch is that nowhere in the above mentioned manual manual is the mSATA mini card mentioned. In fact, before I opened the back and realized this, I was thinking I needed a 2.5" SSD to replace the one I had. But I have since realized this was was not the cas and that my boot drive was on this little 2" mSATA mini card as opposed to the other 2.5" drive in the drive bay. In the "upgrades and accessories" section of the Dell Support for the M4600, they don't really make it clear that when they are referring to an SSD drive they are actually referring to the 2" mini card. I wish they had because I ended buying the wrong one and didn't realize it until I had torn the notebook down looking for the second 2.5" SSD. I finally realized what that chip was (I thought it was the WWAN chip, but that's underneath the SSD). Fortunately I got the entire notebook reassembled without any issues and she's working fine. I am waiting on my new bigger mSATA card to install this weekend.
So the description in this thread above is the best thing you will find because none of the videos or manuals explain this. (They do in the manual for the new M3800, which is nice. But that doesn't help us who have older notebooks.)
The good news is that now you can buy mSATA (6 Gbps) up to 1TB on Amamzon. I bought a Crucial 512GB for around $200. This should breath new life into the old girl and give me another few years before I upgrade to my next notebook.
One last note is that if you are going to use something like Acronis to do a disk clone of your current SSD before swapping it out, you should invent in an adapter that will allow you to connect the new card via eSATA as you cannot to a complete clone (with MBR and partition info) using a USB connection. There are a few adapters out there and well worth the money.
Hope this helps.
HANDYPCREPAIR
15 Posts
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November 18th, 2015 14:00
I had swapped out the Cellular card with a mSata 512GB drive and installed windows on a customers pc with no problems. The reason we had to go this route is because the customer tried to replace his hard drive himself. Placed the drive bay upside down and forced the caddy in the drive bay. After it wouldnt recognize the old or new drive he called me. Found that he busted up the sata ports on the internal hard drive from placing the hard drive caddy in upside down. He was happy to get his laptop back and it seems that it runs pretty good with the mSata drive in his Precision M4600.
luxent
4 Posts
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November 19th, 2015 16:00
I have 3 OS running in mine. Windows 10 runs of the main Samsung SSD hard drive; windows 7 runs of the msata plextor 512gb; and I swapped out the optical drive for a hard disk that runs Hackintosh, mountain lion. I find that the msata doesn't detect after the first reboot. Only on the second reboot does it detect the msata drive. I think the BIOS doesn't recognize the msata right away.
dannykoolj
2 Posts
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May 4th, 2016 15:00
Thanks for sharing! I have this exact issue. Are you saying the msata port is the WWAN port that's underneath the SSD? if not, where is it located? and if yes where did you find an mSata that small? btw I also have an M4600