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XPS 8930, 2nd & 3rd drives install
Hi.
So just took delivery of my new XPS 8930 and want to install the drives from my old XPS. One is a WD Blue 250GB SSD and the other a 1TB drive. Not sure of the actual sizes - 2.5" & 3.5"? These are not original and were installed a couple of years ago.
From other posts I can see that I will need 2 x SATA III cables, probably right-angled. Any particular brands I should be looking at?
There are spare power connectors but the wires look a bit different to those going to the main HDD. Is this just an appearance thing - I'm guessing it is?
Do I need a drive carrier to mount the smaller drive in the one of the spare bays? If so recommendations appreciated.
I guess I will need to tinker with the BIOS when installed to ensure that the current drive is still recognised as the boot drive?
Finally, I intend to copy the OS to the SSD and make this the boot drive, once installed. However given this is my aim I wondered if there was anything I should bear in mind at this stage?
Thanks in advance
Vic384
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March 26th, 2020 06:00
Most SATA III cables are pretty much the same, no particular brand is needed.
The different appearance of the wires of the power connectors is just an appearance thing,
You may need a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter to mount the 2.5" drive, but I recommend that you look at the hard-drive cage first. Some cages allow mounting using the bottom mounting holes of the drive to holes already in the top of the cage.
You do not need to tinker with the BIOS. The new XPS has an UEFI BIOS which does not allow setting boot drive priority. You should not install a bootable drive from your old XPS into your new XPS. If you do have two bootable drives, you need to boot using F12 and then selecting, from the boot menu, to boot from the boot drive of the new XPS. After the system is booted up, you need to re-initialize the old boot drive using DiskPart. Here is the procedure: https://macrorit.com/partition-magic-manager/initialize-disk-gpt-mbr-from-cmd-diskpart.html
Assuming you want to move the OS to the WD SSD. you need to first re-initialize the SSD which will wipe everything, including data and partitions, from the drive. Then you need to clone the boot drive of the new XPS to the SSD using something like Macrium Reflect Free Edition. With cloning you will need to select the option to shrink the HDD to fit onto the SSD. After cloning the HDD of the new XPS you will need to disconnect it and boot from the SSD. If you don't disconnect the HDD you will need to boot the SSD using F12 boot menu. If you don't want to use F12 each time you boot up you need to re-initialize the HDD to use as backup storage. If you plan to move the OS to the SSD, you should not complicate things by installing the old 1 TB drive; it can be installed later.
GKDesigns
258 Posts
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March 26th, 2020 05:00
@Thewestfield
Google around and do some reading... your issues are very common and have been discussed before.
GK
savvy2
2.5K Posts
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March 26th, 2020 05:00
well there are no limits, really besides answering for not the BOOT drive, first.
Thewestfield
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March 26th, 2020 14:00
Thanks to all for responses - some useful ideas to address my queries. SATA cables have been ordered and hopefully will arrive in time start the work on Saturday.
Cheers,