This post is more than 5 years old
10 Posts
0
39486
February 22nd, 2015 08:00
DELL XPS 8700 - Adding a new hard drive
Quick question:
Is it possible for me to add another internal hard drive to my computer XPS 8700? If so, other than the new hard drive, are there any other additional parts that I need to purchase?
Thanks.
No Events found!
laserman778
511 Posts
0
February 22nd, 2015 08:00
You should be able to, you may need to purchase an additional SATA III (6.0Gb/s) cable to connect the drive (if the drive you purchase does not come with a cable. Also before you purchase make sure you have an open SATA port on your motherboard.
Philip_Yip
9 Legend
•
16.1K Posts
0
February 22nd, 2015 09:00
Its a good idea to get a mSATA SSD, change the SATA operation to AHCI and install Windows on it, then setup your new hard drive or old hard drive for storage.
myamanashi
10 Posts
0
February 23rd, 2015 02:00
Thank you for replying. I found your reply to be insightful.
Will I need to install Windows on the new hard drive or would it already have it on there?
Philip_Yip
9 Legend
•
16.1K Posts
0
February 23rd, 2015 03:00
The new hard drive should be blank, you will need to reinstall Windows on it.
There are two ways you can do this. The first method is to use Dell Backup and Recovery to create recovery media of the factory settings from your original hard drive. You can create either a Rescue Disk (Bootable External Hard Drive) or Factory Restore USB (Bootable USB Flash Drive). I made two tutorials this weekend on creating these and recommend creating both:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKIKWN6sugY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_1zRDe-qTI
Once you have these made you can remove any old hard drives attached to your system (just unplug the SATA cables so they don't interfere). Then you can install a >250 GB mSATA drive.
You can then ensure that the SATA operation is set to AHCI, the BIOS is set to UEFI and SecureBoot is on. You may then Restore from the Rescue Disk to the mSATA SSD, giving you factory settings on your SSD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTxrnWsAfoA
After this is done you will need to remove the mSATA drive and reattach the old hard drives. You'll need to use a utility such as DBAN to wipe the system otherwise you will have 2 Operating systems installed, one on the SSD and one on the old HDD:
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/securely-wipe-your-hard-drive-with-dariks-boot-and-nuke-dban/
To use DBAN you'll need to disable SecureBoot and UEFI and allow legacy boot. After wiping revert the BIOS settings back to default. I'll create a tutorial video on doing this when I next get time.
After doing this reinsert the mSATA drive. You should now have Windows with the Dell factory settings on the mSATA SSD and greatly improved performance and blank original hard drives.
To use the HDDs you'll need to initialise them in disc manager and for best results I recommend assigning them to user data files and creating junctions to the original user file locations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQXlya8Lljo
That is the first method of installation and is the Dell factory settings. I recommend this if you have Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 and if your factory settings are performing well.
If your factory settings aren't performing well or you have Windows 8.0 factory settings then I recommend clean installation instead. See here to create installation media:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs6JbJTlxc8
Then see my A Clean Install of Windows 8.1:
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/a-clean-install-of-windows/a-clean-install-of-windows-8-1/