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I recently purchased a Dell Studio 1737 laptop. Looking through the manual I noticed it has a spare bay for a second hard drive. I would like to install an extra hard drive, but after taking the rear panel off I realise there is some kind of adapter between the motherboard and hard drive (an interposer according to the manual) I contacted Dell customer support today to ask if I could buy the interposer and hard drive caddy, but was told I could only buy a hard drive kit (160 gb) for £150 !!!
Does anyone know if it is possbile to buy a hard drive caddy and "interposer" without the hard drive, as I currently have a couple of spare sata drives.
The laptop would take 2.5" SATA drives. Your spare drives are probably 3.5" and won't fit.
If the extra bay is a universal bay that can accept different types of drives then you might be able to use a 3.5" but I doubt it. Most 3.5" SATA drives are 7200RPM. Most laptop drives are 5400RPM. The lower RPM is for power saving reasons. A second drive wouldn't need to have super fast access anyway.
At any rate, any caddies or adapters would need to come from Dell or an after market company that has copied the hardware.
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(Edit) Ignore the URL at the bottom, it looks like it doesn't fit your laptop. But more checking into the following search result, might find something:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...I'm not a laptop person, but could the following adapter be what you need? That is if the spare drives you have are 2.5" drives.
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thanks for the replies.
the spare hard drives I have are 2.5" sata so will be compatible with the laptop.
I need the hard drive cage and interposer for hard drive 2 on this document:
http://support.euro.dell.com/suppor...
I've contacted Dell directly and ended up talking to a call centre who told me it will be £150 for a 160 Gb drive, but he wasn't sure if it included the cage and interposer!
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From those pictures it appears everything you need, other than the drive, is there already. Why don't you open it up and have a look?
edit
You may need the mounting screws.
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I have taken the back panel off and found no caddy or "interposer", just a space with HDD 2 written across it !
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OK, reviewed the link again and see what you need.
I Googled for "Dell laptop interposer" without the quotes and it seems like third party vendors may sell the parts you need. May take some searching.
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I finally managed to speak to someone at Dell regarding this. They confirmed the parts I need do indeed exist, but are not available to purchase! The parts are "on retention" as they are being held back for new builds. The upgrade options department told me the parts are specific to the Studio range of laptops and are unlikely to be available to purchase for 6-9 months.
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Did you Google for the parts. I recently was told by a Chrysler dealership that a turn signal switch was a dealer only part. I bought the switch there and found out later they were widely available in the aftermarket.
Worth looking into.
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Yes I did spend quite some time searching for the parts on numerous suppliers websites. I also spoke to a retailer specialising in Dell parts and they confirmed no parts will be available for this laptop for some time yet. I also checked Dell.com (US site) as they list different spares / accesories compared to the UK website.
The "upgrade options" department at Dell did however offer to Email me when the parts become available. So I guess I'll just have to sit tight and wait.
On a different note it is several years since I last used this website and although it has visibly changed, the advice given is still as good as ever.
Best regards
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Well good luck with that and thanks for getting back with us and letting us know how you made out.
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Just been looking round the laptop and noticed it is actually fitted with a 160 Gb HDD, rather than 120 Gb as adverstised in the store !! I guess Dell must have run out of 120's.
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Well there you go. You just picked up 40GB. Should hold you for awhile before you can get those parts.
Probably could swap out the 160 for something bigger too. Look at the link below. For $70 you can get a 320GB notebook drive. Just swap out the one that is in there now.
Only thing you need o do is verify you can use that capacity. I am not up to speed on laptops but with desktops if the BIOS is 48 bit LBA compliant you can use any size drive made today.
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