Dell 1720 laptop memory and HD questions

[Chris Wilson]

I just bought a Dell 1720 laptop off Ebay. Not a thing of beauty or great technical merit, but far better than my current, and flaky lap top, and actually better specced than my home PC. I only wanted something cheap, witha 17 inch screen, to use in the workshop for mapping, using with a USB oscilloscope, and for keeping some vehicle test utilities on. I may feed it into a 24 inch monitor on the wall as well. It comes with no OS, but most vehicle diagnostics are still built for the Windows XP pro OS, which is what I use, and will be loading on this. I fancy filling the memory slots though, it uses 2 667 MHz SoDIMM DDR2 memory strips to fill it up, where's the best place to buy some, and is secondhand worth the risk? http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins1720/en/om_en/pdf/DT5494MR.pdf is a link to the owners manual. It uses two hard drives, I was thinking of a solid state drive for the OS, and either using the existing HD for storage in the second slot, or whatever will give it maximum storage capacity. some of the current vehicle diagnostic and repair apps from the OE manufacturers are huge, Can someone tell me EXACTLY what I need to buy to do a hard drive upgrade? i am OK about formatting and loading the drivers and OS. Cheers. This is the machine, (to you lot, dinosaur), I bought, nave I paid too much?: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/180769727685?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

 

I have my eye on Dell 17R for use in the house, are they any good for general work (I never play computer games or do anything graphics intensive)? This one is what I was thinking of:

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Inspiron-17R-Tomato-Red-Laptop-Open-Box-17-3-HD-Screen-320GB-HDD-4GB-RAM-/260913296989?pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item3cbfa4f65d

 

Cheers.

[Graham S]

If I remember right, I don't think Win XP will register anything more than 3GB of memory, even if you put 4GB in it. I'm sure someone with better knowledge than me. I tend to buy all my computer stuff from http://www.ebuyer.com

 

As for the Dell 17R, I just bought the wife one. Apart from all the junk that comes with any new computer it seems very good. My only niggle is the keyboard seems very cheap feeling, battery life seems to be very good too. That one you listed is maybe a little over priced i'd say, I got a i3 version for a little more than that and with a 500gb drive.

[stevie_b]

Just a quick reply:

I wouldn't buy 2nd hand RAM without a warranty. If you do, run something like memtest86 to thoroughly check it. RAM sticks can develop small errors which aren't usually apparent, but these errors can manifest themselves in programs occasionally crashing: very hard to debug!

 

Hard disks are expensive at the moment, due to bad weather in the far east where a lot are manufactured (see other threads on here). you could buy a solid state disk but they are comparatively expensive per GB of storage. I wouldn't bother unless you need faster disk access time (you probably don't).

 

As Graham said, Windows XP will only be able to use about 3.5GB of RAM. You can add more but it won't be able to use it above this value. The problem is that, like most PCs, the RAM needs to be installed in matching pairs. You could install 2x1GB giving a total of 2GB, or 2x2GB giving a total of 4. I'd probably be tempted to install 2x2GB, and just accept that it won't be able to utilise the full 4GB.

 

Have a look at the Crucial website. They make fairly good RAM and can identify *exactly* the RAM you need.

[Chris Wilson]

Thanks gentlemen, if I did lash out on a SSD would the thing boot up a lot faster? With the workshop laptop it's a PITA waiting for it to boot when you suddenly realise you need it for something. How do I find out what size drives it uses? The owners manual doesn't appear to mention that. Thanks again.

[Chris Wilson]

Scrub re the drive type above, the Crucial site ID's the drive type used, cheers.

[stevie_b]

Laptop hard drives are almost always 2.5" SATA drives. I couldn't see any reference to it to confirm this in the manual, so you could pop the laptop case open and have a look at the label on the existing hard disk(s) to confirm it.

 

I would guess it would boot up faster with an SSD but it is just a guess (I've never used an SSD). Remember that Windows tends to slow down over time, especially as you install and/or uninstall software. To save you a few quid you could take a backup of your data, and restore the laptop to its factory image and see if that makes it run faster. If it does then it was just Windows' gradual slowdown causing the slow boot. If not you haven't lost anything because you would be replacing the hard drive anyway.

[Chris Wilson]

It'll be a fresh install anyway, I may buy an SSD, I have always wondered how much better they would be in the real world, if it proves not much faster on the shop laptop. I suppose I can use it in a full size PC as well?

[MaveriK]

It'll be a fresh install anyway, I may buy an SSD, I have always wondered how much better they would be in the real world, if it proves not much faster on the shop laptop. I suppose I can use it in a full size PC as well?

 

Yes you can, most 2.5" SSD's come with a chassis so you can mount it in a desktop.

 

I migrated to a 2.5" SSD out of interest and was pleasantly surprised by the speeds.

 

Please remember though, as with cars, upgrading something will just move the bottleneck somewhere else. They are working on a new type of BIOS which will allow for faster boot times across faster motherboards with faster memory. Also, Windows 8, boots a lot quicker but that could be down to it going into hibernation rather than shutting down on demo's

[kill1308]

It'll be a fresh install anyway, I may buy an SSD, I have always wondered how much better they would be in the real world, if it proves not much faster on the shop laptop. I suppose I can use it in a full size PC as well?s

 

Don't waste an SSD drive on WindowsXP

Windows XP and Vista do not support TRIM. If you want an explanation of what TRIM is : http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2010/02/04/windows-7-ssd-performance-and-trim/1

It can also be a bit of a pain to install XP on an SSD depending on the drive and controller.

 

I haven't got time to check the specs of the laptop you just bought, but if it's more than a few years old, a top end SSD drive will of course be an improvement over a mechanical disk for sure, but you won't get the best out of it and some would see it as a waste of money. You could get a cheaper disk if it's an old laptop and you still wanted to go down this route.

 

If you do look at SSD's for the future in a new desktop you buy, check the READ & WRITE speeds of whatever drives you look at.... a good SSD will have near equal Read/Write speeds, the cheaper ones have fast read with a slower write. Many people run just the OS on a well specced but small SSD (say 60gb or so) and have a decent spec mechanical disk for their data.... but go Win7

 

SSD's are brilliant, I run a Corsair Force 3 120gb in my laptop and have 2 of them in my desktop, boot times and general overall windows performance is vastly different from mechanical hard drives and they are well worth the money in my opinion.

[Willson]

Regarding boot times, why don't you use "hibernation" instead of powering down. Then the computer is ready to use in less than 10 seconds from being woken.

[MaveriK]

Regarding boot times, why don't you use "hibernation" instead of powering down. Then the computer is ready to use in less than 10 seconds from being woken.

 

Memory leaks and lets not forget..

 

A

Reboot

Solves

Everything

 

[Willson]

I haven't had any issues not rebooting machines for months

[Chris Wilson]

Update. machine arrived, looked brand new, totally unmarked, so very pleased. It won't stay that way, but nice to do your own damage I tried to load XP Corporate, and every time it loaded and booted it said it couldn't see the hard drive. It has 2 bays, only one is populated, and it has a 60Gig SATA in it. I am just checking it all works for now, before buying another caddy, connector, and two bigger SATA 2.5 inch drives. Anyway, a few Google sessions and it seems I needed to turn OFF atici in the BIOS and turn ON ata. I lso needed to turn off flash cache mode, which i think is just for hybrid drives, with some mechanical storage and some memory type storage> It then worked fine, but have been messing about finding XP drivers for it this evening, but now have everything working properly. I must have XP as a lot of the diagnostics stuff I run for work will only run properly under XP and will have fits under Windows 7. I think I'll stick to a conventional platter type pair of hard drives, one reason being many of these diagnostic apps are huge and some will only install on C: so getting a SSD for just the OS would entail buying a huge one at vast cost, unless I am missing something, which is definitely a none starter, price wise

 

My question now is will there be an issue fitting say two 500, 650, or 750 gig SATA drives, one in each bay, with XP SP3? If I make on these composite install DVD's with SP3 on the the OS itself (need to research how to do this...) will I be able to format them to full capacity as the OS is loaded, in the loader programme? Could the mother board or controller have an issue with such big drives? Ta! I now have a cheap laptop that's far faster than my main PC It might be a dinosaur to you lot, it's a Ferrari to me.

 

Thanks for all the advice.

[stevie_b]

AFAIK I don't think XP will have a problem with huge hard drives. Worth googling, but it's not something I've heard of.

 

XP should be able to format the system drive (typically the C: drive) during installation. You can, by fiddling a bit, get it to format non-system drives too but I wouldn't bother with that. I would just format the system partition at install time, and use the XP interface when it's installed to format the other drive.

 

Slipstreaming SP3 into the installation CD is a good idea. I've got a fair bit of experience making custom XP CDs using nLite, so ask away if you're not sure about stuff. You can also slipstream drivers and regional settings onto XP too.

[Chris Wilson]

Thanks stevie_b, I have got nLite and will have a go at making a custom installation disk. Have found someone witha genuine caddy, just got to choose a apir of drives, anyone help here, no more than £80 a piece though

[kill1308]

I think I'll stick to a conventional platter type pair of hard drives, one reason being many of these diagnostic apps are huge and some will only install on C: so getting a SSD for just the OS would entail buying a huge one at vast cost, unless I am missing something, which is definitely a none starter, price wise

 

It's definitely a huge benefit speed wise to run an OS off an SSD... Windows overall performance is vastly improved, but even so I wouldn't bother putting an expensive disk on a an older machine unless it had a decent speed SATA interface. When you say the apps are huge, how huge are we talking?

 

^^Regarding your other problem with XP not seeing the disks (for future reference) you could have downloaded the relevant storage matrix driver from the manufacturers website (sometimes called an F6 floppy). You load it onto a floppy disk and run XP setup as normal. You press F6 at the start of the XP installation (where it asks you if you want to load additional drivers). You'd then load the relevant driver for the SATA controler...it would have then discovered the hard disk at its optimal BIOS settings rather than having to turn off AHCI. It's not a big issue for your average mechanical drive though...

 

My question now is will there be an issue fitting say two 500, 650, or 750 gig SATA drives, one in each bay, with XP SP3? If I make on these composite install DVD's with SP3 on the the OS itself (need to research how to do this...) will I be able to format them to full capacity as the OS is loaded, in the loader programme? Could the mother board or controller have an issue with such big drives? Ta! I now have a cheap laptop that's far faster than my main PC It might be a dinosaur to you lot, it's a Ferrari to me.

 

It's been a long time since I messed with XP, mostly mess with servers or Win7 devices. But you won't have a problem with that size drive in XP SP3, your limit per drive is 2TB.... pre SP2 it was 127gb.

The BIOS will be the only other limitation, but if it's a fairly modern machine it shouldn't have a problem with those small drives

Once installed you can always use a partition manager (plenty of free ones around) to get the sizes and partitions you want on the drives.