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Dell Inspiron N5110 frustration

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raybarrow
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Dell Inspiron N5110 frustration

#450939

Postby raybarrow » October 18th, 2021, 9:36 am

I have an old, old HP Compaq which is my Linux Mint machine. I experiment with it and the bigger screen is better for video editing and music manipulation. My day to day machine is an newer HP laptop, smaller, lighter, faster and with Windows 10 is fine.

I inherited a Dell Inspiron. More modern, better screen, faster CPU but a non-SSD hard drive. Ok I thought take out the non-SSD, check the memory while I'm there and swap the SSD from the old compaq, reinstall Linux, an hour max, job done.
Have you ever tried to take the hard drive out of a Dell Inspiron? Goes something like this. Remove the battery, remove the memory cover, pop out the CD/DVD for safety, take all the screws out of the back, remove the keyboard, remove the screen, remove metal covering from motherboard, remove the motherboard and all it's connectors, and there on the back of the motherboard is the hard drive. Needless to say I didn't do all of that. I stopped at remove the memory cover when I found no sign of a hard drive.
What possessed Dell to design that (I know it's so you can't easily do it yourself). The only two things you are likely to want to upgrade on a laptop memory and hard drive. Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
So installed Linux Mint on Dell and it takes a whole 30 secs longer to start up than the Compaq with SSD. I did consider taking it and the SSD to my local friendly computer shop and saying can you put that in there but If I can't live with those extra 30 secs there's something wrong with my life. But Dell come on, what happened to easily repairable.
Ray.

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Re: Dell Inspiron N5110 frustration

#450942

Postby servodude » October 18th, 2021, 9:57 am

Holy Moly you're not joking: https://www.parts-people.com/blog/2013/10/16/dell-inspiron-15r-n5110-hard-drive-caddy-removal-and-installation/

It's disappointing when you have to give up once your hands are in the guts of one
- last time it happened to me it was because the "hard drive" turned out to be 2xM2Sata in a Raid configuration and utterly unsuitable to be replaced with the drive I had (should have checked before the first dozen screws were removed :( )

-sd

production100
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Re: Dell Inspiron N5110 frustration

#450943

Postby production100 » October 18th, 2021, 10:00 am

Seems incredibly complicated for what should be a simple operation.

Chris

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Re: Dell Inspiron N5110 frustration

#450944

Postby Infrasonic » October 18th, 2021, 10:08 am

You can boot Linux from an external SSD and make it persistent if you want.

There's gathering momentum for the right to repair movement both in the USA and over here.
Framework make an entirely modular laptop that many reviewers have been very positive about.
https://frame.work/


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