Dell Inspiron 15 5575 - M.2 SSD Upgrade

[Scarpozzi]

I bought a Dell Inspiron 15 5575 a week ago for cheap from Rakuten/Office Depot. I ordered a $35 stick of 8GB DDR4 and realized it had a slot for a M.2 SSD. I was going to pop in a sata/SSD I had, but decided to add one instead of replacing the 1TB drive. Amazon had a Sabrent 512Gb for $50.

I just wanted to post the upgrade process. The M.2 shows up in the F12 boot menu, but not the BIOS. I had to remove the existing windows recovery partitions from the SATA before I could install Windows on the SSD. I used shift F10 to get to diskpart and clean up the old partions. If anyone tries to do this upgrade, it will be easiest to clear all partitions and start fresh with a clean windows 10 install with a USB stick.

I miss the old days before UEFI, but dang this laptop boots fast now. It's just as fast as the Dell $800-1000 laptops we have at work...and I only have about $385 in it with the upgrades.

 

[marlinman]

Never have I been so grateful for a forum's "similar threads" feature (or grateful at all). Was about to post about this. The Inspiron 3493 I ordered during Dell's black friday sale arrived today, and I too was pleasantly surprised to see an empty m.2 slot. I, too, had been planning to replace the 1TB HDD with a 2.5" SSD. I checked out the model's online docs in the hope of finding out whether the m.2 slot was 'enabled' and was encouraged by what I discovered.

However, this section of the service manual reveals that a 'shield' is involved when the model is supplied with an m.2 SSD. Is this likely to be anything more than a heatsink? If not, is the (never used) heatsink that came with my desktop's SSD something I could look at putting to use in the Dell? I'm not very familiar with the m.2 spec, and Dell's shield thingy has me a little uneasy...

 

[Steltek]

The "shield" is a heatsink for the m.2. This is what Dell uses for a full length m.2 drive (they use a different one for Optane modules and short m.2 drives). You can probably use a simple sheet of copper with a heat transfer pad under it. If you want to use an actual heatsink cover, you'll probably have to measure how much space you have to use. It will probably need to be a low profile one, though.

The XPG shield you have will probably work, assuming it is thin enough. If it didn't come with a heat transfer pad, you will want to get one, though.

Dell Inspiron 3493 service manual (in case you need it).

 

[fire400]

Never have I been so grateful for a forum's "similar threads" feature (or grateful at all). Was about to post about this. The Inspiron 3493 I ordered during Dell's black friday sale arrived today, and I too was pleasantly surprised to see an empty m.2 slot. I, too, had been planning to replace the 1TB HDD with a 2.5" SSD. I checked out the model's online docs in the hope of finding out whether the m.2 slot was 'enabled' and was encouraged by what I discovered.

However, this section of the service manual reveals that a 'shield' is involved when the model is supplied with an m.2 SSD. Is this likely to be anything more than a heatsink? If not, is the (never used) heatsink that came with my desktop's SSD something I could look at putting to use in the Dell? I'm not very familiar with the m.2 spec, and Dell's shield thingy has me a little uneasy...

If it doesn't need a heatshield, then skip it.
Based on the design, you'd only need it to protect the components. Most M.2 SSD's that do not even come with a heatshield have already been tested to properly run without one.
Another reason they may be forcing the heatshield, if, is because it serves as mounting hardware to protect data from failed designs in TDP/thermal spread/impact damage.
But yes, almost any heatshield can be had, as the closing screw just usually clamps the two pieces (shell and SSD itself)
In my opinion - that metal shell from the manual is probably just proprietary crap that Dell wants people to buy to prevent self-CRU-upgrades (customer replaceable units).

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Dell claims the laptop can take NVME, as referenced in the spec sheet that marlinman shared.

Other resources:

Adding an m.2 SSD to a 3493 | DELL Technologies

I have a brand new Inspiron 3493 equipped with a mechanical HDD. I was planning to replace this before first boot with a 2.5" SSD but was delighted to find an empty m.2 slot on removing the laptop'...

www.dell.com

m15, M.2 heat shield order | DELL Technologies

I bought a new Alienware m15. When I purchased the unit, I only got a 256GB M.2 drive and added my own 1TB M.2 drive after I received the unit. Everything works great, no issues there. I was readin...

www.dell.com