Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Inside Photos of Dell Latitude E7470 Laptop attempted install of 2nd SSD m.2

I needed to see some interior shots of my Dell Latitude E7470 notebook computer to see if I could put a second ssd in it.  However, I could not find any detailed ones anywhere, so I took off the back plate and took some photos of the inside guts of a latitude e7470 computer.   Here you go boys and girls, the interior photos of a latitude e7470 with the back cover removed....

There really is not a lot of space inside the Dell Latitude E7470.  I've never seen a dell latitude with so little to work with.   Even the battery is screwed in (and not accessible without removing the cover).

This is actually what I was looking for.  I was trying to determine if I could add a second drive (msata) to this Dell latitude e7470.  Turns out that there is no traditional mini-pcie slots anywhere to be found on this unit.   Instead, everything seems to use the m.2 standard; including the wireless card and the ssd drive.    Specifically, (under the green sticker in above photo) I did find a spare WWAN port that has the m.2 connector free.


Nothing to see here (top right of the latitude e7470)

Lower right interior photo of the latitude e7470.  you'll notice that the ssd drive is the m.2 standard

Lower left interior photo of e7470 Dell.  This is the ONLY spare room in the entire chassis, and it is so tiny you would not be able to put anything in it bigger than a bluetooth adapter

Middle photo inside dell latitude e7470

The m.2 spare opening in the latitude e7470.  I peeled the green sticker back.
I am mostly curious to see if I could use this WWAN port as a ssd connection for a second ssd drive.   As you'll see, there is definitely not enough length to put a standard m.2 ssd drive in there.  However, there are options, like this 42mm length one: http://amzn.to/2aIkXM0 that may just work (provided Dell activated the port).   At less than $90 for a 256GB ssd, and around $50 for a 128 GB m.2 ssd, it might be worth the risk.   Has anyone had any experience installing a second m.2 drive into the latitude e7470 and have it work?

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UPDATE
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Well, here is an update everyone.   I wound up purchasing a ZTC 256GB M.2 SSD drive that was 42mm in size, as seen in below images.
While the drive did fit (fyi, it did NOT come with the screw), I was NOT able to get the drive loading in bios or windows.  I tried turning off safeboot and enabling legacy, but I still did not see the drive showing up in BIOS.  I will play around with it a bit more; but preliminary indications is that you cannot put a second m.2 ssd drive in the wwan port of the Dell Latitude E7470 laptop.
A 42mm m.2 drive is the right size (if you plan on installing a WWAN card only)

Here it is installed, but unfortunately it is not recognized by the E7470 laptop.