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.


44 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great thank you for your job, man! I've searched all the forums, but could not find an exact answer about 2nd SSD in E7470 anywhere.
That's a pity WWAN slot is no good for SSD in this laptop.

RandomlyLearned said...

Yes, it really stinks. Especially since the lower end E57xx series has the port enabled.

Random said...

Also, just as an FYI. I did test to see if the drive was good.
First I swapped it in the known working port, and bios saw it. I also formatted it, and also tried running ubuntu live on it. It worked from the primary port but was never recognized in the wwan slot.

Anonymous said...

Hello and many thanks for your test!!

Do you know if the fact that the port is not compatible with a m.2 drive also means that it is incompatible with a simple masta drive?

Randomly Learned said...

The msata port is different and an msata drive will not fit in the m.2 slot. This laptop unfortunately doesn't have a standard msata slot

James Black said...

Thanks for your hard work. Guess I'll have to buy a large capacity SD card. Kinda sucks that on such a high spec you loose basics

Anonymous said...

The issue with adding a SSD to the M.2 slot is that the particular slot is likely only provisioned for PCI-E and USB capability. Not SATA. So you might be able to add a PCI-E M.2 SSD, but not a cheaper SATA-based one.

I would try to get your hands on a PCI-E SSD in the M.2 form factor, and try that out before you write off the whole idea of adding a second SSD to the device.

Anonymous said...

Hi!

I also tried a SATA based ADATA SP600. As you wrote it does not work.

As mentioned before, M2 could be very confusing, because M.2 could be
-M.2 SATA
-M.2 PCIe AHCI
-M.2 PCIe NVMe
(M.2 USB...)
(depends on what the board manufacturer wire to the port)

I had a chat with DELL support and they wrote it could accept PCIe based.
Sounds real, because WWAN card also PCIe based, so it must be wired to PCIe.
Question only is that DELL enabled it in the BIOS or not...

Summ: PCIe based M.2 SSD should work, hopefully NVMe too (as NVMe supported in the normal M.2 2280 port)

We have now only one problem: there is no 2242 M2 PCIe based SSD on the market, only some special one for OEMs... but there is not any on ebay or amazon.
(If you know one please let me know).

(My idea was to buy a 2260, and with a special M2->M2 cable, put/wire it next to the battery, where there is space for it, I hope...)





Randomly Learned said...

Thanks for the tips on the PCI-E. Let me know if that M2-M2 cable works. Space is really tight in this laptop

Unknown said...

Did anyone get the M.2 a shot? I have it open as we speak with and additional m.2 ssd. Having the smaller battery I could easily fit the drive next to it. I would have to have some type of cable that would plug in to the port and then run down towards the battery and plug the SSD nvme there and come up with something to secure it

spacesnow said...

Anybody tested new SSD M.2 pci-e disks on this WWAN port? Still haven't seen any comments on this, probably have to buy one myself to test it... There is is for example Apacer APP128G3FB-ATM.
http://www.mouser.fi/ProductDetail/Apacer/APP128G3FB-ATM/?qs=%2fha2pyFadugKyVZVnUf0Z8vvEHulHd4Yiqa20zRWrbPzmwg0H0iOaw==

Randomlylearned.blogspot.com said...

That's the first 42mm length m.2 ssd pci-e unit I've seen. Nice find. I think I'll wait for the price to drop though to test.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the photos.
I've been looking for an answer to this question too.
After a bit of searching I found that the Intel Wireless card in the other slot has a PCIe interface so the PCIe SSD should hopefully work. Need someone to give it a go.

joe said...

Has anyone tried this? They have a 32GB 42mm PCIe option for under $100 and could be used for the OS. http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Apacer/APP032G3FB-ATM/?qs=SV%252b0z0o3NTuVCyPAUHg05A%3D%3D

Random said...

Thanks Joe, I've been waiting for the price to come down.

Used PC Exporter said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Could we help you getting more hardware to test? Donate a few bucks each each?

Anonymous said...

I am curious too

Unknown said...

Any update on this?

Random said...

I just ordered a very small 16GB PCIE M2 card for $20. I will let you all know how it goes.

Unknown said...

Any update on this? PCIE M2 arrived?

Anonymous said...

Hello, any good news with PCIe m2 ?

Anonymous said...

Hi, any good news with PCIe M.2 card?

Unknown said...

I just ordered a MZ-APF0320-0H1. The specs says it is PCI based but it is not recognized by the e5470 BIOS.

Unknown said...

Hola

Tengo un Latitude 3340 que tiene una ranura extra WWAN M.2
y me gustaría saber si le puedo pegar un SSD M.2 de 42mm con interface Pci-E 3.0x2

https://www.newegg.com/global/co/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820168038

Anonymous said...

Any update...really interested in this. Also, you mentioned the e54xx series has the WWAN port 'enabled'. Is this for the standard SATA path vs. PCIe?

Thanks!

Denis said...

Probably didn't fit =(
>>Hello, any good news with PCIe m2 ?

Unknown said...

Hi,
Does someone know where is the CMOS EEPROM on the motherboard ?
It seems to be corrupted and want to clear ot
Thanks

Anonymous said...

In the 1 open spot next to the battery as mentioned above, there is an open spot. There's even an open threaded hole for a screw to secure a PCIe module. Just no header to plug it in to the system!

Unknown said...

@Random
Any update on this?

Unknown said...

Found 120GB M.2 PCIE 2242 for ~45EUR:
https://www.alternate.de/Toshiba/RC100-120-GB-Solid-State-Drive/html/product/1461909?

Same model is also available with 240GB and 480GB in 2242 formfactor.

Question is: Do M.2 PCIE SSDs work or not?

Unknown said...

I just checked the BIOS (v1.17.5). There I can enable/disable following drives:

* SATA-1
* SATA-2
* M.2 PCIe SSD-0

All are enabled. The last one seems to refer to the here mentioned WWAN M2 port. No idea what SATA-2 is about. Maybe an eSATA Port on the dock, if any?

Unknown said...

I now ordered this one: https://www.reichelt.de/toshiba-rc100-series-m-2-nvme-240gb-tos-rc100-240g-p235202.html?&trstct=pos_0

Will test and report ...

Unknown said...

Works ... needed to disable raid mode. Booting in legacy from PCIe SSD works. UEFI seems not to work.

"Sometimes" (especially after some reboots) the PCIe SSD is not recognized. Switching completly off and rebooting solves the issue. Just updated the BIOS from a 2017 version to the version from today. Need to check if this improves the situation.

Pierry8 said...

Thank you very much for your update.
Any news or pictures in this case will be very welcome.

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much for your update.
Any news or pictures in this case will be very welcome.

Anonymous said...

He estado investigando un poco y el puerto es M.2 con interface PCIe
tu has comprado una unidad m.2 con interface SATA

prueba con la RC-100 de toshiva que si es M.2 PCIe

tal como dice Alexander Christian

michaelm said...

My experience fitting a RC100 240GB 2242 M.2 SSD into a Dell E7270 is:

YES, it CAN work, but its speed performance is poor (max 207 MB/sec READ, 175 MB/sec WRITE).
The WWAN slot supports ONE lane of gen 1 PCIe with theoretical 2.5GT/sec
The RC100 supports TWO lanes of gen 3 PCIe with theoretical 16GT/sec
Hence the slow speed.

The BIOS needs to be set to:
System Config / drives / M.2 PCIe SSD-0 enabled
POST behaviour / Fastboot set to "thorough" to detect the SSD in the WWAN slot.

It also seems to need the Toshiba-OCZ utility to read SSD temperature (a WARM 55 C) and SMART data.

All in all, I'd prefer an external Samsung T5 or similar as the WWAN slot was never designed for a SSD.

By way of contrast, I am very happy with a 1TB mSATA SSD in the WWAN mSATA slot of a Dell E7240.

Anonymous said...

My experience with Dell E7470 (and correcting some things in previous reply):

- 2242 NVME SSD works OK in WWAN port (In my case disk is Western Digital SN520)
- You can also boot from the disk
- Disk speed is OK (around 850 MB/s). In my case it is actually better than the original M.2 SATA drive. Yes, WWAN is PCIe x1, but this is 6th gen Intel which means it's 8 Gbit connection.

I completely removed the original M.2 drive and used the port for eGPU.

Thanks for this page/thread, it helped me in my project.

Unknown said...

Thank you very much for yor review,

Now I can go with Kingspec NE-512 it have the same specifications with the WD sn520,

If I might to ask, did you experienced any battery loss after this upgrade?? , I have read in a comment that it will reduce the battery life

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much for yor review,

Now I can go with Kingspec NE-512 it have the same specifications with the WD sn520,

If I might to ask, did you experienced any battery loss after this upgrade?? , I have read in a comment that it will reduce the battery life

Anonymous said...

A bit late reply: No, I haven't experienced battery loss / problems after upgrade to SN520.

Hopefully your Kingspec worked well.

moteky said...

thank you all for the nice info, hopefully it will be working for my e7270 too - just bought one from ebay and I'm excited to see how it behaves with this wwan ssd solution

moteky said...

"- 2242 NVME SSD works OK in WWAN port (In my case disk is Western Digital SN520)
- You can also boot from the disk"

I'm stuck in getting the BIOS to recognize the wwan SSD and how to boot from it.
If anyone can help with this, please?
e7270 tried with bios v 1.17.5 and 1.31.3 (latest)
not sure what to do anymore
thank you