As part of my preparation for delivering the TechDays08 demos, I need to configure my laptop with 64-bit Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.
I would like to configure my laptop as dual boot with Windows Server 2008 but I don't have a lot of free space on my existing internal hard drive and upgrading the OS itself from Vista Business to Server 2008 is not an option for me right now.
I have been researching my options. I can replace my current hard drive which is 100GB with a larger one that I can partition. I could also configure the system to boot from an external USB hard disk which I may yet try. Then, I remembered at purchase, it was possible for me to forgo the DVDRW drive in place of a second internal hard drive in the modular bay.
After contacting Dell, I received disappointing news. Firstly, it took talking to 2 technicians to discover that there even used to be a part for this upgrade. The part is no longer available and nobody even knows what the part number is so I can search it from another source.
To the Community! I spent a whole of 2 Google searches and hunting through forums to discover a thread where someone had indeed upgraded their system with such a drive. I even found the part name: Modular drive Caddy. After more Google searches, I discovered a merchant in Austin, TX who caries the part. http://www.parts-people.com. I called them up and spoke with Ben who confirmed that this part is absolutely compatible with my D820 even though Dell makes no mention of it. The p/n is: 4P124.
The assembly accommodates an IDE drive as the DVDRW was IDE, this is a sacrifice but we'll see if the performance is tolerable.
I'll continue this post when I receive the caddy and have a hard drive to install with it.