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So far, so good! I've setup two WD19TB and two WD22TB4 docks to be shared among two 7710 laptops at various office locations. Prep work involved: - Updating to latest 7710 BIOS Version/Date: Dell Inc. 1.31.3, 3/9/2023 - Uninstalling old legacy Thunderbolt Control Center apps and drivers and installing latest shown below: Works great with the WD19TB and WD22TB4 docks! Very happy once I completed all the cable management. 3D printed a few vertical upright stand for the 7710 which I sit on the floor next to the desks. On a side note, I've also finally completed my Win10 to Win11 upgrades for our 7710 laptops. Had to add the regedit DBWORD(32-bit) Value 1 for: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup\AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU That was to enable WIn11 upgrade even though the 7710's Intel Xeon E3 v5 CPU is not on the official supported list. Then I visited Dell support to download the latest TPM 2.0 firmware to upgrade from TPM 1.2 to TPM 2.0. I had to do the following for TPM upgrade prior to the WIN11 upgrade: TPM 1.2 to TPM 2.0 Upgrade – Dell Precision 7710 =============================================== 1. Checked BitLocker status: - Ran: manage-bde -status - Confirmed BitLocker was OFF on all volumes 2. Disabled TPM auto-provisioning: - Opened PowerShell (Admin) - Ran: Disable-TpmAutoProvisioning 3. Rebooted into BIOS (press F2 during boot) 4. Disabled Intel TXT (Trusted Execution): - BIOS path: Virtualization Support → Trusted Execution - Unchecked "Trusted Execution", clicked Apply 5. Cleared TPM in BIOS: - BIOS path: Security → TPM 1.2 Security - Checked "Clear" (left "TPM On" checked), clicked Apply and Exit 6. Booted into Windows and verified TPM was cleared: - Ran: Get-Tpm - Confirmed: TpmOwned = False, AutoProvisioning = Disabled 7. Ran Dell TPM 2.0 Firmware Update Utility (DellTpm2.0_Fw1.3.2.8_V3_64.exe): - Right-clicked → Run as administrator - Confirmed update prompt (TPM 1.2 → 2.0), clicked OK - System rebooted and upgraded firmware 8. Verified successful upgrade in PowerShell: - Ran: Get-Tpm - Confirmed: ManufacturerVersionFull20 = 1.3.2.8, TpmOwned = False 9. Re-enabled TPM auto-provisioning: - Ran: Enable-TpmAutoProvisioning 10. Rebooted to allow Windows to take TPM ownership 11. Re-enabled Intel TXT (Trusted Execution) in BIOS: - BIOS path: Virtualization Support → Trusted Execution - Checked box, clicked Apply and Exit 12. Final PowerShell check: - TpmReady = True - TpmOwned = True - AutoProvisioning = Enabled - ManufacturerVersionFull20 = 1.3.2.8 Both 7710 laptops are now on Win11 and also using the Dell WD19TB and WD22TB docks.

Thanks for the feedback Earlier today i ordered a wd22tb4 on ebay for a fair low price. I updated my 7710 BIOS to it's latest stable release 1.31.3 from April 2023, which adds a few new BIOS control settings for USB-C and thunderbolt, including power management settings. That should help with compatibility. These WD docks are pretty interesting. It seems possible to take a wd19 (non thunderbolt), swap out the removable module with a TB3 or even TB4 module (having 2xtb4 ports on module) and BOOM, basically upgrade wd19 to a wd19tb or wd22tb4. I may experiment with that wd19 upgrade idea on another 7710 laptop here that needs a dock I'll update here after i play around with the wd22tb4 dock when it gets here Appreciate the notes and feedback. Thank you.

Does anyone know if the DELL WD22TB4 dock is backward compatible to work with a 7710 which is tb3? I'm looking to move away from the E Port Plus Dock and try a thunderbolt dock instead. I'm hoping to free up some desk space by docking my laptop on it's side edge rather than flat (i didn't open it often when using external displays at my desk). I need it to be able to push button startup and shutdown (handshake power state) the laptop 7710 without having to open laptop lid. Needs enough usb-C ports: One to connect from laptop tb3 usb-c port to dock One usb-c to support up to 1GBps writes to external crucial X9 pro 4TB nvme SSD (for daily backups). One to connect from dock to dell monitor p3223qe. The monitor could connect by display port connection, but if i use the USB-C connection then i can also use the monitor built in network RJ45 and also its usb hub for accessories. What do you think, will wd22tb4 work with my 7710 which has tb3? Or should i go for older WD19TB (TB3 dock). Or do i need to go way back to the 2016 tb16 dock, i heard bad stories about the original tb docks. If wd22tb4 and the wd19tb both can with a 7710, then which is more reliable? Thanks!

I finally got around to adding the interpose and adapter, etc to my 7710. I also got a new Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2TB PCIe. That is the newer gen PCIe SSD from Samsung, but it's backwards compatible to work in my PCIe gen 3 laptop. It was a good price on amazon, so I got one for my Dad too who has matching 7710 laptop (we work together). I bought the 7710 in late 2015 and it arrived in early 2016. It's had the OEM Samsung SM951 PCIe 512 GB as the C: Boot disk; and the Samsung PM951 PCIe 1 TB as the D: Data disk; Both of those disks were at least 80% filled, so I was wanting to upgrade. I cloned D: 1 TB SSD to the new 2 TB = the 2TB becomes my D: Then I cloned C: 500 GB SSD to the 1 TB = the 1TB becomes my C: Then I formatted the 500 GB SSD to be empty = the 500GB becomes my E: <== this one goes in the interposer 2.5 caddy adapter area. Now I have doubled the capacity of my C drive, doubled capacity of my D drive and also have an extra 500 GB SSD using the interposer to use for whatever. Very happy! The interposer does run that E: 500GB PCIe via x2 lanes instead of x4, but still way faster than standard sata3 and it's basically just bonus storage. I used MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro to clone the disks and extend the partitions. I like it alot and I paid for lifetime unlimited upgrades a few years ago so its now my go-to for this sort of thing. Although there are other great cloning utilities such as Clonezilla. Clonezilla was a favorite of mine for many years and it is still one of the greatest for cloning, but I like the GUI of the MiniTool and it's very intuitive.

Ahh, yeah. The chart does say that the 2.5" area has x2 PCIe Lanes instead of x4 lanes. It'll be faster than sata though, so that still good

Instructions link: https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/laptops-general-locked-topics/adding-2nd-m2-ssd-to-precision-7510/647f6333f4ccf8a8def59eb7?commentId=647f640bf4ccf8a8de062e4c#M884913 Now I just need to find out where to buy all these weird parts Found them: Y1WJX - M.2 bracket and WPTND - M.2 Interposer Board together as a set: https://www.ebay.com/itm/296839655402 Found the thermal cover directly from Dell: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-copper-plate-for-m2-pcie-ssd/apd/hr8p8/storage-drives-media Very cool. Still, I'm not totally sure these will supply PCIe Gen3 NVMe speeds, but I think they will. We shall see.

I found this chart listing the parts I may need: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000178253/m-2-nvme-device-specifications-and-upgrade-requirements-for-precision-optiplex-latitude-and-xps-systems Precision Systems System Maximum internal drives supported Drive configurations supported (max) PCIe lanes Parts to install a M.2 device into a M.2 slot Parts to install a M.2 device into a 2.5-inch bay Additional information 7710 7720 3 3x M.2 1 x 2.5-inch 2 x M.2 + 1 x 2.5-inch M.2 slots support 4X. 2.5-inch supports 2 x. 1 x HR8P8 - Thermal cover (includes cover and thermal pad) 1 x 4270E - Screw (secures cover on top of the M.2 drive). 1 x 745TM - 2.5-inch metal bracket (most units already include this part). 1 x Y1WJX - M.2 bracket (mounts to 745TM). 4x 2864D - M3X3 screw(most computers include these. These secure the Y1WJX M.2 drive carrier, or a 2.5-inch drive into 745TM) 1 x WPTND - M.2 Interposer Board(installs into Y1WJX) 5x 4270E - M2.0*3 L screws 1 x HR8P8 - M.2 thermal cover Find instructions on the Dell Community Forum page. 7510 7520 2 1 x M.2 1 x 2.5-inch 2 x M.2 1 x M.2 + 1 x 2.5-inch M.2 slot supports 4X. 2.5-inch supports 2 x. 1 x 745TM - 2.5-inch metal bracket (most computers include this part). 1 x Y1WJX - M.2 bracket (mounts to 745TM). 4x 2864D - M3X3 screw(most computers include these. These secure the Y1WJX M.2 drive carrier, or a 2.5-inch drive into 745TM) 1 x WPTND - M.2 Interposer Board(installs into Y1WJX) 5x 4270E - M2.0*3 L screws 1 x HR8P8 - M.2 thermal cover Find instructions here on the Dell Community Forum. 5510 5520 2 1 x M.2 1 x 2.5-inch 1 x M.2 + 1 x 2.5-inch M.2 slot supports 4X. 2.5-inch bay is wired as SATA. 1 x 88DJK - Thermal pad (no plate required) 1 x 4270E - M2 x3 screw 1 x XDYGX - Cable 2 x 3XYT5 - Rubber side isolator 1 x 3FDY3 - Metal hard drive bracket (some units may already have this installed even if a 2.5-inch drive was not ordered from Dell originally). Discussed on the Dell Community Forum page 3510 1 1 x M.2 1 x 2.5-inch M.2 slot supports 4X. 2.5-inch bay is wired as SATA. 1 x X3YR8 - M.2 end bracket 1 x 1 x2MT - Thermal cover 2 x 4270E - M2 x3 screws Discussed here on SpiceWorks 3520 2 1 x M.2 1 x 2.5-inch 1 x M.2 cache drive + 1 x 2.5-inch M.2 slot supports 4X. 2.5-inch bay is wired as SATA. 1 x 2FFR0 - End bracket 1 x X3DN4 -Thermal plate 1 x 4270E - End screw

Actually, I'm not sure I have the correct part linked above. That might be the connector for a regular old SATA drive and not for an m.2 NVME SSD. I need to do some more research. I'm pretty sure I remember way back when Dell said we could purchase an interposer cable connector to use m.2 in that 2.5" area. I need to find the correct cable part. I'll be back after I research more.

Hello, I have a Mobile Precision 7710. It has two slots for PCIe Gen3 NVMe M.2 SSDs. It also has a 2.5" SATA3 drivebay caddy, near the removable battery. I currently have two M.2 PCIe SSDs. I'm considering a 3rd to put in that vacant 2.5" area. Dell has advertised that it is possible to install a PCIe m.2 SSD in that 2.5" area by purchasing a Interposer Connector and Cable. Does anyone know if that interposer allows for PCIe Gen3 SSD speeds? (for example up to theoretical 3500MBps?) Or will it be limited to SATA3 SSD speeds of about 550MBps? I'm also unsure if I'd need anything else to secure an 2280 M.2 in that area where it's normally meant for a 2.5" drive. Will it just flop around in that caddy area or do I need to order another part I'm unaware to secure it? Thank you, Benny Edit: *I was wrong about WYWRF, that is just the normal already existing connect for SATA drives. Please read my follow-up replies further below

Also, here the results of hw-probe on my M6500 running Fedora. At the bottom of this report link there are more links (look under LOGS label) that show more detailed report info about the laptop: https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=5b287ea21f I'm not sure why it says 2013 as build date. But I think I recall submitting a ticket with Dell support and they sent me a newer system. I can't remember what that ticket was about, but now I'm curious to remember and I'll look it up and report back here. * Dell Support History doesn't go back that far in their online website. Perhaps if I called them they could tell me the support history. But if I had to guess, it probably had to do with the 1st gen SSDs or getting Windows XP-Mode to work inside of Windows 7 or a booting issue with old OS, or something weird like that. I'll tell you, this has been an awesome laptop. Still works perfect today, and for my type of work... database and application support, mostly via ssh to other servers... this is a beautiful machine. 16:10 1920x1200 is nice!

Using Veeam Linux Agent to backup my M6500 that is running on Fedora39: I've been using Veeam Backup and Replication software since 2018 to manage my backups of VMware ESXi guest VMs and also to backup my physical servers and workstations running Windows and Linux. The actual backup repository are on two small mini towers running Linux, connected to my ESXi and other physical servers by 10Gb switches and network adapters. The laptops are backed up via wifi. These are incremental backups, so a daily backup doesn't take too long. A full system backup of a laptop could take awhile via wifi (especially if lots of used disk space is on the laptop), but we only do those full backups occaisionally, or when first adding a computer to be backed up. The incrementals are fast. In order to use Veeam to backup this M6500 laptop that is now running Fedora39 kernal 6.6.4, I had to first upgrade my Veeam Backup Servers to latest V12.1 (which just released on Dec 5 2023). About a month ago I had just upgraded them from v11 to v12, and so it's funny I had to upgrade Veeam once more so soon. But it's working great. The only trick was that I had to manually install the Veeam Linux Agent into Fedora manually. Normally the Veeam Servers will connect to the managed computer and install that stuff itself, but there is an asterix footnote in the System Requirements for Fedora saying that for Fedora39 we have to install that Veeam Agent ourselves: - first, needed the dnf (yum) veeam repo entry by downloading https://www.veeam.com/linux-backup-download.html, which is an .rpm we install and that expands into the /etc/yum.repos.d/veeam.repo when we issue: rpm -ivh <filename.rpm> - dnf update - dnf install veeam - then reboot because that "dnf update" likely updated a bunch of other system packages and a reboot is needed. - then back in the Veeam console on the Veeam Server, issue a rescan of the laptop. Had to do that twice because first time it installs veeam certificates. 2nd time finalizes the other veeam software such as Veeam Transport, etc. Heres the link to the Veeam v12 release notes. https://www.veeam.com/veeam_backup_12_1_whats_new_wn.pdf Under "Agents" is where it describes howw Fedora39 is now supported under Veeam v12.1

Here is output of an lspci report I ran while still in Fedora. Not sure how to interpret all this info, but it's interesting. This is ust another way to get info on which GPU driver is being used.

I've since run dnf update in this Fedora 39 installation, and the linux kernal is now sitting at 6.6.3-200.fc39.x86_64 and it also updated alot of other packages. I think I'm in luck and Fedora has the open source driver for the FX3800M built in. There is an open source driver under the parent name of "Nouveau", and they have drivers with codes that begins with "NV" followed by the Nvidia chipset number. They have a driver for even the older Nvidia GPUs, including my Nvidia Quadro FX3800 Mobile GPU. https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/CodeNames.html G92 is the graphics chipset used for the Nvidia FX3800. When I ran dmesg|grep -i nvidia that reports back that it is using nouveau for the Nvidia G92 chipset. Also, when I click on About in the Gnome desktop Setup menu and then I click on System Details that shows, among other things, that the Graphics = NV92 NV92 (G92) GeForce 8800 (GT, GS, GTS 512, M GTS, M GTX) GeForce 9600 GSO, 9800 (GT, GTX, GTX+, GX2, M GT, M GTX) GeForce GTS 150(M), GTS 160M, GTS 240, GTS 250, GTX (260M, 280M, 285M), GT (330, 340) Quadro FX (2800M, 3600M, 3700, 3700M, 3800M, 4700 X2), VX 200 I don't know how up to date this open source driver is, if it compares well against Nvidia's own 390.xx drivers, but this Nouveau open source driver for the FX3800 is working to my satisfaction. I guess the Oracle Linux 8.9+ does not have that driver. I kindof wish I had run "dmesg" while I still had Oracle Linux 8.7 (OL8.7 was working with the M6500, OL8.9 is the one that wouldn't boot) to see what driver it was using. I may still try Ubuntu on the laptop later, to compare and decide which distro I like best. I also need to see which open source office apps are best for things like email clients, etc. Thanks! *here is a cool feature matrix of the Nouveau drivers: https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/FeatureMatrix.html the FX3800M is in with the NV50 grouping of Tesla cards

We'll I'm on latest Fedora 39 on the M6500 Linux kernal is 6.5.6-300.fc39.x86_64 In the short time I've been using it and rebooting it a few times, it's working great! I'll update with more as I get more experience with it. I've not used Fedora before so this is cool. I'm unsure what the deal was with Oracle Linux 8.9. OL is more of an enterprise linux server setup and, to maintain stability with Oracle DBs and Apps etc, it is slow to receive updates. I'm wondering if Oracle Linux just isn't as rich as Fedora is when it comes to drivers and such and OL is perhaps best kept to servers. Thanks.

Installing Fedora 39 Workstation on the M6500 now, and so far so good. It's strange that OL8.9 and OL9.3 and Oracle Unbreakable Kernal UEK7 had issues on my M6500, but the latest Fedora 39 is installing okay. I thought the newer Linux kernals didn't have the wifi adapter or GPU driver for my fx3800, but maybe that wasn't the issue at all because right now I get a display showing during the Fedora 39 installation. We'll see how it goes after it is fully installed, and after a dnf update, and reboot, etc.