PCIe upgrade for Dell E6420?

First, be careful with your terminology.  You titled this thread "PCIe upgrade" and then asked about M.2 slots.  The E6420 already has PCIe support, and in fact it even has a Mini-PCIe slot that would be used by your WiFi card -- so you're clearly not really asking about PCIe here.  Additionally, not all M.2 slots connect to PCIe.  Some only support SATA SSDs, whereas others support both SATA and NVMe/PCIe.

But no, if your motherboard doesn't have an M.2 slot, you can't add one.  And even if you had a system with an M.2 slot, if it only supported SATA and not NVMe/PCIe, there would be no way to fix that either.

Thanks for replying. I think what I am looking for is a way to install a PCLe NVMe SSD drive in my E6420 so that it would be my primary drive.

That can't be done.  NVMe has to be supported by the motherboard, so there's no way to add it.  Sorry!

Well if you haven't ever upgraded the disk in your E6420, even today's SATA-based SSDs such as the Samsung 850 would likely be appreciably faster than the hardware that was current when the E6420 was released, so that might tide you over until you're ready to upgrade to a system that supports NVMe SSDs.

P.S. I visit the Oregon Shakespeare Festival every year, so you're in good company. :)

Well, I feared that was the case and so, wounded though I may be, at least my wound is not compouned by surprise. I'm pretty sure I'll recover and be no worse for it....but if I were a gamer or a constant user of huge programs, my conditon would remain critical for as long as my speed need  should continue unmet. (Excuse me if this sounds a little magniloquent....I have been reading a lot of Shakespeare lately...it gets to you after a while.)

Thanks foir that tip. I looked at the 850 just now. Not bad--500gb for 139$  The drive I have now has 128gb. I may go for that. Or maybe an SSHD.  God have mercy...acronym after acronym and then more acronyms in this digital age!

As for Shekspeare...How sweet he is! (Jackie Gleason style).

Definitely do NOT get an SSHD.  Those are appreciably faster than regular spinning hard drives, but nowhere near as fast as a proper SSD.  SSHDs basically just have 8GB worth of SSD flash memory cache built into a spinning hard drive -- so it's fast if you're reading certain parts of the drive or writing some amounts of data, and of course it's a lot less expensive per GB than an SSD, but its performance will never be as high or as consistent as an SSD that's 100% flash memory.

I went your latter route a while ago -- bought a new SSD and a USB enclosure for 2.5" drives, then I put my old drive into that enclosure.  In terms of replacing the optical drive, for at least some models, Dell actually made an accessory that was designed to fit the optical drive bay space but was designed to have a 2.5" drive installed into it, correctly positioned within the tray, with holes for screws, etc.  I found one example of it on Amazon so you can see how it looks, but there may be other places to get it: https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Caddy-Modular-original-Newmodeus/dp/B009OLHG30.  Just be aware that at least on some systems, the optical drive SATA connector is only 3 Gbps or maybe even only 1.5 Gbps, rather than 6 Gbps like the connector intended to support the hard drive, so you probably don't want to put your primary drive there.

Good luck!

Thanks for the link. I like the looks of that caddy. Its existence legitimizes the whole project. As for good luck...thanks for the wish. That's the thing about luck, the best you can do with it is to wish for it. Give it an order and, like a cat, it looks the other way. 

Well, We shall see. Thanks much for the info and advice. SSD all the way for me.

I'm sorry I'm a little late to the party but I'm inquiring the same thing I just purchased a Dell E6420 xfr that comes with a one terabyte SSD with Windows10 pro currently installed on it and I'm curious as to whether or not I could install a MSATA or PCIe replacement to that hard drive physically attached to the motherboard on either the mini mylar or wann Mylar slots that are available and be able to boot windows from it and whether or not there would be any performance gains from doing so. So I guess my main question is what is faster the SATA SSD 2 and 1/2 in versus the mini Mylar connection and the WANN connection which I believe is PCIe And what would be the appropriate method to use regarding performance gains with what the e6420 has to offer.

I used to have a E6430 and installed an SSD in it well prior to upgrading to a different computer.  The 6420/6430 series is SATA only and it will not, to my knowledge, support an M2 SSD or NVMe drive.  The only SSDs one can use in the 6420/6430 is a 2.5" format SATA drive.  There are a good number of these out there; the one I recommend is a Samsung 870 EVO SATA III SSD.  They are available in capacities up to 1 or 2 Tb, as far as I know.

Steve

Welcome to the Dell Community @Robby.niemi 

Sorry but I would stick with the SSD you already have installed and 16GB of memory.

Tested two mSATA drives in the WWAN slot.

The BIOS did not see them and W10 did not.

Then I tried to install them in the "Mini Mylar" and they would not fit.

So that's why I say stick with the 1TB SSD already installed and max out the memory to 16GB.

Best regards,

U2

@jphughan​  use convertor like rom shape i have i using nvm2 on dell 6420 very fast response but now i cant able to use cd rom any more