Symptoms
Cause
Various Hardware Methods to get an Operating System installed
External Caddy
(Fig.2.1 External Hard Disk Drive Caddy)
An external Caddy is a Hard Drive enclosure that attaches to a system with a USB or Firewire cable. Some are enclosures used for external storage and some are desk docks for temporary use. Most internal IT departments use them to access faulty Hard Drives and sometimes to install a Hard Drive using a different computer.
Note: They have the caddy plugged into a working system and remove your Hard Drive. They install your drive in the Caddy and then install the OS on to your Hard Drive in the caddy using the working system.
External Dock
(Fig.2.2 Extended Dock)
(Fig.2.3 External USB Dock)
(Fig.2.4 External Wireless Dock)
Some external docks come with integral Optical Drives and a multitude of different ports. They can connect to your system either through a docking port connector on most Notebooks or through a USB connection. These Docks can work as attached Optical Drives or as USB hubs during an install process.
Media Slice
(Fig.2.5 External Media Slice)
Some Dell Notebooks have a media slice available for sale. The Slice is a minimal dock. It fits to the base of the d-series laptop and has a slim line Optical drive and minimal ports. Sometimes it has a secondary battery as well. It is specifically designed to fit a particular system chassis base.
USB Optical Drive
(Fig.2.6 External USB DVD)
You can obtain a low-cost USB powered CD/DVD drive. It is the simplest option but involves the cost of getting the drive.
External Media Bay
Bootable USB flash drive
(Fig.2.8 USB Flash Drive)
Every system comes with multiple USB ports now. (From USB Type-A which is shown in the picture, to USB Type-C which is the latest connector format.) You can now purchase Install media on Bootable USB drives or download ISOs that you can load to a bootable USB. There are also several methods possible to make an ordinary USB drive bootable and then to load install media to it. You would use it in place of a CD or DVD. There are a number of different methods for this, but the most common is called slipstreaming.
Note: The minimum size of USB drive that you need will depend on the version of the OS you want to install.
Note: As with any USB device, if used with a Windows Operating System (from XP through to 10) the device will not require any setup. A USB device is a Plug and Play device. If being used outside of windows, then it can be used through the F12 startup menu, by selecting Boot from USB Device.
Donor Chassis
(Fig.2.9 Donor Chassis)
This last option is to use another system that has an optical drive as a donor. This means installing your Hard Drive into the donor system and performing the install on that machine. Once that is complete, transfer your Hard Drive back into your own machine to complete installing the drivers and software.
I hope this has given you some idea's on how to work around any systems limitations. If not, contact your Technical Support for further help.
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Resolution
Chromebox, Chromebook, Inspiron, Latitude, Vostro, XPS, Retired Models, Thin Clients, Fixed Workstations