15 R3, not recognizing WD SN850 NVMe SSD

Hi @jabtronic  welcome to this user to user discussion forum. This is not Dell Support. 

The Alienware 15 R3 system has One SATA 2.5-inch hard drive bay, and Three PCIe Gen3.0 x4 NVMe M.2 slots. SSD-1 is a M.2 2230 slot. SSD-2 & SSD-3 are M.2 2280 slots. 

The 1TB M.2 2280 WD Black SN850 PCIe Gen4.0 x4 NVMe card will work, but at the reduced PCIe Gen3.0 read/write speed. It is not a SATA card. The system will not accept two OS(C:) boot drives. 

Many users have cloned their OS(C:) to a 1TB M.2 2280 Samsung 980 PCIe Gen3.0 x4 NVMe 1.4 card with sequential read/write speeds up to 3,500/3,000 MB/s. 

Please click on Kudos to say thank you for response from user that is not employed by Dell. Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you. 

Given the newness of this drive model -- with the drive in the desktop system, check using WD Dashboard to make sure it's running the latest firmware.  It's not uncommon for new models to have firmware updates shortly after they've been released to the market.

Hi @jabtronic  the Dell default factory setting for BIOS is RAID, regardless whether or not the system is running a RAID array or not. Having the BIOS setup in RAID can often lead to some SSDs not working with their manufacturer software or cause problems when you try to install a SSD Firmware update even if it came from Dell. The Dell firmware updater wouldn't even detect the drive(s).

Has 15 R3 BIOS been changed to accept individual M.2 cards? 

Thanks for the replies.

You say the SN850 drive will work, and I thought so too which is why I purchased it, but it's not working for me.

I did try plugging the drive into a desktop PC and confirmed it to be running the latest firmware. The drive works fine in the desktop computer.

Obviously I'm not trying to run two boot drives, with the 128gb Toshiba NVMe boot drive reinstalled and the SN850 drive installed also, the laptop won't even boot into bios. With only the SN850 drive inserted, it just does not show up in BIOS or in the interface manager which appears on start up.

If many people have had success with the Samsung 980 drive I will return the SN850 and go for that.

Thanks.

OK I've changed the setting back from AHCI to RAID.

The 980 drive is not in stock locally so I picked up a Crucial P5 M.2 NVMe gen 3, and it does not detect either

The store won't offer refunds after opening the packaging so this is getting a little frustrating. 

When you mention the bios being changed to accept individual cards, is that something that can be done to get these drives registering?

I'm baffled why 2 cards so far are not showing up. The drive that came with the system is also a M.2 NVMe Gen3 Toshiba drive.

Thanks

Hi @jabtronic  thank you for sharing update. 

You have already tested WD SN850 NVMe in different PC. It does not have a fault, you just let someone take it from you. LOL 

Yeah, we all know it's not faulty but the store doesn't want to issue a refund. Pretty annoying since it's a very expensive drive but I will jump through their hoops and try to get my money back.

OK great. I will insert the drive into another pc and format with GPT boot partition and will report back my findings. 

On a side note I am pretty sure I had formatted the SN850 drive with GPT also, with my desktop computer, while trying to get it working in the R3. I've left that drive with the store they wanted to send it away for warranty test.

Thanks 

Hi @jabtronic  thank you for sharing update. 

Crucial ssd selector for 15 R3 says Crucial P5 M.2 PCIe Gen3 NVMe is recommended for your system. 

The M.2 NVMe OS(C:) boot drive's partition format should be GPT (not MBR). 

The BIOS boot list option should be UEFI - Enable, so that GPT can be used. 

Ok here is the update.

I plugged the Crucial P5 into my desktop computer, and in disk management I initialised a volume with GPT.

Plugged it into the R3 laptop in slot 2 along with the standard Toshiba NVMe in slot 3 and the secondary SATA HDD in a standard slot... the Crucial P5 does not show up.

I also tried removing both other hard drives and only running the Crucial P5 by itself obviously it wouldn't show.

These are the BIOS settings I'm using (I did try legacy boot also)

And here are photos of the BIOS with Toshiba NVMe in both separate PCIe slots (with 2nd HDD removed) to show that both slots work fine.

Is there something I'm doing wrong? I'm basically tearing my hair out at this point, it's a business laptop we need for 3d scanning so it's been pretty frustrating to have spent so many hours and money on it so far and not getting anywhere. 

Thanks again

Right now I am attempting to clone the Toshiba SSD to the new Crucial SSD using desktop PC to see if that works.

It's not what I wanted since I wanted a fresh install on the Crucial disk but I will try this since I don't have many other options. 

Oh, right. I was wondering why half my images had stopped working.

I dont have any windows boot manager option

Hi @jabtronic  thank you for sharing update with BIOS image. 

Secure Boot is [Enabled] and you will get window saying attempted change to Boot Option #1 is Disabled. 

Hi @jabtronic  thank you for sharing update with images. 

The images that include your private service tag have been Rejected by Dell. Forum House rules say you are required to remove or redact your private service tag so that Dell can authorise release of these images into this public forum. 

Please reinstate the BIOS BOOT tab's default Boot Option Priorities:-
Boot Option #1 [Windows Boot Manager] 
Boot Option #2 [Onboard NIC (IPV4)] 
Boot Option #3 [Onboard NIC (IPV6)] 

Please check M.2 NVMe OS(C:) boot drive's partition format is GPT (not MBR). 

Secure boot enabled/disabled doesnt make any difference