To add a bit here, the 980 Pro drive will work, but not at full speed -- it will be limited by the PCIe 3 drive interface (the 980 Pro is PCIe 4, so it's actually faster than the interface the system has).
Hi @Kiraness welcome to this free user to user Alienware laptop discussion forum. This is not Dell Support.
My Alienware 17 R5 laptop OS(C:) boot drive is the ultrafast M.2 2280 2TB Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 card. This drive card also supports Bitlocker encryption protection, so if the laptop gets "lost" my personal data cannot be accessed by a third party. This 2TB card was cloned (copied) and has GPT partition format so that boot list BIOS option UEFI has been enabled. Modern enhanced performance/reliability/security with fast boot is a dramatic improvement.
My Alienware 17 R5 laptop does not have the unreliable (two drive) RAID OS(C:) boot drive option.
My disaster recovery plan includes another 2TB drive that is my standby OS(C:) boot drive, just in case my original 2TB drive cannot be recovered, and standby can be swapped in to get system up and running within minutes.
JOcean
9 Legend
•
12.6K Posts
0
June 21st, 2022 11:00
According to the specs here, an NVMe M.2 SSD is compatible. And Crucial lists an M.2 NVMe as compatible up to 2TB.
ejn63
10 Elder
•
30.7K Posts
0
June 21st, 2022 16:00
To add a bit here, the 980 Pro drive will work, but not at full speed -- it will be limited by the PCIe 3 drive interface (the 980 Pro is PCIe 4, so it's actually faster than the interface the system has).
DELL-Chris M
Community Manager
•
56.9K Posts
1
June 21st, 2022 17:00
Kiraness,
You should also read through these applicable 17 R5 threads.
crimsom
7 Technologist
•
6.1K Posts
0
June 21st, 2022 17:00
Hi @Kiraness welcome to this free user to user Alienware laptop discussion forum. This is not Dell Support.
My Alienware 17 R5 laptop OS(C:) boot drive is the ultrafast M.2 2280 2TB Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 card. This drive card also supports Bitlocker encryption protection, so if the laptop gets "lost" my personal data cannot be accessed by a third party. This 2TB card was cloned (copied) and has GPT partition format so that boot list BIOS option UEFI has been enabled. Modern enhanced performance/reliability/security with fast boot is a dramatic improvement.
My Alienware 17 R5 laptop does not have the unreliable (two drive) RAID OS(C:) boot drive option.
My disaster recovery plan includes another 2TB drive that is my standby OS(C:) boot drive, just in case my original 2TB drive cannot be recovered, and standby can be swapped in to get system up and running within minutes.