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May 8th, 2019 12:00
m15 R1, how to distinguish the two NVMe slots?
So I see that there is a 2230 and a 2280 slots in the m15. How do I know which is which? I assume one is primary the other is secondary.
Also, with NVME and HDD installed, how can I configure which is primary drive by myself?
Thanks..
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jphughan
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May 10th, 2019 12:00
@chrishhh primary in that context means the drive that Dell would install the OS onto from the factory, but again you technically could override it -- although you generally wouldn't want to because an M.2 drive will either be a SATA SSD or NVMe SSD, which will be at least as far if not much faster than any 2.5" drive you'd install. Also note that they're talking about M.2 vs. 2.5", and your original post asked about two different M.2 slots.
Disk numbers are assigned by the system firmware based on the order in which it enumerates the attached storage devices, and I've never seen a system that allows the enumeration order to be customized -- but again, there's absolutely nothing forcing you to install Windows onto a certain disk number, so the numbers are arbitrary.
jphughan
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May 8th, 2019 12:00
2230 and 2280 are dimensions, i.e. 22x30mm and 22x80mm. So the slot that has space for a longer/taller SSD module is the 2280 slot. There's really no such thing as primary or secondary anymore. That goes back to the IDE/PATA days where you could attach multiple drives to the same motheboard connector using a multi-connector cable and you had to use a jumper on the drive to designate one as master and one as slave. Now there are just slots. I guess you can consider the drive that has your operating system installed as your primary, but that's not a hardware designation because you can technically install your operating system on whichever drive you want -- which also means there's no way to tell just from looking at the motherboard or SSD themselves which one is "primary". But there's nothing you have to actually configure to make a drive primary.
chrishhh
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May 8th, 2019 14:00
HI jphughan,
Thanks for the reply!.
However, regarding the "primary" vs "secondary" I'm not talking about the IDE master vs slave.
According to https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/us/en/19/alienware-m15-laptop/alienware-m15-setup-and-specifications/storage?guid=guid-2dc1db57-ee24-4137-84bf-aece066a8ae9&lang=en-us
For computers:
Also, I noticed something that in BIOS and Win recovery environment, my HDD is being recognized as Disk 0, while my NVMe where OS is, is being recognized as Disk 1. Hence I was wondering if there is a such thing.
I don't think there is a switch in BIOS. maybe there is no such switch.