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Upgrading HDD of XPS 8900 with an M.2 SSD but have Intel Rapid Storage Technology enabled.
Hi there,
I bought an XPS 8900 last year that was configured with a TOSHIBA DT01ACA200 HDD as it's boot drive. It also had a LITEON CS1-SP32-11 M.2 2242 32GB in the M.2 slot. Intel Rapid Storage Technology was configured to use the Liteon as an acceleration cache to the Toshiba HDD. I'm also running Windows 10.
I have purchased a Samsung 850 EVO M.2 500GB SSD (MZ-N5E500BW) and want to replace the Toshiba with this new SSD as my Primary drive. I assume I will need to disable the Intel RST acceleration before I clone the drive. I plan on using Macrium Reflect Free Edition to do the cloning.
Here are the steps I have planned:
1) disable Intel RST
2) clean up primary C: Drive (ccleaner, Windows drive clean, delete unnecessary files)
3) Backup essential files
4) run Crystal Disk Mark as a baseline for comparison
5) Turn off computer
6) remove Liteon M.2 and install Samsung M.2
7) reboot to ensure new drive is recognized (I assume there is nothing I need to do to prep the new SSD)
6) Disconnect network (I have some media players that access the SMB drive)
7) Use Macrium Reflect to clone Primary Disk0 (4 partitions: EFI System(500MB), C:Boot, Recovery Partition (853MB), Recovery Partition (12.70GB)) Resize the C: drive to fit (going from 1TB to 500GB)
8) turn off computer
9) disconnect old Toshiba HDD
10) enter Bios to ensure correct boot order (is this needed? I assume it would be if I want to reconnect the Toshiba and repurpose it as a data drive)
11) reboot and hopefully everything works.
Let me know if this looks good and if I have missed any steps. I assume I can uninstall Intell RST as it will no longer be useful.
Thanks!
ejn63
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March 24th, 2017 14:00
The one sticking point could be this: check to make sure the system is currently in AHCI mode for the drive. If it's not, you'll need to change to AHCI mode for best performance of the NVMe M.2 -- and you'll be doing a clean install; cloning will fail.
kgan
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March 24th, 2017 16:00
Thanks. I noticed it is set to RAID. I believe it need to be set to that is using Intel RST. I will make sure to change it to AHCI.
Also I entered the bios and noticed it is set to Secure Boot and UEFI. Do I need to switch it to legacy mode in order to be able to boot from the M.2 vs the Blue SATA cable? Any drawbacks from not using Secure Boot or UEFI?
ejn63
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March 24th, 2017 16:00
You're not going to be able to clone the existing setup if it's now RAID - you will need to do a clean install of Windows once you set the system up with the new drive.
The other option is to break the RAID setup BEFORE you clone the drive, though DO NOT try this without a system backup -- anything that can go wrong likely just might.
triplescomputers.com/.../
kgan
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March 25th, 2017 09:00
Thanks,
So I disabled the Intel RST and followed your instructions to change the RAID to AHCI in the BIOS with safe boot. Things seem to be fine.
So, I should be able to clone my HDD to the M.2 SSD with Macrium Reflect.
I believe once I finish my clone, shut down the computer and disconnect all other SATA HDD's, it will default to boot from the M.2 which is listed as SATA5 in the bios.
If I reconnect the original Primary HDD to the blue port, it may boot from there first, but I can always try to change the BIOS to legacy boot and manually reorder it. Will I need to switch the old Primary HDD to another black SATA port instead of the primary Blue one?
Anything else I'm missing?
Thanks
kgan
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March 27th, 2017 11:00
Thanks. My SSD arrived today and I was able to clone it using Macrium Reflect Free Edition to clone my primary disk. I made sure I only had the new SSD and my Boot drive connected. All other SATA drives were disconnected from the motherboard. I also disconnected the network before cloning. There were 5 partitions and I made sure all were brought over. Since I was going from a 2TB drive to a 500GB drive, I had to shrink my C: drive. I used the following tutorial: https://youtu.be/Jh4uRhWwZT0
Once I had cloned my drive, I powered off and disconnected my legacy primary HDD, so the only SATA drive connected was the M.2. I entered the BIOS. I left it in Secure Boot, and left it UEFI. In the Boot Sequence a new entry appeared called "UEFI: Samsung SSD 850 EVO M.2 500GB" . I changed the boot sequence to put that on top of the other entry called "Windows Boot Manager" using the arrows on the top right. Then I booted fine with the new SSD. Once I checked that everything was working fine, I powered off and reconnected all drives. I switched the connection from my old Boot Drive which was using the Blue SATA Port and swapped it with another HDD just to make sure it wouldn't revert to booting from that old drive. I'm not sure if that was needed. Then I rebooted and all drives showed up and i verified that I did boot from the SSD. I had to shuffle some drive letters around to my liking using Disk Manager but all is well.
My Windows boot time dropped from 1min 20 sec to about 20 sec.
Thanks for all the help.