Which SSD for XPS 435 MT?

Found  a fairly recent thread regarding XPS 435 MT & installing SSD = studio xps 435mt ssd installation

en.community.dell.com/.../20068949.aspx

mentions having to use tape to get the SSD installed &  Dell possibly selling a part to mount the SSD. They do seem to sell 2.5" brackets for other systems but not the 435mt.

Wonder if I will have to tape the SSD into the XPS 435 MT?

Well, thought I had done all the research but keeping finding more info:  per thread

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-drives/f/3534/t/19447468.aspx

The XPS 435MT SATA interface is limited to 3 GB/sec by its hardware, but it will still accept drives that are capable of 6 GB/sec.  The higher, 6 GB/sec, interface speed requires the Sandy Bridge architecture that became available with the XPS 8300.

that would certainly help determine the drive selection.

thanks,

daemoncycler

The folks on the Amazon forum were kind enough to answer my questions & since we apparently cannot delete threads on the Dell Community I will answer this myself - might help someone else.

In this case we will use a Crucial 256 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s

we will need a SILVERSTONE SDP08 3.5 to 2 X 2.5-Inch Bay Converter or something similar.

& since Crucial doesn't supply the cords (don't want to take the chance there are not extras included in the Dell box as another thread on this forum indicated) we will need a StarTech 18in SATA to Right Angle SATA Serial ATA Cable & a StarTech.com PYO2LP4SATA 12in LP4 to 2x SATA Power Y Cable Adapter or something similar.

Here are some excellent installation instructions too - provided by an Amazon customer:

Additional Hardware Required (PC):
The package did not come with a Bay Converter, so you will need to buy one of those. I recommend the SILVERSTONE SDP08 3.5 to 2 X 2.5-Inch Bay Converter. To install SSD, just plug in the hard drive plug and the power. You will also need to buy a transfer kit if you want to move stuff over from the previous hard drive. I recommend a fresh install of Windows 7, so you can enable TRIM which will keep the SSD running blazing fast. To enable TRIM is very easy, you can Google the instructions on how to do it.

Data Transfer:
If you had an existing hard drive like I did, make sure to unplug that first. Install a fresh OS on to the SSD, and then plug the old hard drive back in. You do not need back up the data of the old hard drive. The previous C: drive will now be E:. If you have more than 1 partition the rest will be F:, G:, and so on. I recommend formatting your old C: drive and use it as a storage drive after you get everything set up.

Oddity:
After the SSD was installed, I got a prompt to run it using AHCI or IDE before the Windows load screen... I didn't know what they were, so I chose AHCI and it crashed constantly. After switching to IDE in the Bios, it was working like a champ.

Important Update:
Make sure you go to Crucial official website and download the latest firmware. Just Google "Crucial SSD firmware" and it's the first link. I had a blue screen of death once before installing the firmware, so I'm not sure if that's related. However, after I install the firmware to version 009, I haven't had any issues since then.

Daemoncycler

Hi 9Hoku & thanks for responding to my thread.

Have decided not to upgrade any components until they fail.  Still going strong on original HD, GPU, RAM & PSU.

This is great info you have provided.  If I interpreted that Microsoft KB article properly it looks like the issue with RAID can be avoided if we install Win 7 with SP1 as the problems were addressed in SP1.  Perhaps those Digital River .iso's will come in handy?

Problems cropping up with the Optical Drives never occurred to me.  Guess Dell doesn't want to make things too easy.

When the time to replace the HD arrives will return to this thread for assistance.

thanks again,

daemoncycler

Did you get the SSD install working with AHCI via Raid setting in BIOS? 

I tried for days to get AHCI to work with my new SSD, but the Windows 7 Pro windows operating system install would not accept the drive unless it was set for non raid (install kept failing).

The only other option I could think of is to replace the motherboard with a mother board that had not been crippled.  Dell had no recommendations for a new motherboard, they could only recommend a new computer.  It appeared all the choices to utilize the tri memory and CPU were very expensive since they were out of production.

If anyone has any suggestions for a new drop in motherboard, I am wide open because the SSD performance is not as slow as a standard hard drive yet, but the performance is not nearly as good as it originally was.

Yes SSD install went very smoothly, Happy :-)

I did not define any RAID volumes but the BIOS has to be in RAID in order to enable AHCI. 

Windows 7 found all the appropriate drivers during install.  Not knowing how old your copy of Win 7 is might be beneficial to get a current copy from Microsoft.  That way sure to have latest SSD drivers.

If there's a problem with MB?  I also replaced that within the last two years & purchased the exact same model off eBay, around $60.  The on-board sound didn't work but a $20 sound card fixed that.

Plug DELL XPS STUDIO MOTHERBOARD R849J 0R849J into your search engine & good luck.

p.s.  Windows 7 so smart it enabled TRIM & turned defrag off on it's own.  Check TRIM:

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (Windows TRIM commands are enabled)

p.s.s.

Hope you're switching BIOS to RAID & doing a clean install.  See this wikipedia page

Boot issues[edit]

Some operating systems, notably Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, do not configure themselves to load the AHCI driver upon boot if the SATA-drive controller was not in AHCI mode at the time of installation. This can cause failure to boot, with an error message, if the SATA controller is later switched to AHCI mode. For this reason, Intel recommends changing the drive controller to AHCI or RAID before installing an operating system

I posted my experience with XPS 435MT and Samsung 850 Evo SSD here http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-drives/f/3534/p/19469477/20741647

I am still in the normal SATA mode (not RAID). There is performance improvement for sure.

Here is my WEI after Criucial M500 SSD & GeForce GTX 760 SC install - Core i7-950 & Elpida RAM 1066 Mhz:

Pretty good for a machine from what 2008?

Since I started this thread guess I should put some real closure to it.  Here are some good comments I made on another similar thread, that I should have posted here.

Crucial M500 SSD in XPS 4535MT - performed CLEAN install, went very well.

Cloning I think might present a problem = Some operating systems, notably Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, do not configure themselves to load the AHCI driver upon boot if the SATA-drive controller was not in AHCI mode at the time of installation. This can cause failure to boot, with an error message, if the SATA controller is later switched to AHCI mode. For this reason, Intel recommends changing the drive controller to AHCI or RAID before installing an operating system.

Downloaded a current copy of Windows 7 (Microsoft Software Recovery) so would be sure to have latest SSD drivers.  Used the Windows7-USB-DVD-tool to create bootable media.

As far as the installation I first switched to RAID (of course) in the BIOS to enable AHCI -  a msg popped up at startup saying No RAID volumes defined & will allow you to enter the Configuration Utility by pressing CRTL-i.  If you do nothing it proceeds to boot normally. I did not want to define any RAID volumes - All I really want is AHCI.

Windows 7 is so smart it installed the appropriate Intel Storage drivers during Windows installation, device manager no longer shows IDE ATA/ATAPI controller but does now show instead Storage Controllers | Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R/DO SATA RAID Controller.  Have not as yet installed the (apparently latest & greatest)  Intel Matrix Storage Manager as some of the threads I came across at Toms Hardware indicated it can cause problems.  Six months later & so far so good. 1TB Seagate drive & both Optical drives are performing well.  I did not have to install any additional drivers for these as some others had stated.

Windows 7 also smart enough to know - not to set defrag for SSD but best to make sure defrag is turned off anyway. Very Important, check to see that TRIM is enabled, this is what I believe keeps the SSD clean.

From CMD prompt:

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

& the result was:

DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (Windows TRIM commands are enabled)   -  this is good :)

Were it a 1 instead of a 0 then TRIM is NOT enabled & that would not be good :(