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XPS 8920 M2 SSD in Optane slot
I have a 8920 SE with the M2 Slot NVMe pc300 SSD and as I tried it will not take the SK Hynix Drivers from their website. Dell blocks the drivers, So Dell limits the drive speed of reads and writes. When I had the Black face 8920 Optane and My samsung 850 pro I was getting reads of 3800 - 4000 with the SK Hynix drive I get 1700 - 1800 with no Optane Memory due to the slot is being used
Now my question:
Is the #8 in the service manual SSD Drive Slot also the Optane Memory slot?
Can I get a M.2 Adapter X4 PCIe 3.0 NVMe Low Profile And Full Profile SSD PCIE M.2 Adapter
and the put the optane memory in the $8 M2 slot
Would it do the same speed as the m2 slot in the PCIe bay and will the optane memory use it as the first hard drive.
Would this work like I want its too?
Anyone else do it?
Is there a better solution without buying a new Hard drive?
Or should I just sell the M2 SSD Drive and get the optane memory and use my samsung 850 Pro SSD?
Please help I'm still pulling out hair LOL
Mitch
DELL-Jesse L
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October 11th, 2017 06:00
n2rga73,
Where you installing the drivers as the administrator? If not, follow the information below to install them in the system.
Installation instructions
Download
1. Click Download File and follow the remaining prompts to download the file.
2. When the File Download window appears, click Run to unzip the download package into your hard drive.
3. The file explorer will open pointing to the directory containing the download package. Please take note of the path.
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ATTENTION
1. Backup the SSD.
2. Switch to AC Power
Firmware upgrade through the Windows utility
Procedure
1. Go to the directory containing the download package as noted above.
2. Run the firmware update utility with administrator privilege (right-click on the executable, then select "Run as administrator").
3. Follow the on-screen instructions.
4. Select the target SSD for firmware upgrade.
5. Click on "FW Update" button.
6. Follow the on-screen instructions.
7. DO NOT interrupt the firmware update. A dialog box will pop up when the firmware update is completed.
8. Please reboot your system.
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Firmware upgrade using the bootable image
1. An ISO image is provided in the download package. Use that image to create a bootable USB thumb drive. You may want to consider using UNetBootin
2. Boot the system from the USB thumb drive created in Step 1.
3.Your PC will boot up with Linux booting screen and it displays SSDs that connected to your PC.
4. The FW update tool will seek SK Hynix PC300 SSD. If the tool find a SK Hynix PC300, it will start to update automatically, if not it displays an error message.
5. After successful FW update, PC will shutdown after about 10 sec.
1. Prepare a USB thumb drive
(1) USB storage and ISO image Writer(like UNetBootin) are needed for updating SSD FW with this package.
(2) Run unetbootin-windows-608.exe
(3) Check 'DiskImage' button and select path to ISO file using the ' ... ' option button.
(4) If USB Drive is ready, then UNetbooin will show the driver letter.
(5) Select OK to copy ISO bootable image to USB thumb drive
(6) Once installation is completed, please follow the next steps on UNetbootin Window.
*.Installation Instructions:
For the detail usage of this package, Please refer to the attached Update Tool Manual.
Dell XPS 8920 Drivers, Downloads and Manuals
n2rga73
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October 11th, 2017 15:00
Thank you for the instruction for DELLs Driver. This has nothing to do with what my questions was, you provided a copy and paste of the Dell firmware update for the drive. Please review my full question about optane memory and putting the SSD in a PCIe cradle.
ejn63
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October 11th, 2017 17:00
Optane slots are limited to 32G - and are designed as a cache for ONLY SATA drives (hard drive or SSD). So -- assuming what you're asking is "can I put an M.2 drive in the optane slot and then access it as a boot or storage drive by itself?", the answer is no -- you cannot.
Optane will cache ONLY SATA drives - not M.2 drives at all.
As for installing the drive in a PCIe adapter, that should work - but whether you can boot from a drive installed that way is open to question. Given the engineering quality of a $20-30 PCIe adapter, I'd guess it to be hit or miss at best.