This post is more than 5 years old
53 Posts
0
1309196
Dell XPS 15 (9530) Flawed mSATA Setup
I have had my new XPS 15 for 4 days now, and overall it is a very impressive machine. I got the mid-range one (with 1TB HDD). However, I would like to let the community know about some issues I am having, and to post publicly that this particular machine is shipping with a flawed setup.
My model comes with 16GB system memory. It has a 32GB mSATA drive intended to be used for Intel Rapid Start and Intel Rapid Storage. The mSATA is partitioned with 8GB for Intel Rapid Start and 22GB for Intel Rapid Storage. However, Intel clearly documents that you need a partition equal in size to the system memory for Intel Rapid Start to work. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CDIQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.intel.com%2Fsupport%2Fmotherboards%2Fdesktop%2Fsb%2Frapid_start_technology_user_guide_for_uefi1.pdf&ei=m1OHUpzGAdPpkAfE8YGIDg&usg=AFQjCNH7Rh6iQN6hSR0Ry3oBF6kGmxgjaA&sig2=e--yKMT7hoApFUI_7kMyEA This makes sense because what it is doing is writing an image of system memory to the SSD.
Consequently, Intel Rapid Start does not work on the midrange XPS 15 9530.. I noticed this because it starts slower than my old Inspiron 15 with its Crucial SSD.
Unfortunately, one cannot fix this by repartitioning the mSATA. If you dedicate 16GB on the mSATA to Intel Rapid Start, only 14GB remain for Intel Rapid Storage, which requires a minimum of 18.6 GB to work.
Dell needs to ship this model with a larger mSATA for both technologies to work.
Now I really would not care personally, as my intention was to recycle my 512GB Crucial M4 as a boot drive by performing a clean Windows install on it. This would allow me to dedicate the entire mSATA to Intel Rapid Start. Unfortunately, this system does not ship with Windows Install disks. And I can't seem to order one as Dell's system does not recognize my Service Tag. I've tried to use the factory reinstallation disks I made to reinstall on my SSD, but they won't let me reinstall to a smaller drive. I could destroy the final 6.96 recovery partition, shrink the main partition, and then clone the drive with Clonezilla, but my intention was to keep the original disk as backup, and the SSD would not be aligned properly.
Another issue I had was the McAfee firewall that came preinstalled prevented me from setting a second network to private. I uninstalled this after failing to find a solution. Windows Defender seems to be adequate antivirus, and its much easier to set the 2nd network to private with Windows firewall.
Overall I am very happy with my new computer, but I don't think I'll be really happy until I can switch back to SSD. I may solve this by ordering a 1TB Samsung EVO, but that puts me up to the price point of the top XPS 15 9530, and I didn't want to go there. And I would still have the alignment issue if I clone the drive. So hopefully my service tag will get recognized soon allowing me to order Windows reinstallation disks.
wmarsh
53 Posts
0
April 14th, 2014 05:00
Yes, that would work. But it would require a reinstall of Windows -- cloning from 1TB to 128MB won't work.
I dual booted mine for a while with Win 7 on the mSATA and Win 8.1 on the SATA. That worked, but there must be some difference about how Win 8.1 and Win 7 handles NTFS as it would check the disk integrity about 1/2 the time when I switched OSs.
I am no longer doing that as I know Win 8.1 better and have worked out most of my issues. Win 8.1 seems to leak memory when you run apps in a different resolution (1600x900) than desktop resolution (3200x1800). Easy work around once you know the problem.
M.S.A.
16 Posts
0
April 14th, 2014 11:00
Hi wmarsh,
is it possible to use the two original disks (1TB HDD and 32GB SDD) to set up the following scenario:
Use the 32GB SDD and a 32GB portion of the HDD in a RAID1 setup as a plain data partition for documents, files, etc.
Use the remaining 968GB of the HDD non-raided for whatever else (Windows OS, Linux OS, another data partition, etc).
Is it possible to RAID1 only portions of the HDD like this? Or can I only RAID entire disks?
Since want to be able to access the RAID1 partition from Linux as well, it would need to be the BIOS-based RAID, not the software raid that requires windows drivers...
Thank you,
MSA
wmarsh
53 Posts
0
April 14th, 2014 12:00
I have never heard of RAID on only part of the disk, but others know more than I do.
Jun Austria
15 Posts
0
April 24th, 2014 00:00
wmarsh
53 Posts
0
April 24th, 2014 05:00
Well, thats not quite what I did, and I see a few issues.
Consider it a two step process: switch to AHCI 1st, replace your disks 2nd.
Making a backup with Dell's software is reasonable as a 1st step -- I did not use this software to clone the drives.
Then do what you said above up to "Only then can I remove the old drives." Don't take the old drives out yet. Reboot your system; it should work normally in AHCI mode. 1st part is done.
At that point you could make a second backup, to use to transfer your system to the new drives. I did not do it that way, and I suspect you might have an issue cloning a 1TB system to a 250GB SSD. If you buy a 1TB EVO, you should have no problem. Or if you do a clean reinstall, you should have no problem.
What I did is take the 1TB HDD out of my laptop and attached both it and a 1TB EVO to a desktop with 2 free SATA ports. I booted the desktop using Clonezilla (google it) and followed the prompts to clone the drive. I then put the SSD into my laptop, and it boots normally.
You could also attach your new SSD temporarily to your laptop using an SATA to USB converter. Put Clonezilla on a USB stick and attach it to another USB port. Then use F12 on startup to boot your laptop into Clonezilla and clone the drive. While this method only uses 1 computer, its slower as the bandwidth of USB is less than SATA3.
I think the EVOs come with cloning software, but I did not try it as I have previous experience using Clonezilla. And Clonezilla is free.
Jun Austria
15 Posts
0
April 24th, 2014 08:00
Jun Austria
15 Posts
0
April 24th, 2014 23:00
M.S.A.
16 Posts
0
April 25th, 2014 00:00
Here is the answer to my own question after talking to Dell and Intel support:
Either both drives have to be HDDs or both have to be SDDs.
Jun Austria
15 Posts
0
April 25th, 2014 02:00
wmarsh
53 Posts
0
April 25th, 2014 05:00
If you skip that step, Windows won't boot after you change the BIOS setting.
I'm thinking you did not type your command in an elevated command prompt, so you don't have permissions to open the boot configuration data store.
type cmd in the Metro search, then pick run as administrator. Type your command in that window.
Jun Austria
15 Posts
0
May 9th, 2014 00:00
wmarsh
53 Posts
0
May 9th, 2014 05:00
If you are in AHCI mode (not running Intel Rapid Storage) or planning to do a clean install after switching to AHCI mode, then yes you can power off the computer and switch the mSATA. Be careful reattaching the ribbon connector that goes over the mSATA.
Jun Austria
15 Posts
0
May 9th, 2014 06:00
wmarsh
53 Posts
0
May 9th, 2014 08:00
Mine recognized it, not quite immediately though. Windows goes thru installing device driver and (I think) reboots.
halo9
8 Posts
0
May 10th, 2014 21:00
Hi Jun,
This is exactly what I did with my system and it worked fine using Samsung data migration. The only additional steps required is once you finish cloning the HDD you need to go back into the bios and change the default boot drive to the mSata SSD.
An issue you will run into after switching to the SSD is the Dell Backup and Restore software will come up with an error saying the recovery partition is missing as it assumes it is booting off a HDD with the recovery partition on the same drive. This means you cannot create recovery discs when booted off the SSD so make sure you create recovery discs BEFORE you make any changes to the drives.
I ran this way for a week and was still not happy with the performance and had a few issues occasionally when resuming from sleep so I ended up doing a fresh install of Windows 8.1. You need the correct version of Windows for your licence, which is Home (aka Core) edition and 64 bit. The Install will pull your licence key from the bios and it will activate when you go online. I then installed all the Dell drivers EXCEPT for the Intel RST and rapid start drivers/software and all I can say is WOW. There is a huge difference in performance. Bootup is fast, sleep is instantaneous and the system is super responsive. I can only guess the original install is not optimised to run off an SSD.
I then removed all partitions off the HDD except for the diagnostics partition and created 1 large partition for storage. So final system is 2 Partitions on the HDD (Diags and Storage) and Dell diagnostics still works from bios, plus the mSata is C: with a clean install + dell drivers. All the issues I had with the original install are gone and I now love the system. Next step will be to go down wmarsh's route and replace the HDD with a 1gb evo but that can wait as I'm happy for now.