Dell XPS 15 (9530) Flawed mSATA Setup

Hi wmarsh, 

Thanks. I did not call tech support ( I would have cracked my skull head butting the wall trying to explain things). I merely emailed my Dell sales rep and his supervisor and got them to chase this up.

Well the answers are in now. Here is a Dell engineers reply that finally makes sense.

"For HDD + SSD dual configuration,  under iRST 12.8 drive, it does need 20GB SSD for iRST . But it does not  necessary need partition bigger than RAM for Rapid Start .  There is a setting called Active Page Threshold, which allow system to enable Rapid start even with smaller SSD than RAM.

Besides, Rapid Start is battery life saving feature.  With Rapid Start,  system will go from S3 to S4  with the similar wake up time as S3 wake up.    Without Rapid start , System will keep in S3 and the wake up time will be still very fast ( in fact, with Rapid Start, since system wake up from S4,  it will be a little bit slower than Non Rapid start system ). "

Looking for some Intel papers, I found that this is in fact true and OEM's can enable this feature through the Bios. Some OEM's give you an option to turn on/off the Active Page Threshold in the bios and I guess they can make it hidden as well. Intel have also confirmed that OEM's can modify parts of the Intel RST driver through their forums.

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/22647/eng/Intel%20Rapid%20Start%20Technology%20Deployment%20Guide%20v1.0.pdf - pages 15 & 16

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/technology-briefs/responsiveness-technologies-brief.pdf - read how it works under What is Intel® Rapid Start Technology?

So we now know that it is in fact possible for both features to work on this Dell system (XPS15 9530) using a 32GB SSD as cache. Would I run the system this way?? No way!!

Thanks to wmarsh I have explored the install and find it slightly buggy. A fresh install on a swapped out SSD is the way to go.

A little bit of extra info - Intel Rapid Start vs Windows Hibernate.

Essentially they are the same thing except that IRS has hardware support and allows it to save the RAM image to a different storage medium, in this case, the SSD. IRS was developed for systems running on a HDD and using an SSD for caching. This enables a zero power state and faster resume since it loads off the SSD and not the HDD.

With Windows Hibernate the file it creates (hiberfil.sys) must be on the OS drive and in this case would create a slower resuming system as it must read the file to RAM from the HDD. Intel Rapid Start allows you to work around this and is in fact a faster option for a HDD+SSD cache system. If you do replace the HDD with an SSD or install a larger SSD and run the OS off it, there is no need for IRS as it will perform the same as Windows hibernate.

So if you want to be able to have a zero power state with an SSD and not use IRS you can enable the hibernate option in Windows 8.1 but as with IRS but be prepared to give up 16GB or SSD space. I use it and it works great. Here is the instructions on how to do it http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2658-power-options-menu-add-remove-sleep-hibernate-windows-8-a.html

Enjoy.

Thanks halo9, that's very informative. I think you finally answered my original question.

I enabled hibernate (tx for the tip by the way). Wake from hibernation off the SSD is noticeably faster than iRST off the cache (as shipped with 8Gb partition and 16Gb system memory).

Maybe you understand the mechanism -- I suspect it has something to do with the Active Page Threshold.

Apparently Intel RST on 32GB SSD doesn't boot the performance very much.

If you don't want to pay more for a top-end model or spend more money on large size SSD, there is another approach which might offer you high performance close to the top-end model, i.e., use the 32GB SSD as system drive by installing WIMBOOT which takes less than 3GB space on your SSD, and de-activating intel RST in Windows 8.1 on the harddrive (you can even reformat the whole HDD and use it for your data storage and programs). 

For WIMBOOT, see

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn594399.aspx

Thats easy, just follow the setup instructions in the intel documents I linked in my very first post.

So now a slightly different question: 

I imagine in order to use the 32GB mSATA disk as a regular data disk (partition it as NTFS, format it and assign a drive letter to it), I assume I would set Rapid Storage Mode in the BIOS to AHCI and also disable the "Intel Rapid Start Technology" in the windows configuration program with the same name.

But if I ever want to go back from that to using the mSATA drive for RST as in the original setup, how do I do that? Has anyone ever tried that?

Please also consider, if you place a password on your HDD, that RST won't work anyway.

That was a deal stopper for me even trying to get it to work :(

Hi guys,  I'm looking to order a XPS 15-9530.  I've gone through this thread and would like an clear answer to my question:

If I understand good: the laptop does have 2 drives: 32gb mSATA used for Intel Rapid Start and Intel Rapid Storage, and a 1TB drive on which the OS is installed.  Is it possible to replace the mSATA drive with a Samsung Evo 840 250gb mSATA SSD drive (http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/361757/samsung-840-evo-msata-250gb.html) and install the OS/programs on this drive so I have the benefits of a SSD drive?  Then I can configure the 1TB drive as storage.

Can you let me know what you think?

I will be doing a clean install by the way, I don't like these pre-installed operating systems :emotion-1:

Also, a 250 gb mSATA SSD drive will be considerably cheaper since a 1TB mSATA SSD is very expensive and not needed for storage.  1TB sata at 5400rpm for storage will be sufficient :)

Hi

I was wondering if you would be able to assist me with a problem described here:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19587970.aspx

Maybe there is something I am missing, but with the current setup I simply do not see what is the function of the msata drive?

Thanks

Thanks for your prompt reply, wmarsh!

Yes, I do understand that there is a 32gb flash drive along with 500gb hdd, but please note that my setup also consist of a 256GB msata drive.

I might be wrong, but I would install Windows on the 256GB msata and leave 500GB hdd (with 32gb ssd for quick access) for storage. However, the factory setup is as described in my post and I have no idea how to change it. I did try to reset the computer from USB recovery image, but as there is no option where would one like the OS to be, it all went back to this weird factory setting: OS on the slow HDD and speedy MSATA left blank. In the notebookcheck review they specifically say that MSATA drive is the one where Windows is installed, also when you go to official M3800 page on dell.com the 500GB hdd drive is not even mentioned when the msata drive is present.

My assumptions is that somewhere someone when resetting the laptop made a stupid mistake.

Have you opened you laptop up? It looks alot like mine -- which would mean internally you have 1 SATA3 bay (where your HDD lives) and 1 mSATA slot (32gb flash drive). There really is not much point in a cache drive if you are booting off an SSD.

Your backup disks would restore you to as shipped; that does not sound like what you want. If in fact you have a 3rd drive (256GB SSD whether mSATA or SATA) You could install Win 8.1 on that drive. Dell will send you disks to do a clean install, but I had to contact them and ask for them.

If you don't have a 3rd drive, the easiest thing is to get an mSATA SSD at least as large as your HDD (I like Samsung EVO) and clone your HDD to it. (I would use Clonezilla, but the Samsung software is reported to work well.) You then go into the BIOS to switch it to boot off the SSD. When you know everything works, then you can wipe your HDD and use it for storage, or install some other OS on it.

Thanks for your patience, it is much appreciated. I should have checked the detailed specification of the HDD before I posted the previous message.Below is an extract from Dell's post test message.

[ Storage ] Hard Drive 0 OEM: ATA, product: ST500LM000-1EJ162, revision: DEM7, type: SATA, size: 500 GB,

(this is the hdd that includes 8GB ssd for quick access {not 16 or 32GB which is what I wrote earlier, sorry for the confusion})

Hard Drive 1 OEM: ATA, product: LITEONIT LMT-256M6M mSATA 256GB, revision: DM8110F, type: SSD, size: 256 GB,

(this is the MSATA drive)

[ Boot ] BootPath = MBR of Hard Drive 0 BootPath = MBR of Hard Drive 1

As you can see, there are two drives in my laptop, HDD (with 8GB ssd along with 500GB in the same casing) and MSATA (256GB). I though that OS would be installed on the MSATA, not on HDD. What I would like to do now is to move or reinstall the OS onto the MSATA drive. I thought that doing a full recovery would help me, as usually during the Windows installation one can choose where Windows is to be installed. I copied the recovery partition to an external usb drive and did a recovery, however, during the process, there was no option to choose where I would like the OS to be installed, so it was simply reinstalled on the C drive, which is HDD.

Is there any way to manipulate BIOS to disable or bypass HDD so that the only active drive would be the MSATA? I did go to BIOS but I could not see any option. By doing this I would be able to install Windows on MSATA and enable HDD later for file storage.

Thanks again

ps Here is an extract from a review available at notebookcheck.net. I have exactly the same configuration and I did expect to see the same setup. 'In our test device, Dell combines a 256 GB mSATA SSD (including the system partition) with a conventional 500 GB HDD for data, yielding more than enough storage space for movies, photos and other files and at the same time a fast system drive [...]. '

OK, you have 2 drives in your system, a Seagate SSHD and and mSATA SSD. You can't access the 8GB on the SSHD separately.

If you want Windows to boot from your SSD, get the reinstall disks from Dell. Recovery won't work. With a clean install, you can put the OS on the SSD.

You then need to change the BIOS settings to boot from the SSD.

Thank sfor your answer, it is much appreciated.

Well, I will see if I am patient enough to wait until Dell delivers the necessary disks to me. I might try to open the case, unplug HDD, recover the OS from USB stick to MSATA, and the replug the HDD.