Inspiron 11 3147 SSD upgrade : have you had success

1: no

2: Intel 530 240gb

3: cloned using acronis true image 2015 from a USB boot loader and an image of the hdd.

Also cloned using EasUs.

4: no

5: sometimes computer would not recognize a bootable drive.  when it would boot to windows, the computer would crash after 1 to 5 minutes to a blue screen then a black screen saying that there was no bootable drive found.  Scan disk found no errors on the drive.

1. yes

2. Intel 520, 240GB SSD

3. Nothing, just opened the case and change the HDD out. Then installed Ubuntu from USB drive.

4. none

I know there are problems with Windows booting from SSD drive, but there are none with Linux.  I also upgrade the RAM to 8GB as well.

1. No

2. Crucial M100 256Gb

3. Acronis (clone and backup/restore) and EaseUS (clone and backup/restore).  Also tried to shrink HDD partitions to <256Gb before cloning / backup.  none worked

4. No.  Tried both BIOS A01 and A02

5. Same as above.  Win8.1 froze after a couple minutes.  Device manage showed everything (SSD+SATA) running properly when I can open device manager before computer froze.  Swap back to HDD and everything worked again.

Dell (and Crucial) please fix this!

1. Yes finally, after cloning disk with EaseUS, I uninstalled EaseUS from the SSD, as it appears to conflict with Dell's bloatware. 

I am sure it's Dell's problem since I have cloned the same SSD drive for another computer (Toshiba Protégé) with no issue.  Not sure why is an issue with the SSD only either.  EaseUS coexisted with Dell bloatware on the HDD with no issue.

2. Crucial M100 - 256 GB

3. EaseUS, after cloning and swapping SDD, computer still froze a couple minutes after start up.  Uninstalled EaseUS and laptop has run well for 3 days now.

4. No (updated to A02)

Good to know.  I just got 840 evo working without any trouble.

1. Yes.

2.  840 evo 500 GB. (returned the Intel drive after no success and picked this up for black Friday.

3. I used Samsung's free cloning software.  I'd not need to run software from flash drive. Cloned drive and replaced HDD, booted up and have need running smoothly for 24 hours.  the computer is now very responsive. 

4. No

5. N/A

I got myself an 840 Evo. I read it works well and others here confirm that.

I am told that when you clone the disk, the system/factory restore WILL not work since it is expecting the drive of the same size....can someone confirm?

1. Yes

2. Silicon Power S70 240GB

3. Acronis true image 2013, clone disk

4. no changes. Bios is A01.

1: No

2: Crucial M500 240GB

3: Crucial doesn't offer any cloning software.  I used free Macrium.  I used Macrium successfully with an Intel SSD on a Dell 7000 laptop before.

4: No.  Bios is A02.

5: Laptop doesn't seem to recognize the ssd after I put it in.  It says no bootable device.

I tried both MBR and GPT.  None worked.  Will get a Samsung 840 and try again.

I am happy to report that a Samsung 840 250GB SSD worked.  I used the downloaded Samsung software to clone the disk.  After I replaced the HDD with the SSD, the computer turned on without problems.  The Crucial M500 worked on a Dell Inspiron 5xxx laptop, so it is not defective.

1. Yes

2. Toshiba Q Series Pro - 256 GB

3. Downloaded NTI Echo (included for free with the purchase of Toshiba SSD). Plugged the SSD to an external SATA enclosure through USB, launched NTI Echo, follow on-screen instructions to create copy the exact image from the system drive to the SSD on the USB enclosure. All the defaults just worked.

4. Nope, no changes to the BIOS, once the drive was cloned, it was pretty much a drive swap.

5. At first, I tried with the Crucial M500 and, as others have mentioned on other forums, it did not work for me. I tried using Windows image backup, and even tried to do a fresh Windows Install, but both the BIOS and Windows setup were not recognizing the drive reliably. It could not see it, then see it in the BIOS, but not on the setup, then back to not even the BIOS recognizing it. I was going to try using tool such as EaseUS or Acronis True Image, but I'm concerned the system may not recognize it sometime in the future, so I decided to go with a different drive. The Toshiba worked perfect, I also tried going to the BIOS a couple times turning the machine off and on, and it recognizes the Toshiba every time. Boot time is impressive with this thing. Less than 15 seconds. Loving it so far.

1.  yes

2. crutial 256

3. cloning software

4. no

5.  when it was initially put it, it would hang up, and it would not let me reinstall windows.  did a full reinstall from the startup. works like a champ.  all the computer needs is a ssd and 8 bigs..what a difference

1. Yes with Samsung 850 EVO 120GB. No with Crucial BX100 120GB.

2. Samsung 850 EVO 120 GB

3. My first attempt was with the budget Crucial BX100 120GB. I cloned all the partitions with Macrium Reflect Free, but the 3147 refused to recognize the drive, saying that it could not detect a boot device. Sometimes it would detect it, but the only thing it managed to boot was the recovery partition. When it tried to boot to Windows, it would just blue screen crash. The Dell Diagnostics program that you can run when it gives the no boot device message would consistently report that no drive was detected.

My second attempt was with the Samsung 850 EVO 120GB. Samsung's Data Migration software would get to 100% clone, but then would die and give some random message that the cloning had failed, so I proceeded to clone with Macrium Reflect Free. The computer gave me the no boot device found at first, but then eventually gave me a windows error saying some file in System32 was corrupted, which was my indication the drive was finally detected but that the clone had not worked.

Therefore, I did a clean install of Windows 8.1 by putting the Windows 8.1 installation media on a flash drive using Microsoft's media creation tool. I tried to fiddle with the BIOS to get it to boot from the USB drive. It eventually cooperated in booting from USB and got to the Windows installation setup. The first time around, it refused to detect the SSD, so I restarted, and the second time it detected the SSD just fine and showed me all the partitions that Macrium had cloned. I deleted all the partitions straight from the menu where it lets you select what drive to install Windows to and the installation went on without a hitch.

I had to install all the Dell 3147 drivers from scratch. Even the WiFi card was not working, so I had to download all the drivers to the flash drive and install them one by one. Windows appeared to activate itself either after a few restarts or after I had connected my Microsoft account to to the computer, so I didn't have to pull the product key out from the BIOS. A couple of the Dell drivers are kind of useless bloatware, but the IC2 controller, input drivers, and all the Intel drivers must be installed to get the touchpad and screen working the way they did from factory.

It took a couple of hours to set everything up from scratch and put all my programs back on, but it was worth it. Everything runs so much faster and smoother and there's no more crrrrnching of that slow 5400rpm Seagate HDD.

4. I didn't make any changes in the BIOS beyond trying to make sure it booted from the USB flash drive. Everything worked with SafeBoot enabled and with AHCI mode.

5. No success with the Crucial BX100. Judging from what I've read, it looks like the 3147's motherboard is exceedingly picky about which brand of SSD it will detect. If you want to make sure an SSD upgrade will work on the 3147, use a Samsung 850 EVO and do a clean installation if cloning doesn't work. Other users both here and elsewhere (search for "850" or "840" in that thread) have reported success with the older 840 model as well.

On the note of doing the actual installation of the SSD, some plastic spudgers/scribes/pry tools are an absolute necessity because the back cover on this notebook is exceedingly hard to pry off. I used this spudger kit from Amazon. Be sure to ground yourself to discharge any static electricity and be careful with the delicate Keyboard ribbon cable that sits right under the HDD caddy. I must have knocked it a bit loose during my installation of the BX100 because some of the keyboard keys had stopped working. With some effort I was able to unplug it and plug it back in as best I could and regain proper functionality of the keyboard. 

Note that there is detailed official documentation from Dell on removing the battery and HDD here. Those are the instructions I used to do my installation (remove battery first, then remove the HDD). I used this SATA to USB adapter while trying to clone my original HDD, but the nicer 2.5" HDD enclosures would probably work better.

I posted all this here for anyone who wants to do an SSD upgrade on their 3147. I was jumping into the dark trying to get this upgrade to work, but hopefully this post will have anyone interested in taking the SSD plunge with this notebook a little better informed.

I'm quite relieved to read all these posts about problems with putting an SSD in this laptop!!  I'm no expert but have swapped out 5 SSD's in various computers at home and this is the first time the computer just refused to "find bootable drive".  I thought I was either losing my touch or the Samsung 830 series SSD I was using was defective.  

Thanks for all the posts that clarifies the pickiness of the 3147 board!!  I just bought (and will return) a Scandisk SSD, which didn't work either after cloning with EZ GIG IV.  

I will now try a Toshiba that someone had success with, then a Samsung 850 if needed.  I just can't live with that sloooow HDD...it's killing me!  Wish me luck!!