XPS 15 Touch 9530 Sata or mSata

Hi asawyer13,

Dell XPS 15 Touch 9530 can be customized with SATA hard drive + mSATA Drive or SSD. SSD/mSATA drives are faster then the regular mechanical SATA drives. MSATA is a smaller version of SSD drive.The advantage of mSATA drives is it’s faster than normal mechanical drives and cheaper than SSD drives. Yes you can upgrade the system with 1TB SSD if available.

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I only just ordered it, so I don't physically have it yet.

I don't think the one that has the bigger battery can accept a 2.5" SSD drive also. If it can't, then I will return it and order the one with the smaller battery and the 1TB 5400 rpm drive and replace the drive with a 1TB SSD.

It's unfortunate that the manual shows the spot for the 2.5" drive, but unless I'm confused (which I would love someone to confirm) I think the bigger battery extends past where the picture in the manual shows and takes up the spot where the 2.5" drive would go.

Could someone from Dell please confirm this information? It is very important to me.

All of these have space for a single internal 2.5" SSD (or HD/SSHD).

Based on other forums that I am seeing that is not correct.

If you have the bigger battery you can only use an mSata drive because the 2.5" bay is not there because of the size of the battery.

Based on other forums that I am seeing that is not correct. If you have the bigger battery you can only use an mSata drive because the 2.5" bay is not there because of the size of the battery.

I think you are right.  People in other forums have posted pictures and the battery does indeed take up the space formerly occupied by the 2.5" HDD.  I was disappointed in this as well.

Hi asawyer13,

Sorry about the incorrect information. XPS 15 Touch 9530 comes with 2 types of batteries (61Whr and 91Whr). If the system is purchased with 91Whr battery the system would not come with the regular hard drive and the primary hard drive on the system would be the mSATA drive.

Can you please confirm whether the 512GB mSATA card supports the SATA III (6GB/s) interface or the SATA II (3GB/s) interface? This is very important to me, and I would appreciate a quick answer. Thanks and regards.

Sata 3

Thanks for responding. Well, I suppose that's good news (SATA III).. If we're stuck with a single mSATA drive, at least its the high performance version. Like you, I had no idea the 512GB SSD option would limit my ability to upgrade to a larger SSD. If I could do it again, I would go for the 32GB mSATA/1TB SATA option. Then again, the way things are going, perhaps there will be a 1TB mSATA option in the not too distant future?

Let me make sure I understand what you're saying. If I've ordered an XPS 15 touch with the larger battery and 512GB mSATA, can I later replace the larger battery with the smaller one and free up the SSD space? If this is indeed possible, is it something I can do on my own, or would it have to be performed by Dell? Any insight you have would be most appreciated. Thanks.

Could be - you could also install a smaller battery to free up the space for the 2.5" drive.

I don't like to "hijack" this thread, but I recently received my XPS 15 9530 with 1TB HDD and 61 WHr battery - and have been very disappointed with the performance of the battery.  Initially I was getting less then 2 hours on a charge, but after updating BIOS to A01 I'm now getting about 2.5 hours per charge.  This is far less than the 11 hours stated in Dell's literature (for the 91WHr version), but even with the 61 WHr I expected about 6-7 hours instead of 2.  

Do you know if the 2 hours for the 1TB version is normal?  If not, then I will go through replacement process with Dell and hope to get better battery life.  But if it is normal, I may opt for a different system entirely.

Thanks.

Battery runtime will depend on what you're doing with the system - if you want to get 6 hours out of a battery, you will need to slow the CPU as much as possible, dim the screen as much as possible and set the hard drive to a very short spin-down time.  Using the system actively with a brighter screen, accessing the hard drive frequently, and running applications that demand CPU or video performance will appreciably diminish the runtime on any notebook.

I guess that's good to hear about the larger SSD... but it's too late for me.  I was advised by Dell to return the XPS 15 if I was unhappy with the battery life, so that's what I did.  The battery life was consistently about 2.5 hours - and that was using the Dell suggested power scheme and not streaming video the whole time either, just gmail, Word, Excel and standard applications.