Inspiron 7459 mSATA or M.2

I posted this question to our experts forum. Let's see if I get a reply.

Hi major bystander,

Thanks for posting and bringing this to our attention.  I've contacted the manuals team and the Level 2 technicians to figure this out and make a change to the manuals. 

I'll post back when I have an update, thanks for your patience.

Regards,
Robert

Robert,

I removed the base cover and found 'm.2' stenciled on the system board net tot the part so presumably that's what it is.

However, it's not clear exactly which m.2 form factor will work. Browsing the web I learned there are at least two m.2 forms, 42mm and 80mm  in length. I think the larger capacity m.2 SSD's, e.g, 500GB or 1TB, rely on the larger form and it's not clear whether these can be accommodated. They may work electrically but may not physically fit. It would be nice to have this clarified as well.

MB

Thanks MB,

I'll check with them and see.  Thanks for your patience.

-Robert

MB,

The information in the comprehensive specifications is correct, One 32GB M.2 SSD will fit.  They are changing the manuals to reflect this. 

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Regards,
Robert

Robert,

Thanks for following up.

I'm still wondering, though, whether the system will recognize SSD's larger than 32GB, and to what benefit?

I'm about to pull the trigger on a 512GB m.2 SATA SSD in order to migrate the entire system but naturally that only makes sense if the system will recognize a 512GB m.2 SSD and whether I can select that as the boot drive.

What think?

MB

I'm looking at doing the same thing and would like an answer too.

I opened up the pc and can confirm that it needs a 42 mm length m.2 ssd. This limits the available options. This seems to be the best one I could find: http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-256GB-MTS400-Solid-TS256GMTS400/dp/B00KLTPUG4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Can someone from Dell please confirm that it is possible to boot up fro the m.2 ssd slot? (That is after swapping out the existing 32gig drive with the one linked and transferring the OS etc). Could you please advise?

Can someone from Dell please confirm that it is possible to boot up from a drive in the m.2 ssd slot? 

(That is after swapping out the existing 32 gig drive with the one linked above and transferring the OS etc).

I really would appreciate a response before I go ahead with the purchase.

i'm not from Dell but I have purchased this model and installed M.2 512Gb (42 mm!). It can boot from m.2 as from hdd. But I just installed a new Windows 10 to m.2 ssd and it appeared in boot menu as a new system. So boot from EFI is done from hdd and the system is installed on SSD. this method leaves the original hdd as before, original restore partitions and other stuff.. I remember someone explained with example on 2350 older model, that you can remove original hdd, install fresh on SSD, then swipe everything from HDD so that you have only one system and full boot from SSD. anyway booting can be done from any device via uefi: hdd, m2 ssd, usb flash

btw, the only 42mm m2 ssd that i found is transcend and it worked.

my other problem in 7459 that it has electrical noise from motherboard, especially when the screen is turned off,... very annoing noise. its not fan, not hdd, looks like electronic throttles on the motherboard.
Who is using 7459, do you have such noise coming from it?

Thank you so much for your response, I really appreciate it!

I have ordered the same SSD as you and look forward to installing it. I will be cloning the HDD to the SSD and then I will reformat the HDD for just storage duties. What type of boot times are you achieving?

To answer your question, fortunately I don't have the noise that you seem to be experiencing. I used to have a lot of fan noise but since the latest bios update that has stopped. The machine is actually very quiet now.

You'r welcome. I have used AHCI boot mode in my configuration but I installed clean Windows. changing the boot mode may cause you old Windows to crash at startup. Anyway you need to turn off "caching" (intel smart response) to free the SSD to be used as generic drive.. I think you should play with it a little.. Please describe the recipe of copying Windows from HDD to SSD and making it bootable when have success with it.

Also note that if you copy all backup partitions from hdd to ssd you will loose about 12gb of SSD on it (this is the size of all additional partitions).. 512 Gb is not so much as I noticed :)

Since you have such model and do not have electrical noise problems I'm going to call service for it, thanks!

I will post the recipe when I have worked it all out. The SSD is not due to arrive for another 2 weeks so I have a bit of time to look into it. Transcend have their own cloning software that I plan on using which should make it easier.

All the best sorting out your noise problem.

The event log flooding was caused by the wifi card (btw Dell 1801 is a *** one - old model with single band). I ordered a replacement module. 

The SSD problem was a "bug" - I had to switch BIOS to RAID, install Intel Rapid Storage, "clear metadata" for that drive, and switch back to AHCI. Now it is showing as regular drive (*** as well, seq write will not exceed 80 MBs).

For anyone still interested, I managed to get this to work eventually. I needed to use Macrium cloning software instead of the Transcend software however.

Once I cloned the HDD to the new m2 SATA SSD the SSD was not recognised in the boot menu of the BIOS. I needed to run the boot repair facility from the Macrium software and then it worked like a dream. I have reformatted the original HDD for storage only.

It's been 3 weeks now and all running well.