XPS 8930, KIOXIA NVMe SSD, management utility available

Question

I have skimmed through the Dell Support Utilities that came with my Dell XPS 8930 computer that has a 512 Gb KIOXIA NVME SSD as its system drive. Any diagnostic tools for the hard drive seem to be very uninformative blackbox PASSED or not tools with no real report on the state of the SSD. In contrast, I have installed a Crucial and a Samsung SSD to replace mechanical hard drives in older laptops. Both non-Dell SSD's came with great management utilities that in particular tell me what % of the write life of the SSD I have used up and the reports are sensitive to enough decimal places I can actually tell if anything I'm doing, say in machine learning, is chewing up a substantial amount of SSD write-life on a day-to-day basis.

Is there any SSD management utility from Dell or KIOXIA that can be used on a DELL XPS 8930 Special Edition without violating the Dell warranty? I have also inquired through a Service Request to Dell but sometimes community members are more knowledgeable than Support personnel....

Vic384 · Accepted Answer

I did a search and found this SSD utility from KIOXIA:
https://personal.kioxia.com/en-emea/software/ssd-utility.html

This utility. like Samsung Magician, allows you to update the firmware on the SSD.

I don't know if it will work with your OEM drive. Also, note that the web page says the SATA controller should be in AHCI mode. I know that for Samsung SSDs, Samsung Magician also requires AHCI mode. Dell sets SATA operation at the factory to RAID. You cannot just change SATA operation in the BIOS from RAID to AHCI because Windows is installed in RAID mode. You either had to reinstall Windows after switching to AHCI in the BIOS or use this procedure to switch Windows from RAID to AHCI: http://triplescomputers.com/blog/uncategorized/solution-switch-windows-10-from-raidide-to-ahci-operation/

Unless you have a special Dell warranty, the limited warranty does not cover software or software issues.

Note that in the procedure, the SATA operation change is made half-way through the procedure.

Jim Lewis · Answer

Thanks for the suggestion.  It may explain why when I had previously installed the KIOXIA SSD utility, the utility said, 'Hard Disk Not Found' and perhaps why when I looked in Device Manager on my Dell XPS 8930, I did not see an IDE controller device listed as I had wanted to see if it were set to AHCI mode (or using an AHCI driver as the SSD's I installed on some other computers do).

DavidIMA · Answer

If it's an NVME SSD, then it wouldn't have anything to do with SATA. The NVME protocol goes directly through PCIe, not SATA. I don't think AHCI mode would have anything to do with it.

That said I have also been looking to see if there is any utility that will work with the kbg40zns256g Kioxia NVME M.2 SSD that is installed in my computer as well.

RealHelper1 · Answer

Hi, Here is a link    Check your firmware before, because mine is 1041.0105 when the link indicate 1041.0104.   Bye

Jim Lewis · Answer

Thanks @RealHelper1 for the suggestion at the French site but that's FIRMWARE, not a disk management utility, which is what I wanted, and it also appears to be a firmware update for an older type of Toshiba SSD, KBG...., whereas my KIOXIA drive is KXG...., presumably a drive produced long after Toshiba shed its subsidiary....

I basically gave up on finding a disk management utility for the KIOXIA drive. I think I tried an older Toshiba disk management offering but the KIOXIA drive isn't recognized. Since then I got a Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe drive as a non-system drive. It beats the pants of the KIOXIA drive, particular in random read/writes (~3x faster in both). So when my Dell 8930 Special Edition is out-of-warranty, I'll probably get another Samsung EVO PLUS (or maybe even PRO!) drive to replace the relatively pathetic system drive that Dell provided.

I don't know if a moderator marked the thread as SOLVED (I don't remember doing so). But just to be clear, I haven't found any solution yet and I recall that soon after I got my computer over 6 months ago, I called Dell and asked them about a disk management utility for the KIOXIA drive in the Dell XPS 8930 Special Edition and the support agent said that there was none other than the scanning tool in the Dell Support utility, which just give a PASSED/NOT PASSED grade, etc. So maybe if a moderator happens to read this post, they can unmark the thread solved or if a Dell or KIOXIA disk management utility now exists, provide a link.

I just tried the following KIOXIA utility for their Exceria line of NVMe M.2 SSD's. Doesn't work. As before says "No recognized drives"

Jim Lewis · Answer

Ran out of time to edit my just-previous post. The link to the KIOXIA Exceria disk management utility that doesn't work for KIOXIA NVMe KXG... drive in Dell XPS 8930 is SSD Utility Management Software | KIOXIA

From Dell, 5/23/2020

DELL-Cares to (Jim Lewis)

‎05-23-2020 04:30 PM

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Re: SSD Management Utility Available for KIOXIA NVME SSD Drives in Dell XPS 8930

Hi Jim, thank you for sharing the details and we apologize for the delay in response. Unfortunately we do not have any such utilities or applications available with us. Is there any issue that you are facing with the system?

XPS Desktops

XPS 8930, KIOXIA NVMe SSD, management utility available

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