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XPS 8920 and 0 drive says unallocated.
A Dell tech had to replace the motherboard, format the hard drive and reinstall Windows 10. Just looking around in disk management and see "Disk 0 13.41gig says it's Uninialized and unallocated and a drop down says Initialize disk and has GPT checked. My understanding is that disk is the Optane memory which acts as cache for the hard drive and just speeds things up. I replaced the original platter drive with a SSD and it has 16 gig of RAM. Dell support says the only way to get that drive working is to reinstall Windows again??. That's not going to happen, but does that drive really do any good?
Any advise would be appreciated.
Thank you
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
8 Wizard
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January 3rd, 2020 22:00
I didn't even know that (slightly old) XPS-8920 even support Oplame .
https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/sln306433/how-to-install-an-intel-optane-m-2-nvme-accelerator-into-your-existing-dell-optiplex-inspiron-precision-alienware-systems?lang=en
Like @Vic384 I read confusing things.
It sounds either mis-configured or non-optimally configured.
But if you do not want to re-install Windows-10 ever ... you will likely just have to live with it.
Vic384
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January 3rd, 2020 18:00
I am a little confused about what you wrote. You stated that the tech formatted the hard drive and install Windows 10. Is Windows 10 on the hard drive? You later stated that you replaced the original platter drive with a SSD. So is your boot drive now a SSD? If so then you don't have any hard drives? If you have a SSD as your boot drive the Optane memory will have little benefit. Disk Management should show your SSD as your boot drive with a C: partition. You could also run Intel Rapid Storage Technology to see what it says about your drives.
r72019
6 Professor
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5.3K Posts
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January 3rd, 2020 23:00
Honestly, Dell just did you a favor. The Optane drive and a slower drive (usually your boot drive, but doesn't have to be) get set up in RAID, with your most commonly used programs stored on the faster Optane drive. Intel RST decides what goes where for you. Removing either drive renders the existing data stored on both drives unusable, unless you first disengage the Octane Drive (apparently, yours isn't even initialized so not a problem, but it's pretty easy to do). Anyway, you can sell your Optane drive (I sold mine for $60), and stick a $100 1TB M2 NVME PCiEin its place. Then, make the PCiE drive your boot drive. This will be like 6x faster than your SATA SSD and insanely faster than any spinner. This is what I did with my system. Or alternatively, you can initialize it, assign a drive letter to it, and have a 16gb storage drive.