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XPS 8940 desktop, faulty SSD to replace, disappointing support
Bought end of 2021. Had recurring random freezes | crashes for no apparent reason every 2 days or so. Most of the times this happened when system went to sleep. I disabled sleep to use hibernate instead which patched (hid) this problem for a while, though not ideal obviously. So I contacted support and they found it was a faulty NVME SSD apparently, so I was scheduled for a replacement. That's fine, but what disappoints me is the lack of help to migrate all my setup & data to this replacement SSD (supposed to be identical or same specs).
Immediately I thought this should be do-able with a simple disk cloning operation, but alas support didn't help at all to do this, they told me basically figure it out yourself. I know I'm on a basic support plan, but at least I would've liked some more helpful tips to do this.
Fortunately, I found the answer here in the support forums, it seems to work (will test it asap, crossing fingers ;-P). See this: Solved: NVMe drive upgrade to larger NVMe - Dell Community. TLDR: Macrium Reflect Free does the job of cloning.
The other annoyance is that Dell wants their local tech to replace my SSD and leave with my old one (instead of me keeping it while I do the clone then send it / drop it somewhere after). This forces me to clone it to some extra disk I had but is obviously cumbersome, time wasting and will require a second clone operation (instead of just one, it took hours). Not impressed.
68cutlass
192 Posts
1
May 31st, 2022 08:00
Don't bother with cloning. Create an image instead to your extra drive. Then boot from the macrium boot disk and restore image to the new drive after it's installed. I've had a few problems with cloning over the years but never with image restoration.
ispalten
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1.9K Posts
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May 31st, 2022 08:00
Nothing new here... they just don't do that. Even if they were to replace your entire PC, they do not reload it like you had it.
Lockups with an 8940 are usually tied to a specific BIOS. If your problems continue, scan subjects here for that problem. It might not have been the SSD.
Bruno D
10 Posts
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May 31st, 2022 13:00
Thanks, yea I did just that this morning, an image to my extra drive which ran so much faster than with my external USB drive (a couple hours vs 12 minutes !). Not sure why it matters so much clone vs image, but anyway I did a full test of the recovery steps: created the macrium usb boot key, then was able to save my drive to an image on my other internal HDD then will only have to wipe the SSD before the tech swaps it over for a working one.
68cutlass
192 Posts
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May 31st, 2022 13:00
I'm extra cautious with data so if you have the time and haven't done so, back up your extra data drive to the USB including the new image. There shouldn't be an issue just swapping the ssd but you know... Murphy's Law kicks in at the most inopportune times! Good luck!
Bruno D
10 Posts
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May 31st, 2022 13:00
I had a tech who ran a bunch of tests earlier which concluded the SSD was faulty. I don't know much besides that, but thanks anyway. I'll try and post a bit later once I get it replaced to see if it did indeed fix my problem.
Bruno D
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May 31st, 2022 18:00
Ok, I wasn't aware of that. I just assumed it'd be normal to let the customer a reasonable window to transfer his data to the new media. Guess not then, and this reminds me I should buy a bit more extra storage devices since all those I have are either filled already / too small / too old.
CTG_8273
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513 Posts
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June 1st, 2022 05:00
@Bruno D
If you have basic support, I am surprised they sent you the drive. And in the past when they sent me a drive it was imaged with the factory OS. Even when my DATA drive went bad they sent an imaged drive I had to wipe it. Also this is a good time for a clean OS install and a good time to go in BIOS and turn off RAID it it's on. I never liked RAID mode.
ispalten
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June 1st, 2022 13:00
From my experience, when they do exchange a PC, the allow you time to return the old one being exchanged. When I had a boot disk go bad (many years ago) all they would send is a blank disk. Makes sense too. XPS's have many configurations, and today, 2 possible OS's, W10 and W11 and both Home and Pro versions. H/W, all different SSD's are used, video cards, CPU's, etc. Not to mention purchased s/w.
I assume they don't create the PC OS with individual components and build the Boot drive image every time. There is probably a bank of images of all the possible combinations ready to load onto an XPS being built though, or at least with enough basic stuff to boot the system and then have other files available after it boots to enable the other devices possibly (video drivers for instance).
Worse part would be for you to get an SSD that wouldn't boot. So you'd be forced to install the OS anyway.
By the way, I in the past have had a problem restoring a disk image. The ENTIRE drive image... when I had to restore my boot drive. See I had the image when it was W10. Went to W11 I only saved the C: drive. Then had a problem and went to restore the ENTIRE drive... would NOT boot. Some parts of the drive were W10 and had pointers to different places. I had to wipe the drive, install using MS's Media Creation tool W11, and then restore the C: partition.
Dell also uses more than one manufacturer's SSD's... I don't think it matters if you get a different one, but if there are drivers for it, it does. I've got a WD one, and it does use the MS drivers, but there could be some configuration data stored away. If you do get a replacement, I'd make sure I got the same make and model.