Area-51m R2, unreliable

Question

Dear all

I have recently received the above laptop. I am however finding it fairly unreliable. I have found four or five times that one of the NVMe drives fails to mount correctly in Windows and brings down Windows completely. This originally happened when I was initially trying to transfer some data to the SSD over the network.

Daily, the AWCC and Killer DBWM are stopping working, I am wondering if this is linked?

I did swap out the original 512GB SSDs for 2TB Samsung Evo 970 drives and there is of course the chance that one of these drives is playing up although I would have thought that if an SSD was faulty Crystal Disc info would report some errors etc. Does anyone have any ideas? By the way, I think it is always the D drive which is playing up.

I have contracted supoort, they put the phone down on me? I will use the Whatsapp support during their working hours.

I am just wondering if anyone else has had a similar issue with their Alienware?

Many thanks for any comments or suggestions.

Matt

mattgod69 · Accepted Answer

Hi Renium

No, the original slots 1 and 2 with the operating system on and which have been configured as RAID 0 have the original 512Gb drives on. I only changed slots 3 and 4 and installed 2Tb Samsung Evo 970 drives.

I finally managed to get hold of somebody in Dell and they saw the problem (via remote assistance), ran a few tests and confirmed that it appeared the board containing drives 3 and 4 was faulty. It was either this board all the motherboard which was at fault.

They arranged for an engineer to visits to swap at the board and since then problem has not occurred again. Therefore, it appears that the problem has been sorted out and I have reinstalled everything back on the new Dell PC.

The only issue now is to work out why Samsung magician does not report both drives correctly. It shows one drive as an NVME drive and displays its health and temperature etc, but the other drive it does not, it just states that the drive is a Samsung SSD 970 with unknown written next to it. This is the same as what happened previously though so it might be a Samsung thing. I not at all concerned about this though as I have the same issue on my desktop with the magician software not reporting the Samsung M.2 drive correctly (not displaying health and temperature) and just saying it is not supported, which is of course silly because it is a Samsung drive.

Hopefully there will be no more problems with this PC and I have a very clean Windows installation.... However, I am getting the Alienware Command Centre (AWCC) crashing daily in reliability history and event viewer, but again this is not a problem it is just something wrong with the software and was probably happening on everybody's machine (it has done it on every build I have done on the Dell machine - there have been about three builds in addition to the original build).

Regards.

Matt

mattgod69 · Answer

Hi,

I had a computer repair shop remove the offending screw satisfactorily and they managed to get the drives fitted.

The slot with the offending screw was SSD4 which presumably is the E drive.... The problem I'm having is with Drive D. I guess the only way I will know is by checking the serial numbers against the physical drives in the slots?

Check Disk says there is no problem with any of the drives c, d or e.

Regards.

Matt

crimsom · Answer

Hi @mattgod69 thank you for creating another thread.

CrystalDiscInfo is a very good and versatile utility, it is designed to check all types of drives.

Your unsolved Re: Area-51m R2, Storage Upgrade, #4 - Dell Community thread says "I opened the case to change the M.2 drives, but notice that one of the screws holding down the SSD was badly damaged. The simple job now changing this SSD has become a headache and much more risky."

Is this the SSD-? slot whose drive is playing up?

Please run Check Disk to find and automatically fix any file corruptions on the OS(C:) boot drive.

Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you.

mattgod69 · Answer

I have just removed drive D SSD which was actually in SSD slot 4, which was the one with the defective screw. I have put in the drive which came with the PC originally and am now carrying out some tests.

The problem was not there all the time, so it will take some time to determine if the SSD is faulty or not or if it is something else.

Interestingly, Samsung Magician was correctly reporting the D drive (the one i have removed) but does not report the E drive in the same way... it just calls is a Samsung SSD 970 but does not correctly report the Serial No and interface, nor the temperature etc. It has a ! adjacent to the name but says the 'ssd information could not be verified due to system compatibility issues. please check information'.

Matt

crimsom · Answer

Hi @mattgod69 thank you for sharing update.

It seems that Windows has not installed 2TB Samsung Evo 970 driver in Device Manager? Please see if Intel Driver & Support Assistant will get this Samsung driver for you.

Please install this Samsung SSD card in a different M.2 slot to see if Samsung Magician will fully acknowledge it. If yes, please clean the M.2 PCIe socket with lint free cloth (no water, no solvents) that could have a poor electrical contact and/or debris.

Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you.

mattgod69 · Answer

Hi Rhenium

It seems that the problem i thought related to the SSD itself, whereas in fact this is not the case as the issue happened this morning with the stock drive in. Then on restarting i got a blue screen reporting with storport.sys failing.

The amount of time this hardware issue is causing is staggering and so annoying!

Not sure where to go from here other than try with Dell Support.

Matt

crimsom · Answer

Hi @mattgod69 thank you for sharing update.

The storport.sys blue screen will be captured by Windows as a critical event, and the root cause of this problem will be declared. This can become serious and stop Windows from booting. Please create (clone) a good standby OS(C:) boot drive that can be swapped in, if the original OS(C:) boot drive becomes unrecoverable.

Please run Reliability Monitor and wait for events to create timeline. Look for critical event created on day and time that blue screen appeared. Open this event to see the root cause and use Microsoft error code to search internet for similar problem and its solution, which could be your fix.

Have a look within Fix Storport.sys BSOD errors on Windows 10 (thewindowsclub.com) to see if your blue screen problem is listed and how to fix it.

Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you.

mattgod69 · Answer

I have already checked reliability monitor several times.  There are critical events,. Event viewer seems to give more info.  Firstly it was reporting that 'an error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk2\DR2 during a paging operation.  This occurs multiple times.  There are also reports about failing to flush data to the transaction log.  It then reports that 'Disk 2 has been surprised removed', whereas of course it had not physically.    This was just before i noticed it and I restarted and get the BSOD.  Its either a windows issue or a hardware issue up to the SSD.  I guess I need to remove everything and start again with a fresh reinstall?

mattgod69 · Answer

Still having issues with new SSD installed.  To cut a long storey short i am going to reinstall windows.  Do i need to do anything special to keep the Raid 0?  Should i get rid of this and put the OS on one drive?  I look forward to hearing from you.  Matt

crimsom · Answer

Hi @mattgod69 thank you for sharing update.

There is no increased performance benefit with the two M.2 SSD Raid 0 as the OS(C:) boot drive. A single ultrafast M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe boot drive provides same performance with increased reliability.

If not already installed, get the two optional M.2 2280 NVMe slots by installing the Sled board, rather than getting an external enclosure to clone (copy) single NVMe OS(C:) boot drive.

You can use your original 512GB M.2 SSD Raid 0 OS(C:) boot drive to clone (copy) a single NVMe OS(C:) boot drive onto one of your existing 2TB Samsung Evo 970 drives by using Macrium Reflect Free. There are tutorials on YouTube.

Please click on Kudos to say thank you for response from user that is not employed by Dell. Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you.

mattgod69 · Answer

To update you. I did a fresh install yesterday.

The problem is still occurring... I just tuned the PC on again at 12.25pm. One of the SSD drives in not showing up in explorer. This is an intermittent problem, it does not happen all the time.

There is nothing in reliability history concerning this (there was a hardware error reported at 8.35am), but in event viewer an error occurred with stornvme. It is reporting that 'a driver detected a controller error on \Device\RaidPort0'. Immediately before this there was a warning saying 'the system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur in volume ID in E: DeviceName \Device\Hard disk/Volume 10.

crimsom · Answer

Hi @mattgod69 thank you for sharing update.

Please install the original 512GB M.2 SSD Raid 0 OS(C:) boot drive. If the Area-51m R2 problems disappear, then the files on the 2TB M.2 SSD Raid 0 OS(C:) boot drive are corrupt.

I have always wondered if the solid-state drive interposer board can be used to clone RAID 0. The Sled board clearly says (No RAID).

Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you.

mattgod69 · Answer

The Raid 0 SSDs are in slots 1 and 2, slots 3 and 4 each have the 2Tb drives in.  The problem is with slot 4.

mattgod69 · Answer

I have already managed to replicate the problem occurs with the original SSDs.    The 2Tb drives are not the issue.

crimsom · Answer

Hi @mattgod69 thank you for sharing update.

It is not clear, so guess that all slots have 2TB M.2 2280 NVMe cards, and all these cards are created with the modern GPT partition format, and Boot list option UEFI has been enabled. The 4GB (2TB x2) M.2 SSD Raid 0 must have GPT partition format, for OS(C:) boot drive to fully function.

Please reseat slot 4 SSD card, having removed any debris from card and PCIe socket electrical contacts.

Does F2 BIOS menu acknowledge that slot 4 SSD card has been installed complete with description. If slot 3 and slot 4 cards swapped, does F2 BIOS menu acknowledge them as installed?

Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you.

Alienware

Area-51m R2, unreliable

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