XPS8920 - a replacement m.2 NVMe SSD that CAN boot in SATA-ACHI

For some reason, the Samsung 960 M.2 NVMe will not boot in an XPS8920 system with SATA set to ACHI.  With SATA set to RAID, it works just fine.  I wanted a larger replacement that I could boot Windows on without having to use SATA-RAID.

Before returning the computer to the store I decided to exchange the Samsung for another if I could find one. So far I've been pretty loyal to Samsung and not really bothered looking at other SSD's.

I exchanged it for the Toshiba OCZ RD400 1TB PCIe NVMe M.2. The logic being that since Dell shipped a Toshiba in the original system, this might have the best chance to work if any would.

To be clear, in my specific case, WORK, means allow me to have the BIOS set to SATA-ACHI and boot from this drive in the M.2 slot. Something the Samsung could not (currently) do.

Somewhat surprising, it works!

So if you have an XPS8920, want to put in a new/different M.2 NVMe SSD, and desire to boot from this SSD with the BIOS set to SATA-ACHI, the Toshiba above will work. Probably others might also. Caveat: As of today at least, with the 1.0.4 BIOS that's currently available in this system.

I've not bothered with any benchmarks yet or even had time to install the Toshiba drivers which they recommend for peak performance.

This is how I migrated my original Dell SSD to the Toshiba RD400 - with ALL original partitions intact. I've not tested the recovery partition but I was most interested in the diagnostics partition and it works fine after the steps below.

The system as shipped was configured SATA-RAID.

TIH = Acronis True Image, running from USB recovery media. Note this is custom WinPE recovery media I created that includes several drivers used by many of my machines. I suspect the native Acronis recovery media will work just as well. Note that my recovery media can not see any M.2 drives in this system with the BIOS set to SATA-RAID. Hence step 4 below.

DD12 - Acronis Disk Director 12

1. Booted the new system, let Windows update itself.
2. Configured Windows to boot in Safe Mode
3. Rebooted and went into BIOS BEFORE Windows loads
4. Change from SATA-RAID to SATA-ACHI
5. Booted and let Windows start - in Safe Mode now
6. Not sure if it's required, but the internet connection was active. Looking quickly in device manager, I could see some devices had exclamation marks on them. Common when devices don't have drivers or can't be identified. Within 30 seconds, they were all resolved. My guess is that these were ACHI related items that Windows found and loaded drivers for without any actions on my part.
7. Configured Windows to boot normally - not in Safe Mode - booted.
8. The original Toshiba 256G now booting Windows 10 in SATA-ACHI
9. Imaged the Toshiba 256G to the internal 2TB HDD using TIH 2016
10. Shutdown and pulled the Toshiba 256GB - replacing it with the RD400
11. Booted into TIH 2016 recovery media - picked the backup from step 9 - restored everything to the RD400
12. Rebooted and Windows 10 loads fine from the RD400 with the BIOS still in SATA-ACHI
13. Checked the "alignment", all partitions aligned properly.
13. Loaded DD12
- moved the special partitions (diagnostics/recovery/factory image/etc) to the "end" of the drive
- resized the Windows 10 partition to consume the remaining unallocated space on this much larger SSD
14. Out of paranoia, re-checked the alignment. Perfect, all partitions.

That's it. Now I don't have the return the XPS8920 and Dell/Samsung can take their time fixing whatever the incompatibility is with the 960 SSD.