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September 13th, 2020 18:00
M2 Drive Max Capacity
I'm looking to upgrade the 256Gb M2 drive that shipped with my Inspiron 5593 but according to the specs manual it looks like the maximum capacity is 512Gb if I am reading it correctly? I'm new to these M2 drives so was puzzled why they maximum capacity is so low. My 2.5" SSD C drive on my previous laptop was 1TB and that was nearly full even though I had a separate 1TB data partition as the physical drive capacity was 2TB. This will be quite restrictive as I will not be able to load all my previous software. I plan to install a 2.5" SATA SSD for data but I am still 500Gb short of required capacity on the C drive by the looks of things.
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CocoBoy
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September 13th, 2020 19:00
Just after I posted this I had the idea to use my 2TB 2.5" SATA SSD drive as the boot C drive? 1TB would be a D data partition. Is that possible?
jphughan
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September 14th, 2020 09:00
@CocoBoy
Don't worry about maximum capacity specs. When those are provided at all, it's either the max capacity Dell tested or the max capacity they offered from the factory. There are MANY cases of people successfully using storage devices with more capacity than the specs indicate, across several system models. There is currenty no practical limit on max capacity for drives at a hardware/firmware level. That hasn't existed since the Windows XP days where you needed SP1 and updated motherboard firmware to support 48-bit LBA addressing if you wanted to use drives larger than (I think) 137 GB. Since then, there's a 2TB limit for OS disks booting in Legacy BIOS mode, but that doesn't apply to systems booting in UEFI mode or to non-OS disks at all as long as you're not running XP anymore. The only possible limitation you might run into is that some high capacity M.2 SSDs achieve their capacity by having storage chips on both sides of the board, and that can cause some physical fitment issues in some systems. So be aware of that. Or if you can find an SSD of the desired capacity that's only single-sided, then even better.
Although yes you can certainly install Windows on one physical drive and use the other one purely for a Data partition. That's a fairly common setup and has been for years. Assuming of course the system will support having both drives installed simultaneously. Some Dell systems are designed such that the M.2 SSD and 2.5" SSD would occupy overlapping physical space within the system and therefore although it's possible for the system to suppot both types of SSDs, it can't support both at the same time. Check the documentation of your system if you're worried about that, which you can find on support.dell.com. The Service Manual would likely be especially helpful here since it will show you where each of those devices would be installed and therefore whether they seem to occupy overlapping space.
CocoBoy
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September 14th, 2020 19:00
Thanks for the helpful reply. Dell have been in touch and confirmed that I can use a larger capacity M2 drive. They also confirmed I can run the OS on a 2.5" SATA drive instead of the M2. As I already have a good working 2TB SSD SATA drive I will probably do that and just forgo the 256Gb M2 that shipped with the laptop. That way I don't need to spend any money upgrading the M2 drive.