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D830 Flash Cache Module Enabled for Windows 7
I have a Latitude D830/140M with A17, 8GB RAM, T9300, XT409 (Blu-ray/DVD/CD) and WD 750GB hard drive. The Latitude is running a fresh copy of Windows 7 Pro SP1 64bit.
The laptop has pretty great performance and even plays Blu-ray movies via TMT5 without a hitch, just amazing for a 8 year old PC.
I recently became interested in the FCM (Flash Cache Module) from Intel and purchased one (2GB chip). I put the module in the WWAN slot next to the WLAN slot (Dell 1505 802.11n) and made the 2 changes in the BIOS to enable the FCM (I was already running in ACHI).
I know the FCM ultimately shows up in Device Manage as another drive and I/O controller, but first the PC boots into Windows and the FCM shows up only as Other Device/Unknown device.
Not to worry, I run the latest Intel FCM driver/Matrix Controller installer (INVM110ENU.exe) and the FCM "drive" shows up in Device Manager as does the Matrix Controller.
I restart the PC and the Matrix Controller shows that Ready Boost and Ready Cache are enabled and sure enough, the PC boots faster and seems more peppy. Not to bad for a $20 module, but it turns out that Windows Update Service (WUS), Search and BITS are all knocked out. I remove the Intel FCM software from Programs and Features and the 3 services come back except that WUS has lost it's installed update history list.
Has anybody got the FCM to work on a D630/D830 AND retained WUS, Search and BITS? The PC has better than good performance without the FCM, but I'm a geek and would like to know if FCM really does work. Is the large drive (750GB) the problem due to it's 4K physical file size (512 logical) and the 2GB FCM's physical file size is 512? Or do I need a newer FCM driver/software?
Thanks for any reply.
laidbacktokyo
54 Posts
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November 20th, 2015 12:00
Oops, so surprising comment...
I guess the founder of this thread has started a discussion on how to properly & efficiently use the enabled FCM with HDDs but not SSDs w/o FCM, right?:emotion-5:
As for IRST drivers so I believe that v10.1.5.1001 operates faster than mentioned v10.1.0.1008. Though it's just my personal experience of its current use with my M4300 SSD w/o FCM installed...:emotion-10:
UPDATE: Sorry for a double posting. The first above message was suspended for some unclear reason security check...:emotion-12:
laidbacktokyo
54 Posts
0
November 20th, 2015 12:00
Oops. So surprising comment.
I guess the founder of this thread has started a discussion on how to enable FCM and use it properly & efficiently with HDDs but not how to turn off FCM and use SSD, right? :emotion-5:
So it's surely no problem to turn FCM off in BIOS and use any size SSD (or HDD) would it be 512Bps or 4KBps.... with IRST driver either of v10.1.0.1008... or v10.1.5.1001, which seems to operate faster in my personal experience and now in use with my M4300 SSD w/o FCM installed... :emotion-10:
mahunt
11 Posts
0
November 21st, 2015 09:00
No worries.
Your helpful SSD info provides the next evolution of the D830, from HHD + FC to SSD.
I thought there were a bunch of SSD related OS disk items to check to make sure that the SSD didn't kill itself with excessive writes (like no swap file and such).
Cheers.
larry818
5 Posts
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November 22nd, 2015 09:00
That "excessive write" issue is not an issue, according to the SSD mfg's web sites.
I installed a Samsung 500gb ssd as the boot drive and a 1tb ssd in the cd bay of my D830. It's got awesome performance, better than my daughter's new Dell laptop. Running winders 10 as well. The nice thing about 10 (and 7) is the bluetooth finally works the way it's supposed to.
My D830 has the nvidia video chip which is a hot running thing. I found that almost as good as installing the ssd was that I removed the heat sink and re thermal-goop'd it. The old thermal goop was like concrete.
laidbacktokyo
54 Posts
0
November 22nd, 2015 11:00
z below is a part of my another post @ this web here:
en.community.dell.com/.../19453973
p.p.s. i forgot to mention that i truly hope that all laptop users must know that it's highly recommendable to disassemble laptop at least once in 1-2 years of use to replace z thermal grease in-between cpu and heatsink (and video chip and its heatsink - although this 2nd one depends on design. for instance both m65 & m4300 aren't designed to use thermal grease with video chip. it's just a thermal pad. it's also replaceable if need but this is a rare case) otherwise u'll likely have a problem to separate heatsink from cpu if need when after a few years of continuous use a cpu is likely like-soldered to its heatsink. of course it depends on a thermal grease tech characteristics but this problem is unfortunately common for a thermal grease used by dell by default. so be careful with cpu surface...
UPDATE: sorry I made a minor mistake above... just checked now... at least m4300 heatsink is designed to use thermal grease with both cpu & videocard, and thermal pad for chipset northbridge chip...