Alienware 14 (2013) - SSD Detection issue

I ordered the exact same configuration and received it today. I also want to take the sata SSD from my old laptop and add it to this machine. I think the only difference, maybe, between mine and yours is I ordered it with Windows 7, I don't like the touchscreen.

My SSD has Zorin Linux on it, and I'm trying to find out more about running it and dual booting it on this machine, using Linux for everything but gaming.

I will be watching to see if you have any luck getting your SSD to work with this machine, and in the process of getting mine to work, if I find out any "trick" to getting it to work, I will let you know, and I'd appreciate the same from you.

These are truly incredible machines!!

Snyde

Sorry the OCZ never worked ! 

I finally bought a Crucial M4 512GB and it worked the first time a fire it up. 

My first impression was like yours : Incredible machines ! But after a few months of daily usage a had my load of trouble. I'm sick of those random reboot, bluetooth module stopping 3-4 times a day, frequent bluescreen, video card detection problems, bluetooth detection problems. I begin to be afraid of using it 'cause I think it can blows up right in my face !

Has for linux I tried to install it when my SSD finally worked and the hardware in this machine was just Alien to the kernel at this point. Tried several distros F19, Debian 6, Linuxmint, Arch without any succes, the network card never got detected.

I could also just try to compile a fresh 3.11.* but Ain't Nobody Got Time for That !

Tought I'm releived I'm not the only one with this trouble, I think you might have to buy another SSD. Dell recommended me a Sandisk Extreme 480GB a friend of mine with the exact same machine juste put one of these in is and it worked flawlessy, it's also blazing fast.

When you installed Linux on your machine did you install it to the SSD and leave the original HDD untouched? That's what I want to do. I want to dual boot with it. I talked to someone in tech support today about it and they told me I had to install Linux first and then Windows. That's totally backwords from the way I've always done it, in fact usually Windows will "complain" about a different operating system on the hard drive if you are trying to install them both on one drive, in this case I won't be doing it this way. I was talking on the phone, and he had a bit of an accent, and I don't know if he really understood what I was trying to do.

What I want to do is to add my SSD drive to this machine, change the boot order to the SSD, and once Linux is running, run update-grub, and then os-prober, and that will scan the hard drives for operating systems and add them to Grub. Also, by doing it this way I won't alter the original hard drive at all.In fact, when I did it this way on my Toshiba I could press F11 on boot up, bring up the boot menu and select the original hard drive, and it would boot directly to Windows without going to grub.  I'm going to use Zorin Linux, a variant of Ubuntu.

I've actually had the SSD drive in my old laptop so long I don't know what brand it is. I almost think it's a 120G OCZ, but it might be a 120G Crucial. I've got 2 120G SSD drives, one in my laptop and one in my desktop, they've been in there a couple years and I don't remember what brand they are, but I know they are sata drives.

If I can't get either one of them to work I'll buy a Sandisk or a Crucial, but it won't be a 480G or a 512G. I don't need that much space, and really don't want to spend that much $$$ for one that big, especially after throwing the "long green" on the Alienware computer.

When you tried installing Linux did you tried Ubuntu?

I assume you're not dual booting Linux with Windows on this machine, is that right? Did you just replace the original HDD with an SSD, or did you add it as a second drive?

Thanks for the help. If you've got any more tips, please let me know.

Snyde