Alienware Aurora r5 m2 SSD installation question

Question

Hi everyone, I'm having a really hard time finding a good guide on this so your help would be greatly appreciated. I'm also new to this forum and to installing things into desktops so I apologize in advance for my ignorance.

I bought an Alienware Aurora r5 desktop reading that it was highly upgradable, and I bought it with only one HD. But I wanted to install my own M2 SSD into it after seeing how fast my laptop runs using a SSD as the drive holding the OS. I researched and saw a video on youtube from Alienware showing how easy it is to change the M2 SSD and also looked at the Aurora r5 manual. However, after purchasing the computer and looking in it, I don't see the SATA cable that was in the video and saw another forum post saying that the SATA cables that are included are only the ones with installed hard drives. I bought the computer with the 850 watt power supply.

From what I see when I opened it up, the power cables are provided for the other Hard drives just no SATA cables. So this is my question since I'm not familiar with this M2 type slot loading SSD that goes straight into the motherboard. What exact cable do I need? I notice the SATA cable that's connected to the current HDD has a right angle style connector. But other than that, I have no idea what the other end supposed to look like or how or even if I need a power cable.. I also basically don't understand or know where I'm supposed to plug in the other end to, if I need an adapter of some sort, if I need additional power, I'm just totally confused because this M2 SSD connected to the motherboard is something I'm just not used to. If anyone could shine some light on this.

I've also read some differing things on how to put the OS onto the SSD but I'll save that for later as at this rate, I won't even be able to install the M2 SSD. Thank you in advance if anyone is knowledgeable about this.

Mike202_573885 · Accepted Answer

In order to install a m2 drive you have to pull out the video card(s), and it connects directly to the motherboard with no cables. Look at the yellow arrow.

Here is mine installed. Just slide it in, and screw it down.

Tesla1856 · Accepted Answer

So the M2 SSD doesn't need any cables because it goes directly into the motherboard? Correct

Mike202_573885 · Answer

The m2 drive blends into the motherboard, making it hard to distinguish. Here is another picture with everything but the m2 blurred.&#xa0;

Cloud9999 · Answer

Thank you for your reply Mike. So the M2 SSD doesn't need any cables because it goes directly into the motherboard? I assumed that it also needed a SATA cable because when I look at the system board components, there are 4 SATA connectors to the right of the M2, which I assumed it to mean 1 for the M2 SSD, one for the 3.5 HD, and 2 for the 2.5 HD's, which I thought were all of them (according to the manual). When I look at your setup I already see 3 right angle SATA connectors being used (1 white, 1 blue, 1 black but I can't see the last one on the bottom being used from your other photo because it's dark). My Aurora R5 only has one SATA right angle connector plugged in which is connected to the 3.5 original HD. Are you certain that I don't need another SATA cable for the M2? I'm just wondering because I don't see any space or connection for a 4th drive if the M2 doesn't need one. Thank you again.

Cloud9999 · Answer

Thank you Tesla and Mike. I'm going to system image the current hard drive, unplug it, then install windows with the system image onto the M2 SSD. Hopefully it goes smooth. Thanks again

Cloud9999 · Answer

Thanks Mike, I will try to take it out and put it in again and see if that does the trick. The card is a mydigitalssd M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD.

Mike202_573885 · Answer

My 1st thought is that you don't have the drive completely seated, or it is possible that you got a bad drive. You can leave the video card out while testing and just use on-board video.

Cloud9999 · Answer

I just physically installed the M2 ssd, disconnected the original Hard drive that had windows on it, and for some reason my Aurora r5 is not recognizing the new drive as it says 'none' in the bios. I tried disabling secureboot and it caused my computer to lose display, in which I had to take out the CMOS battery and eventually I was able to 'see' again. I tried changing from RAID to AHCI, which doesn't help. Does anyone have any ideas on what I should try next? I hope I don't have to take out the M2 again as I was having problems putting in the tiny screw. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you

Cloud9999 · Answer

Thank you Mike, I did as you said and now it does recognize that there's a M2 SSD. So you are right it wasn't seated properly. I have a windows USB recovery and used that to to get into the windows troubleshooter and planned to use a system image restore from an external HD. Everything goes fine as far as finding the system image point but now there's an error that won't let me install the image onto the M2 SSD. I've read somewhere that the target drive has to be bigger than the drive that the image is located on so I'm attempting to put the system image files onto a smaller USB drive. Did you run into any problem like this when you installed your OS onto the new M2 drive? Thank you so much for helping me! Very much appreciated

Mike202_573885 · Answer

I didn't try loading an image, I just did a clean install of Windows.

Mike202_573885 · Answer

Mine is on the default RAID. I was able to get Windows installed with secureboot enabled.

Cloud9999 · Answer

Thanks Mike, much appreciated. Tomorrow I'll try do a clean install of windows first, and then try to do the system image restore from there. Do you know if there are there certain settings the BIOS should be? For example, should I have it in AHCI settings or the default RAID? And should enable Secureboot again? Or turn it on after I get Windows installed? I've read of people changing all kinds of settings in the bios and I'm not sure what is just standard. Thank you again.

Cloud9999 · Answer

Thank you for all of your help. I finally finished it and learned a lot. I used Macrium Reflect to clone the drive to the SSD and then went into boot options and disabled secure boot so that I could boot from the USB drive with Windows 10 recovery. Went into the dos prompt menu and erased and reformatted the original HDD then enabled secure boot again. It's amazing how fast Windows boots now!

Juice63 · Answer

I spoke with Alienware tech support and you can use either SATA or NVMe types of M.2 drives.  NVMe is faster and one less cable to find and connect, but make sure you buy the right type of SSD.  There are official posts with a list of supported SSDs but they're all pretty old, slow technology.  A couple people have had success with newer ones like the Samsung 960 Pro but it's not officially supported.

Cloud9999 · Answer

Juice63, I bought the MyDigitalSSD BPX 80mm (2280) M.2 PCI Express 3.0 x4 (PCIe Gen3 x4) NVMe MLC SSD (120GB) for $65 from their site, and although I had to reseat the card once (as per Mike202's advice) it does work. I'm not sure about how the prices for the 256 and 512GB compares, but for the 120GB this was the cheapest best rated SSD I could find. I haven't had any problems so far and haven't tested the actual read/write speeds, but it definitely starts up in seconds compared to the original regular HDD.

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Alienware Aurora r5 m2 SSD installation question

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