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13693
October 23rd, 2012 13:00
XPS 14
Hi,
In researching another issue with my XPS 14 (L421X) I was discussing an issue with my drive making a noise. The tech asked if it was the SSD drive of the larger drive. I did not realize I had an SSD drive and he informed me that I had a 32 GB SSD on board as well as my normal 500 GB drive. In looking at the disk manager, it shows up just as an 8GB partition that I cannot do anything do but when you run the diagnotics tool during bootup, lo and behold, there is a 32GB SSD drive in there.
I am sure you all know this already but it was a surprise to me. This was a replacement laptop for a lemon that I had gotten earlier so I never actually saw the specs on it before I got it.
That said, is there any way to get to that drive to use it? It seems to be tied to some intel rapid start tool that was not installed on my computer when I got it so it is just sitting there wasted and I cannot seem to do anything to it (even using 3rd party partition tools).
Thanks,
Dan
DELL-Terry B
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October 23rd, 2012 14:00
It sounds like you have a MSATA cache drive. It is basically a RAID 0 setup created by Intel Smart Response software with the primary drive so in Windows you are only going to see the main drive. The system loads the most used files on the MSATA drive as it is faster than the SATA drive and should generally increase Windows performance.
I really don't suggest it but you can disable the cache in the Intel Rapid Storage Utiltiy. Please make sure that all data is backed up before doing so.
Removing the mSATA/SSD or HDD:
I hope that this helps
TB
k0rgull
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October 24th, 2012 07:00
Thanks for the info. More what I was wondering is if I could use that drive as the boot drive. It seems a waste to have a pretty much unused SSD just hanging out. The computer is slow as mud so I am trying anything I an think of to improve the speed.
DELL-Terry B
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October 24th, 2012 09:00
64 bit Windows 7 require about 20 gygs of storage space, so presumably you will be able to install Windows on the mSATA drive but you wouldn't have a lot of room for anything else. If you do decide to do something like this please disable Smart Response from the rapid storage manager or the system won't be able to see the drive when you attempt to install Windows. Please also make sure to back up your data.
In theory you should be able to see an increase in speed especially while booting the system or loading programs if you do decide to try something like this. Since you will have to load most of your software on the SATA drive and not the mSATA drive I can't really say that it will be a big difference. If you are comfortable in reinstalling Windows it might be a good project.
TB
DELL-Royan S
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May 23rd, 2013 05:00
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