XPS 15 2015 HDD version Upgrade SSD

Question

Hi everyone!

I know this problem has already been adressed here but none of the topic I've seen are adressing all the questions I have about doing this, since I'm really not a pro about this, I'm trying to ask everything here!

I bought my XPS 15 in 2015, it was the 1To HDD/32Gb SSD version and I expected to upgrade to a SSD later, now is the day and just ordered the new SSD ( Samsung 970 EVO Plus (250Go, M.2 2280) ) as I've seen here, this should be good.

So I expect to replace the 32Gb SSD that is used for cache with that SSD, and then install Windows on it and keep the 1 To HDD because this would be the perfect combination for me.

Is there anything to change in BIOS settings to make it work ? If yes, what do I need to change ?

I saw that you should I remove the HDD during the process of installing Windows, is this really necessary ? (I'm not really sure how to do it)

And by the way, removing the 32 Gb SSD will not cause harm to the computer in any way?

Thanks a lot!

jphughan · Accepted Answer

@RomsKidd Happy to help! Dell generally does only release at most one generation of a laptop per year, but I can't always remember which generation of XPS 15 came out in a given year, and since Dell identifies their laptops only by model number and not "model year", it's harder to figure out which XPS 15 was released in 2015. And then there have been cases of people who mention a year based on when they purchased it, which isn't always the same as the model year. When Dell introduces a new model, they keep selling the older model alongside it for a while.

Anyway, the XPS 15 9550 definitely supports NVMe SSDs, which is the reason I asked, so you're good on that front. And I've even found posts from people confirming that they've gotten their XPS 15 9550s working with that specific Samsung 970 model. I would recommend updating your BIOS first if you haven't already, but that likely isn't necessary -- although if you find that your system doesn't detect the SSD properly, that would be my first suggested fix.

No worries at all about asking seemingly simple questions. We all start somewhere! And just to reassure you, if you don't care about preserving any of the existing data on your system, then there's really no way you can screw this up that will permanently destroy or even damage anything -- short of physically damaging something while taking the system apart, anyway.

You should change your system from RAID to AHCI after installing the SSD but before booting your system from your Windows 10 bootable installation media, which you would have already created using the Media Creation Tool I mentioned.

In terms of cleaning your existing HDD afterward, diskpart really is the easiest way to do this, so here's what to do after you've got Windows running from on the new SSD:

Open Command Prompt
Enter "diskpart" and accept the UAC prompt.
Enter "list disk". Note the disk number for your HDD based on its capacity in the Size field. It will probably be Disk 1 (since the SSD will likely be Disk 0). If you're not sure which disk is your HDD because your SSD and HDD have identical capacities, just read on and I'll show you how to verify.
Enter "select disk X", replacing X with the number of the disk for your HDD, based on the output of "list disk" above. If you're not sure, try one of the numbers you think might be correct.
Enter "detail disk". The top line of that output will show the model of that disk. Make sure it's your HDD. If not, enter "select disk X" again using a different number this time, and then run "detail disk" again. Repeat until you've selected the correct disk.
When you're sure you've selected your HDD, enter "clean". That will mark the entire disk as empty. If the command comes back with an error, try just entering "clean" again. Sometimes the first attempt fails for some reason.

Once you've done that, you can do the rest in Disk Management. When you open that, it should immediately prompt you that there's an uninitialized disk connected and ask you to initialize it. Choose to initialize it as GPT, then you can create one or more partitions on the disk and format them as desired. You'll probably want NTFS unless you have a specific reason for using a different file system.

jphughan · Answer

@RomsKidd First of all, can you identify your XPS 15 by actual model number rather than year? Is it an XPS 15 9550? If you're not sure, open the System Information application and check the System Model field (or look in your BIOS Setup).

But assuming that you've got a system that will accept an M.2 NVMe SSD, then do you intend to clone your existing Windows installation to your new SSD or install Windows from scratch onto the new SSD? If you'll be installing Windows from scratch, I would recommend changing the SATA Operation setting from RAID to AHCI in your BIOS before you start the Windows installation. You don't need RAID mode if you'll be running two completely independent drives, and that will avoid the need to use the Intel RST driver, plus you'll have the option of using Samsung's NVMe driver if you want to do so, which isn't possible when the system is in RAID mode. You don't have to disconnect the 1TB HDD while installing Windows, but it isn't difficult, and I generally recommend it in cases where that disk will contain a bootable OS, as yours will unless you plan to erase it first. And honestly if you're already going to be opening up your system to install an SSD anyway, you may as well just get the Service Manual for your system from support.dell.com, which contains step-by-step instructions for removing and replacing every component in your system, complete with diagrams. You'll see that disconnecting the HDD is trivial.

If you instead plan to clone your existing Windows installation over to the SSD, you'd first want to disable Intel Smart Response on your system so that the system isn't relying on the SSD cache at all, since that's going to be removed. Then you'd use a cloning tool such as Macrium Reflect Free to create bootable media that will allow you to perform a clone. Here again it can be useful to be able to disconnect the source disk just to make sure your system boots from the newly cloned SSD, but it isn't technically essential. But in this case if you want to switch from RAID to AHCI, that will break a cloned Windows installation that was set up when the system was in RAID mode, so in that case if you want to make that change you'd need to boot your system in Safe Mode once after making that change to allow it to update, then you can reboot normally and it should be fine.

But whatever you do, if at all possible I would recommend backing up your 1TB HDD and then wiping it clean and setting it up as a data disk -- NOT just formatting the main partition that you can see. The reason I say that is that a disk that contains an OS will have a few other hidden partitions that are unnecessary on a data disk. If you're familiar with the command line tool "diskpart", you would want to use the "clean" command to mark the disk as completely empty, then from there you can either set it up again using diskpart or just jump to Windows Disk Management if you prefer a graphical interface for setting up disks. I'd recommend setting up the new disk as GPT. It's not required, but unless you'll need to be able to read this disk from Windows XP, there's no real reason to use MBR anymore. GPT is newer, supports some additional capabilities, and is more recoverable than MBR in certain corruption scenarios.

RomsKidd · Answer

Thanks a lot for the answer, and sorry I tought there was only one model every year and didn't knew where to find the right model, yes it totally is the XPS 15 9550 as written in my BIOS.

I absolutely don't mind about deleting everything in this laptop at all, it's my secondary computer and there is nothing important on it, some game I can download again and maybe some pictures I can save somewhere else. So I would prefer a fresh installation, even more if this is a good thing for the computer.

I've found where to change the SATA operation, so yeah will do this, I need to do it right after I've placed the SSD in the laptop, right ?

I'm not really familiar with diskpart at all, but if I can do it with the windows manager later, it shouldnt be a big deal. Just to be sure, I have to do the fresh install in the SSD and then clean the HDD of the old OS and make it a data drive?

Thanks for the Service Manual, will check that!

Sorry if those questions sounds stupid, it's the first time I'm doing this on a laptop and really don't want to destroy it by doing this..

RomsKidd · Answer

Ok, I've installed Windows on the SSD and it work great, but now when I try to do the diskpart, it says "Cleanup is prohibited on the disk containing the active boot, system, swap file, crash dump, or sleep volume."

I'm sure the os is on the other disk because my SSD is 250Go and my HDD is 1 To.. (SSD is disk 1 and HDD disk 0) ...so what is on that disk that I can't modify it ? When I start the computer I see different windows that I can start in "different places", is that the problem maybe?

I don't see the disk in in Windows File manager as well...

I forgot to mention that I already tried to re-install windows on this computer and it has already two partitions on it with two different windows on boot, (and obviously they don't start anymore). Is this the problem ? I mean that there is the startup partition somewhere on the HDD and I can't clean it because there would be not boot partition ?

jphughan · Answer

@RomsKidd Ok, there are several things about what you're saying that don't sound right. First, at the very least the Windows partition from your old disk should be showing up in Windows Explorer. The hidden partitions won't since they're, well, hidden, but if you don't see any indication of your 1TB disk in Windows while booting from the SSD, that's unexpected.

As for the note that "I forgot to mention that I already tried to re-install windows on this computer and it has already two partitions on it with two different windows on boot", I'm not sure what that means. What physical disks are these located on, and are you sure you actually have separate partitions rather than just separate Windows BCD entries that point to Windows installations that no longer exist? In any case, when booting from your SSD, you should not have a Windows Boot Manager menu that lists options for other Windows environments, even if they no longer exist.

It sounds like what happened is that you decided to leave the HDD connected when you installed Windows on the SSD, and since Windows saw an existing installation, it assumed you wanted to create a dual boot setup. If that happened, then the only EFI System partition you'll have will be the one on your original disk, and that partition contains Windows bootloader. So essentially what's happening is that at a system level, your firmware is always booting from your 1TB disk to load the Windows Boot Manager interface, and then if you choose to boot from the SSD, Windows Boot Manager will switch to that drive. That would explain why diskpart isn't letting you wipe that disk, because your SSD on its own does not have everything necessary in order to boot Windows. Specifically, it's missing the EFI bootloader partition.

I would suggest that you start again, and this time either disconnect your HDD or wipe it BEFORE you go through Windows Setup so that Windows won't attempt to set up a dual boot environment. To do the latter, press Shift+F10 when you first enter Windows Setup in order to open Command Prompt. In there, open diskpart, and in this case you'll want to run the "clean" command for EACH of your disks -- or if you chose to disconnect the HDD this time, still wipe the SSD. Wiping the HDD will mean Windows Setup won't see an existing environment that it will assume you want to dual boot with, and wiping the SSD will "reset" it so that Windows can implement all partitions necessary to boot just on that disk.

jphughan · Answer

@RomsKidd  Great news!  Glad I was able to help and that you're all set.  Fyi that trick about opening Command Prompt in Windows Setup and running diskpart's 'clean' command before proceeding through Windows Setup can be very handy.  But even if you don't do that, if you want to perform a truly clean install, then at the step of the wizard where Windows asks you where you want to install it, choose to delete all partitions on the target disk until the only entry for that disk is a single 'Unallocated space' item, and then choose to install to that.  You just have to be careful not to delete any partitions on any OTHER disks that you might have connected, such as an external hard drive or a secondary data drive that you want to preserve, because Windows Setup will list all detected partitions on all disks in a single list.  Each entry says 'Disk X Partition Y', but Windows will start listing 'Disk 1' partitions right below 'Disk 0' partitions rather than segmenting them into groups -- so if you're not paying attention while working down the list to delete your Disk 0 partitions, you could end up accidentally deleting a Disk 1 partition.

RomsKidd · Answer

Yeah, I tought I deleted all partitions but I was totally wrong, disconnecting the HDD is way easier anyway!

I think everything worked and is fine now, my HDD is all cleaned and a data disc now (formated in NTFS) and did as you said!

This computer is sooo much faster with a SSD, it's like I've got a new computer, it's amazing!

Thanks again for all the help!

RomsKidd · Answer

There was two installation of windows in the boot manager, because 6 month ago I tried to re-install everything on the computer. Everytime I was booting, i had to choose between two windows... it was stupid but yeah.. not a big deal actually. (the other windows was no working, so it was a "ghost" windows, yes)

You are totally right, I've disconnected the HDD, wiped everything on SSD it and re-installed everything and now everything is working fine, totally my fault, my bad!

So I did the diskpart and now I'm allowed to delete everything and barely everything is woorking perfectly as I can tell (I don't have any WiFi but I guess I'm just gonna install and update all drivers and everything is gonna be fine).

Thanks a LOT, for all your help, never expected that much help!

( ~~Ehm, I'm trying to install the wifi intel driver from dell, when I install it, it says "the system strategy doesn't allow this installation. Contact your administrator. Any ideas maybe?~~ nevermind i'm gonna install with the dell assistant and everything should be fine.)

XPS

XPS 15 2015 HDD version Upgrade SSD

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