Does M17X-r3 support SATA III (6GBps)?

Hopefully this is a simple question to answer.  Perhaps someone that has a SATA III drive in their machine can confirm it's fully compatible?

Thanks

I can confirm that M18x is the only laptop currently shipping that is supposed to support SATA III.

WOW that is super good to know.. .

Thanks for the response Chris, although your use of the word "supposed" is a little concerning!  I just checked the manual on the Dell site and have found the following which contradicts what you have said :S

The manual is available here:

You can use it but there is a known documented issue with using Port 0 - sometimes it runs sata III other times not. If you use Port 1 and you arent on bios A09 it runs SATA III speeds all the time - Dell Really need to address this issue.

Any thoughts on this Chris? Should I assume that I can use a Sata 3 SSD in my machine?  Don't want to shell out for an expensive drive if I can't utilise it.

Thanks

I'm running BIOS A08 so on Port 1 it should run SATA III at all times.  

With regards the installation, is the following correct: At the moment I have 2 HDD.  I plan to remove the 2nd drive and replace with the SSD and then clone the 1st HDD onto the SSD.  Then I will replace the 1st HDD with the newly cloned SSD and reinsert the 2nd HDD leaving me with the SSD with the OS on and the 2nd HDD with my documents on.

Questions:

(1) How does one clone a drive? Will OCZ provide software with the drive to achieve this?

(2) Since I want the SSD on Port1 to get the max speed will simply swapping the drives round still leave me with a bootable system.

(3) Additionally, since this is a laptop that I use for work I need to minimise downtime, therefore if I run into problems with the SSD installation can I simply put the HDD back in and everything will be back to how it was before I started messing with the SSD?

(4) I've read something about different HDD settings in the BIOS (IDE, AHCI, something like that).  Can I just amend this as appropriate and the cloned OS will work OK? Or does the OS need to be installed with the BIOS settings?

Advice please.

Regards

Hi,

I installed 2 SSD 512gb SAMSUNG 830 in Raid 1 in a M17x R3 full options bought 15 days ago:

I got during WIN 7 x64 installation little crackling noises in the speakers.

After complete install; specialy audio driver; they were still there.

I unplugged 1 drive: OK, no noise

i switched to the other one: OK, no noise

reinstalled both together: noise again...specificaly during software installation or files migration.

I decided to order 2 VERTEX 3.

the installation of the Raid 1 was fantastic! no noise any more.

BUT after 2 hours i got a message from Intel RST: volume raid 1 degraded...

Unplug the SSD 1, restart with the degraded volume.

Put back the disk, rebuilt, OK

3 hours later volume crashed AGAIN.

I had 5 AlienWare in my life. I never had this kind of INTEL problem.

The worse is Intel has no solution to fix this issue. The ports 0 & 1 has no capacity to manage SATA III in the same time.

I spent $3185 for this laptop. And nobody knows how to fix a Raid 1 or a Sata III installation.

come on Intel ! wake up.

In my experience my Vertex 3 SSD is always detected as a SATA3 device whilst in HDD0 whilst when in HDD1 it is sometimes detected at SATA 3 and sometimes as SATA 2.  Therefore since I only have 1 SSD using HDD0 is fine, but I can see your frustrations with a RAID set-up.

If you check my previous post you can see an excerpt from the manual that says it does support it, but looking at the latest version of the manual this has been removed to say only SATA2 is supported.  Doesn't seem quite right that if the product fails to support what is originally specified that they can just change the user manual to say that it no longer supports it.

Yes it sounds like they found out the chipset doesn't fully support sata III and took that part out of the manual. I didn't see on your other post that it was for the M17X, I was thinking it was for the M18X like I have, sorry about that.

Sorry to bump this up, but I knid of want to be sure before spending money on a SSD. So is it accurate that m17x r3 DOES NOT support SATA III? Only SATA II SSDs will work? Is it better to installe then in slot 1 instead than slot 0?

If so, anyone could reccomend some SDD to buy, let's say aorund 120gb?

Thanks.

I have an m17x R3 and had nothing but BSODs with the Vertex 3. Same thing with the Kingston HyperX. Anything SF-2281 based might be a problem. I have the Crucial m4 now. Do your research before buying to find out if they fixed the problems people were having with Sandforce.

Thank you for answer. I discover this problem after buying the ssd. :( there is no solution to my issue... :(