Area-51m R1, replacement of SSHD drive

Hi @BHE666  Dell Support for Alienware Area-51m Storage says it can have up to two M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe drive cards and Crucial database says the drive card can have up to 2TB capacity. Samsung is a good choice because their drive cards have all the full options, such as encryption. Fastest M.2 NVMe SSDs as of January 2022 (Ranking) - GPCB (gamingpcbuilder.com) 

The fast Samsung 970 PRO or EVO Plus is a good choice. The Samsung 970 PRO is the best gaming drive card and the Samsung 970 EVO Plus is still among the very best in the PCIe Gen 3 category. Search internet for discounted purchase. 

A single OS(C:) boot drive is the most reliable configuration, with the GPT partition format file system to use BIOS boot list option UEFI for fast boot and enhanced security. 

The second slot can store a Data drive and can also be used by Macrium Reflect Free to copy (clone) the standby OS(C:) drive that should be part of the disaster Recovery Plan just in case the original OS(C:) boot drive cannot be recovered. 

The SATA SSHD drive is very slow, but provides good long term archive data retention. A normal HDD with increased storage capacity is a good replacement. If the laptop is being used when traveling, an external SATA HDD is recommended. 

Hope that this is the information you wanted. 

I have a Samsung 870 in the hard-drive slot, Magician says the ssd is running at 3gbps, 6 gbps "available" ?

Does anyone know how to get the drive running at 6 gbps ?

Hi @LudoC welcome to this free user to user Alienware laptop discussion forum. This is not Dell Support. 

The Samsung 870 EVO SSD specification says it has SATA 6 Gb/s Interface. Connect system to internet, visit Device Manager, Disk drives, right click select Samsung 870 SATA device, and try to update SATA driver, then Restart (not Shut Down) so that change is saved. If unable to update Samsung 870 SATA driver, delete driver and Windows will install new driver from internet during Restart. 

Hi Crimson, thx for your help, but......... I can't fins a sata driver to replace

I tried the update button, but Windows says the newest version of the drivers is already used.

best regards

Ludo

Hello, I see you are looking for technical assistance. If you need our help, you can start a private message with us and we will be happy to assist you.

Hi,  

I just noticed that under Windows I have full acces to all three drives ( 2 NVMe, one Sata), Bios only recognizes the NVMe's there is no hard-disk 1-2-3, also UEFI doesn't show me the third drive.

So now I can use my fastest drive only for storage, not as bootable system drive.

The manual says 6gbps / 1 Terabyte, might my problem be that I have 2 Terabyte installed ?

best regards

Ludo

Hi @LudoC thank you for sharing update. 

The Crucial System Advisor database has list of internal SSD that they have tested, and work in the Alienware Area-51m two fast or ultrafast M.2 NVMe slots and the single slow SATA bay. Your OS(C:) boot drive should be a fast or ultrafast M.2 NVMe of up to 2TB capacity. The slow Data SATA drive can be up to 4TB capacity. 

Your 07-05-2022 08:11 PM message is confusing. Is your slow 1TB SATA SSHD or 2TB Samsung 870 EVO/QVO SSD being used as the Alienware Area-51m OS(C:) boot drive and the fast 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD used as a Data drive?  

Alienware Area-51m with Base Cover removed

Hi,

right now, my "System" is running on an Intel SSDPEKNW02 NVMe , but benchmarking shows me this is my slowest drive, with a linear read of 1506 MB/s.

My "secondary System" (dual boot) runs from a Samsung 970 EVO, linear read is 3252.

My archives are on a "slow" SATA SSD Samsung 870 QVO , linear read is 6196 !!

So much to "slow"

So, naturally, I decided to swap the Intel and the 870 to gain some system speed.

The 870 is only accessible from Windows (and Partition Master / Clone Disk etc.) , BIOS only lists the M.2 drives, so I can't get UEFI to set up a bootable system on the 870. 

This weekend I'll rip out the M.2 drives and check if BIOS can be persuaded to do something

Hi @LudoC thank you for sharing additional information. 

SATA SSD Samsung 870 QVO is advertised as having Sequential Read Speed of up to 560 MB/s and Sequential Write Speed of up to 530 MB/s. Not sure how your 870 QVO linear read is 6196. 

870 QVO SATA Internal SSD | Specs & Features | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Hi Crimson,

as I said, data from Samsung Magician benchmark after firmware update and optimation :

I have NO idea how and where these speeds are reached