New M6500 Discussion Thread

Yes, but your SSD still needs to support TRIM. Older SSDs or SSDs with older firmwares do not support TRIM. Afaik Samsung does, Indilinx bases with firmware 18xx and 19xx, Intel with G2.

So you have Win7 installed already? Could be that you need to run a repair installation after changing that bios setting. There where posts here that it worked for some without reinstall and for some not when changing that bios setting.

Some Registry tweaking might help as well: [Solved] How do I change HDDs from IDe to ACHI without reinstalling Windows 7 - Chipsets-Bios - Motherboards-Memory

 

I just got my m 6500 last week with a samsung ssd factory installed. I've already got all my programs and data on the computer, so don't want to screw anything up.

 

I changed the bios to IDE as I wanted to measure the SSD performance with that setting. Windows wouldn't boot but simply switching back to ahci brought Windows back. No guarantee of course, but testing that setting and go back to the old value if booting does not succeed should work.

Did you verify your Start value of the msahci registry key?

 

What wrong with your usb 3.0? Mine shows up in Device Manager....you didn't try to install the drivers on Dell's site did you? Don't, uninstall and let windows 7 install the drivers. See my DM below:

 

No- not yet... I think 3 is disabled and 0 is enabled???

 

From Dell's reps responses and also from this forum:
- you can add anytime a new mini-SSD (only look for the proper size); until now, the performance of Dell's sold Samsung is not great at all.
- if mini-SSD is present, the other 2 drives MUST be RAID 1 or 0. You can not have them non-RAID (this forced me to forget about mini-card, because I have a 160Gb Intel X25-M G2 and a 500Gb Seagate 7200 HDD and I'm very happy about their performance on my XPS M2010). There is no technical reason provided for this choice: mini-card -> required RAID for the other two SATA drives - I really hope in the future they will let us use all three in non-raid if this is only a BIOS restriction.

 

The Dell service tech tried to replace the motherboard but claimed that the replacement motherboard that was shipped to him was defective. Somehow he knew it was defective before he even installed it. Bizarre. Anyway, he took the laptop completely apart and replaced the two companion boards. He said they have to order another main motherboard. When he re-assembled the Laptop, the keyboard had a bulge in the middle so he didn't even re-assemble it correctly. After the tech left, I called Dell to have the laptop returned. At least Dell made returning the laptop for a refund easy. They setup a UPS pickup for tomorrow. Oh well, I really wanted/expected the M6500 to be great. For now, I'll continue to use my Inspiron E1705 since it has been great for the last 4 years. Maybe I'll try the M6500 again in the future.

 

Figured....I just read too many stories about tech's leaving screws behind, etc....I had that popping but it quit when I nuked the IDT driver and rebooted. It really is a great machine, hope you get one sometime in the future. Good luck.

 

Has everyone checked their task scheduler? I changed my java update check to once per month instead of everytime I log on. Also, since I use PerfectDisk 10 Pro, I disabled the default auto defrag schedule by windows.

FWIW

 

Not sure why but mine doesn't even show the 3.0 after reboot and uninstalling of the NEC 3.0 Host controler!