SSD working well - SATA3

Hi Guys,

Just a quick update, have just installed my new Samsung 830 SSD in my M14x. I've had to reboot about 10-15 times this morning due to the re-install of all the resources and drivers and no problems so far. Also, just ran a benchmark and am getting the drive recognised as SATA3 with read seq of 483.33MB/s and write of 250.36 MB/s.

Pretty happy with this drive...so far so good. Special thanks to Samsung for the packaging also, definitely a premium product and not bad for £165 for the 128GB drive.

I'll keep you posted

 

Hey,
Nice to hear. I have a OCZ vertex3 SSD in my machine, but i have boot problems with it. With firmware 2.13 i have to boot 1 to 5 times to get a succesful boot. With the newest firmware for the ssd (fw 2.15) i have to boot 10 to 30 times to get a succesfull boot. A real disaster.

So i'm glad to hear the samsung 830 SSD works succesfull in booting and with SATA600 speeds.
I understand you don't have booting problems with the samsung ssd when everything is installed. Sounds good... i appreciated if you let us know if booting stays good. I consider to buy a samsung 830 SSD because vertex3 is an disaster.
Thanks for your announcement.

 

no probs, I was worried at first after reading the horror stories but i'm amazed at how well its working. Samsung also give you a handy USB to SATA dock and Norton Ghost. As I only got the M14x last week I didnt need to image it but used the dock to move some downloads back. Boot up is around 8 seconds, with a full restart around 12. Lovin the 830.

 

i had an intel 510 which worked perfectly for the first couple of weeks. then there were occasional problems waking up from hibernate. then boot up in general. good luck

 

I second that ... please keep us updated as im thinking of buying the 830 once I receive my m14x .... I just found the 128 for less than 260 after taxes and shipping ....

 

flybass ... don't you have a samsung ssd ... because it says so in your sig ... I hope you don't mind tell us how that is going .... any BSODs ... ?

 

zero boot issues. buying the ssd which dell would have installed was the best decision i made. the morons at hidevolution (who installed the 510) were trying to have me replace the 510 with the m4 instead.

 

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC128N/AM 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) Notebook Upgrade Kit

is this the one? please confirm, thanks!

 

yep, thats the one I installed yesterday. Still no issues

 

@ niel hhh, Do you have the Intel RST drivers installed as well?

 

Have the same drive as well, seemed to work great for the first week or so, but the drive is occasionally causing the system to hang for about a minute, and then everything goes back to normal. Much better than the Corsair Inferno GT though.

 

Yea, I think RST driver is a big issue for some of the SSD drive. I could not install RST at all in my Vertex 2 drive. Without it, it works perfectly well.

 

I'm also using the 128GB Samsung 830 drive with my new M14x and it's running flawlessly. I think RST is installed, but it's sticking at SATAIII speeds, and seems to be doing 500MB/s Read, 300MB/s Write.

No problems with boot up or hibernation

 

Hmm interesting, maybe since it comes from dell with samsung SSD the new samsungs work better for Sata 3. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense but who knows

 

are you guys saying that the extra 350 bucks from 750gb hdd was for installing 256gb samsung 830 ... ? Anyone to confirm this ... ? I thought they will install some sata 2 ssd or samsung 470 or something ... reason i think so is they refused to tell me the brand or the speed of the ssd .... which raised my suspicion ....

 

Also have a Vertex 3 SSD in my M14x. Problems booting a lot of the time, and random BSOD's. :/

 

ok i take my words back .... according to the review in notebookcheck, dell installs pm810 which is 470 .... not worth the extra 350 ....

 

The Samsung uses its own controller chip, so I suspect this is why people aren't having the same problems as those with SandForce chips.

 

Any chance you can provide the settings or changes you've done? I have RST installed, get SATA III speeds, and left Windows hard drive power management settings to defaults. I'll have the occasional random instances where my HDD indicator stays lit for a minute, and during those times the system acts like it can't access the SSD. Hibernation causes my computer cold-boot instead of resuming from the last state.

 

Hi,

I didn't make any changes, just re-installed using AlienRespawn once I had replaced the drive with the SSD.

Are there any power saving settings that might cause problems?

 

sorry for the delay, no RST driver installed. Simply replaced the drive and booted from recovery CD. Was prepared for some issues but it all just worked. Amazed when I ran some benchmarking to confirm all was working at SATA3 speeds. 3 year warranty and a MTBF of 1.5million hours (or 171 years) is a nice assurance, not sure how they worked out the latter.

 

Received my brand new M14x yesterday - I'm soo happy with it. Booted it up initially to check that the processor was correct as to what I ordered and the rest of the specs etc. Had a play around with the AlienFX which worked well.

Then powered it down, opened it up, and installed 16GB 1333 GHZ RAM (Corsair) and also a Crucial M4 512GB SSD.

I did a clean install of everything, but did NOT install the Intel RST drivers. Everything seems to be working beautifully after hours of testing, installing and running applications and multiple cold and warm boots. Also definitely getting SATA III speeds - Windows Speed index gave my SSD a 7.9 rating, still have yet to benchmark properly but boot times and load times are amazing.

Also, for some reason my Bios Reads A06 - yet only version A05 is available on the Dell Support Drivers and Downloads Page for the M14x. I'm not sure if it's to do with that - but everything is working absolutely perfectly...so far

 

Is it possible that the bios can fix the sata III issue?

 

Is it possible to backup the A06 and put it on the net?

 

I'll see what I can do for you when I get home!

 

Here you go!!!

Universal BIOS Backup Toolkit

This should work.

UPDATE: I tried the utility with my existing Bios and it created a rom file. Anybody knows how to flash with usb stick using rom file?

 

i think i am too n00b to open my m14x myself and put in a SSD harddisk and do a clean reinstall. lol.

 

Swap SSD:

1. remove battery and power cord. (very important)
2. swap

All you have to do is follow points 1,2,4 and 5. in post 2.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-m14x-disassembly-teardown-upgrade-guide.html

Clean install:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...er-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html

 

I also learnt from this really good video on youtube - Alienware M14x R1 disassembly for GPU + CPU teardown / review - YouTube

But as c69k just posted - most of the info is on this forum. Disconnecting the battery and not breaking the ribbon/white zip lock tab are probably the most important things

 

Mine was also shipped running BIOS A06, so perhaps this is what is causing us not to have issues?

 

Hi, If you have the latest bios A06 m14x, and the page Dell of the drv is only the A05, it might mean that the new m14x have made any modification or revision of the chipset or other hardware, which is not compatible with "old "M14x.

I do not know if it is advisable to put the bios A06 on the m14x does not come out with that version, then maybe I'm wrong

Ciao

 

Hi there,

How do you get AlienRespawn to work on your M14X? Mine keeps saying that:

"AlienRespawn cannot be installed because your hard drive does not have the Windows Recovery Environment"

Can you or any one help? I didn't get a response from the original AlienRespawn thread.