Alienware M17 xR4

ive purchased a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD and currently have 1T hard drive and 60GB SSD as standard when purchased two years ago, I wanted to install the Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD in place of the current 60GB SSD, but everything I've read so far indicates there are only two hard drives, now this is confusing, does Windows see these two drives as one eg C:\ 1TB or is one a standard hard drive and the other the 60GB SSD? Getting more confused the more I read about the upgrade. Can anyone help?

Stephen

 

The 60 GB SSD (it's actually 64 GB) is a mSATA SSD, not a 2.5" SSD people regularly think of for SSDs. You can put the new SSD you have in one of the other SATA bays the m17xR4 has and there shouldn't be a problem.
The 64 GB SSD is functioning as a cache for the 1 TB HDD you have. Certain repetitive programs/tasks, like booting to Windows; using Microsoft Office ordinarily; loading up certain games; etc., will be read through the SSD instead of the HDD. It will achieve close to SSD speeds, but it won't affect all of your programs and won't write (I think). If the SSD is fully dedicated as the cache for the HDD, Windows won't detect it as something you can store data in (it will still detect it, though). In simple sense, you will only be using 1 drive (just a C:\, no C:\ and D:\ or whatever).
You can have both the 64 GB and 256 GB SSD in the m17xr4, provided that they have different form factors (one is mSATA, other is 2.5"). However, if you intend on making the 256 GB SSD the boot SSD, you may have to uncache the 1 TB HDD. I'm not certain on this, so maybe another member can explain this part better than me.

 

going by the teardown videos it looks like it you can do 1 MSATA + 2 2.5" drives (or a 3rd if you can use a drive caddy in the ODD bay).

what I suggest you do is buy another MSATA SSD with a larger capacity (80GB+) and install it place of the 60GB, install the OS onto it and use the 256gb as your game drive.

you don't need to uncache anything since it should be all dictated by the Intel RST drivers and app

 

Thank you for the reply, it got the better of my imagination after posting this question, so I've had a look inside, the 1T hard drive is in bay 0 and bay 1 is vacant, but it has all the pieces to attach a new SSD including the bracket, screws and the connector, so it's just a matter of installing.

Can I migrate my os from the 60g mSATA SSD with the program I have to the Samsung Pro 850 256g rather than having to go through the resource cd all over again, I've just finished a Windows 10 clean install on the mSATA SSD

 

You could, but I prefer doing a fresh install of Windows. Takes some time, but doing a fresh install on Windows will make one appreciate the speed of an SSD. And it'll be as if the laptop came from factory.

 

Unless you explicitly did it, your OS is NOT installed on the 60 GB SSD. In some configurations, the recovery partition is located on that drive, but not your OS. It is primarily used by the Intel RST software (and RAID BIOS) to cache your 2.5" HDD to speed up things like booting and program performance. You won't need to "migrate" from the 60 GB drive, but you will need to clone or copy the contents of the original HDD to the SSD once you get it installed. Good luck!

Rich S.

 

personally i would just fresh install it on the MSATA and be done with it.

 

Hi, just to add my 5c...
The msata drive will be invisible to windows as it is caching the mechanical HDD. You can see it in Disk Management.

Simplest way to upgrade is to put your new SSD in the spare slot. Go into the bios and change the boot drive over to the new SSD. Start the machine from a windows install (CD or DVD on F12 during boot) and re-install windows to the new drive.

This will leave the caching alone so you now have two fast drives . Your new drive will be C: and the existing cached HDD drive D:. Once you are happy with your new installation you can format the second drive to get all the space back. If you have problems just changing the boot order back will start the machine on the original windows installation.

Any drive swapping will mess up the caching and can get tricky if you don't understand how it works - it's in hardware and totally OS independent. The MSATA is also under the keyboard so needs more dismantling .

Good luck

 

no point in keeping the caching drive if there's no need.

 

Of course there is a point. The existing HDD stays cached so it's way faster when loading from there (after the first time it is used).
It is also the simplest way to add a dedicated SSD without any messing with the IRST, by changing the boot order.

It means that the original installation will remain in-place ready to be rolled back to if the win install has problems (just put the original drive back to boot in the bios).

 

I agree with mickyd, I kind of did something similar in my R4, removed all caching support, installed 7 on the 256 840pro, 8.1 on the msata, got a cheap 840 Evo for games and the 500gb hdd into the esata case

And since it's all SSD, save some power as a bonus