Anyone tried SSD in PCIe slot and 2.5"in HDD?

Hey guys, has anyone tried putting a SSD in the PCIe slot designated for the WWAN in the M1330? Something like this one: http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/SP...-9-----800008CD-1222915030.jsp#specifications
And then having a normal hard drive in the 2.5" HDD area for storage or games and stuff. Hopefully they will make these PCIe SSDs much faster and cheaper.

 

I haven't tried that... but I have a 120Gig SSD for the HD in my 1530, and I LOVE it. I'll never buy a laptop without SSD again...

-Jim

 

The read speed of that SSD module is ok at 70, the write speed of 15 is far below any typical 2.5" SSD or HDD.

I'm running a 128GB SDD in the 2.5" location and I also don't ever want to go back to mechanical storage.

 

The idea of a PCI Express Mini Card SSD is interesting though. It could make a nice internal backup/extra space/media location.

 

Well I was planning on waiting for those PCIe cards to be much faster and enough for my OS and applications to be stored on there so I am thinking a 64GB fast SSD in the PCIe slot and then a 500GB or more when they come out in the 2.5in place. My 250GB is already half full and I have a 1TB external that is about 75% full and a portable 250GB hard drive full as well. So I just wanted something FAST for the OS and something large for storage on the laptop.

 

Unfortunately companies aren't really tailoring solutions towards PCIe (except those crazy mofos at FusionIO w/ 160GB 700/600MB/s read/write speeds in a PCIe card...) But that's for desktops. Oh and it's available for consumers for the low price of a bajillion dollars! Ok so it's more like $5-10k.

 

What about something like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/RunCore-32GB-SSD-MINI-PCI-e-for-ASUS-Eee-PC-901-1000_W0QQitemZ400017047340QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAU_Laptop_Parts?hash=item400017047340&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66%3A4|65%3A15|39%3A1|240%3A1318
I would really like the best of both worlds, one fast drive for OS and one massive drive for storage.

 

My post from a similar thread on the D430 -- not sure how similar the XPS is to the D430:

 

I tried a 32Gb SSD in the Expresscard slot on my M1530 (where the media remote normally lives) and installed Windows XP on it, but the read/write speed for that bus was way too slow - it took about 5 minutes for XP to boot up and was completely unusable. No problems though, I use it to back up work now

 

You could boot this from the BIOS? Did you use the USB Boot option?

 

Yup, booted as a USB device.

 

i stuck the 8gb ssd from my dell mini 9 which was a STEC STM00001d661 into my WWAN port of my m1330. its in there as i write this from my m1330 and it doesnt show up. ill try it in the slot where my wireless card is to see what happens...

 

tried it in the wireless slot and still nothing... however i moved my wireless N card to the WWAN slot and it recognizes it but seems like it just needs teh drivers.

 

Just talked with consultants on Dell US Chat. After looong conversation the first one said that it'll work. Still, I started new session and made a second consultant double-check it. Result was the same. SSD must work in these miniPCI slots of XPS M1530. But I don't have a spare one and don't wanna end up with brand new not compatible with my lappy. Anyone else (except daewootech) tried ?

 

Which means your expresscard SSD was really just a USB flash drive in an expresscard case. Expresscard has USB pins to support exactly that. USB flash drives are not fast enough to run an OS off of. Expresscard also has PCI-E pins.

 

Well, I just made third consultant confirm this is gonna work ;-P. UWB miniPCI slot should do.

@peterf, it's not an expresscard SSD. It's miniPCI >> http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_minipci_express_ssd-sata_

 

Even if you couldn't boot directly from the BIOS you could probably put the Windows bootloader on the internal hard drive and configure BCD to load from the PCI-E slot so long as it has a GUID assigned to it and appears as a drive to the bootloader.

 

The only concern I have is that I've read a post here (can't find the topic right now) where someone spoke about PCI SSD's. It didn't work for him in XPS M1330.

 

Sorry for double post, but I thought this will be helpful....

The PCI-e cards currently available will not work.

You need this one..
http://www.siliconmadness.com/2009/06/samsung-mini-pcie-ssd.html

 

Of course PCI-e cards won't work. PCI-e is for desktops... The guy who started this thread knows that, as evidenced by the fact that he linked to MINI-PCIe SSDs.


Has anyone gotten an M1330 to recognize an OCZ mini-PCIe SSD? I want to get one of the 64GB ones for my M1330, I don't care if it boots off it or not - I have an SLC 2.5" sata for boot, I just want to use the mini-PCIe SSD as a little bit of extra storage.

 

You can't use miniPCIe SSDs in any notebook since they have no built in I/O controller. Only certain netbooks have a custom I/O controller attached to the receiving pins of miniPCIe. Samsung is set to release some miniPCIe SSDs w/ their own I/O controller but I have yet to see it on the market.

 

Many of the mini PCIe card-based SSDs are just that; they are *based* on the mini PCIe interface but use PATA interfaces (or maybe SATA). In the Dell Mini, they just used it as a socket interface but aren't using it as a "real" mini PCIe interfaces. It's just that the socket is a convenient form factor that fits great and and support the card while the unit is moved rather than using the much wider PATA or SATA with power connectors. I have two Minis, and neither my stock nor my Runcore SSDs would, nor should, work in any mini PCIe interface. It's completely doable (and would be very fast), but as mentioned earlier there isn't a lot of development in this space. I planned on getting an SSD for my ExpressCard slot later on to meet the same need. I have a 500GB 7200RPM drive for my main storage, and it's still getting used heavily for VM storage. I want more storage for movies and music (128GB would be nice).