Back from the abyss, XPS 15 (9530) mSATA upgrade

First, I make no claims of being the original pioneer for doing this upgrade. There were many great articles on the XPS 15 Wiki from people (here in the forum) that took the plunge and gave steps for doing the upgrade. I wanted to give my observations for my upgrade.

Before I attempted the upgrade, I made sure all of my tools were in place:

96705 Torx T5 Screwdriver
Paragon Hard Disk Manager 14 Suite
Samsung 500GB 840 EVO mSATA Internal Solid State Drive

This is not step-by-step instructions, but here is what I did in a nutshell:

- Disabled and uninstalled all of Intels Rapid software in the OS. Disabled in the BIOS.
- Removed back cover and swapped mSATA drives.
- Booted in OS and cloned the HDD onto the mSATA.
- Booted into BIOS and swapped boot order.
- Booted into OS, confirmed mSATA was boot drive and formatted HDD.

Here are my observations on the upgrade (kinda long):

* Be sure to make a full back-up your personal files and favorites. It can save you a lot of grief later on if something goes bad.

* One thing I should have had was the Dell Recovery software on USB thumb drive. I was able to call them after the fact and get it rushed to me in two days (there was a reason for that coming up in the observations).

* I will probably only use the Torx screwdriver once (for this upgrade) or maybe a second time when the larger battery is released.

* The Paragon software was essential to me. It cloned the HDD over to the mSATA which saved a lot of time and brain matter. I popped for the Disk tools suite which was only $10 more than the stand-a-lone disk copy utility.

* I did make back disks from Dell's back&recovery software which I found to be completely useless. I attempted to use it later in the day and ran into problems that it could not handle (more on this coming up).

* Popping off the cover was a little confusing, but by the end of the day I was a pro. Removing the mSATA card was very easy. No problems swapping the card.

* Changing the default drive in the BIOS was very confusing. After I had installed the drive and cloned the HDD to the mSATA, the Paragon software showed me that I had two exact drives (with the exception of the size of the boot partition on the mSATA). At that point the HDD was the "C:" drive and the mSATA was the "D:" drive. Most typical BIOS's will show you actual devices and make it very easy to change boot order. Not so for the Dell BIOS. It will show the boot order as "Windows Boot Manager" and "Windows Boot Manager #1." If you select either of these options it will again show you "Windows Boot Manager" and "Windows Boot Manager #1" and give you the option to change the order in the way they boot. I ended up deleting both of these options and rebooting. At that point the BIOS recreated the boot order and booted the mSATA as the primary. The next day I reformatted the partitions on the HDD and everything was where I wanted them to be.

* After I had installed the new drive I developed a display issue from a utility that I had installed. I could not find a solution to repair the problem so I ran Dell's recovery disk to return the OS to factory default. Somewhere along the way it made my boot drive unbootable and it kept telling me that it could not re-install because my boot partition was not ~900 Gb. The recovery was setup for the original setup and it refused to go any further. At this point I called Dell. I was completely honest and answered all of the troubleshooting questions. However, I never voluteered that I had upgraded the mSATA. In the end they agreed the installation was toast and told me they would two day me a Windows install program on a thumbdrive. About an hour after I talked to them I realized that I still had the original setup on the HDD. I swapped back to the original (32 Gb) mSATA and rebooted the laptop and ran Dell's recovery software. Everything was fine and then I did the upgrade all over again. At least now if I have to recover the OS, I have the Windows Setup program on thumbdrive.

My computer is now very fast. I have a laptop which has a 500 Gb mSATA drive with a 1 Tb drive for all my files, programs, games, and media. All I have to do, when it become available, is swap out the battery for the larger model and then I have a laptop that exeeds the top-tier model. At some point, when I get the money, I'm considering upgrading the HDD to a large SSD for complete solid state system. It's funny, when I was ordering the laptop, I remember asking the Dell sales rep if I could swap out the drive on the laptop and replace it with a large SSD at a later point in time. He said no, but little did he know what the Dell user community was capable of.

This is kind of long, and if you've stuck with me this far, thanks for reading. I hope this helps helps someone else, and please don't hesitate to ask questions...

 

Hi zoxxo and thank you very much for the extensive and in detail tutorial

Although your explanation was incredibly understandable I've some questions about the mSATA swapping. At this moment I'm waiting for my Dell XPS 15 9530 mid-tier (losing my mind waiting for the shipping number after some delays...) but I'm really decided to swapp the 32Gb SSD for an 256-512Gb SSD as soon as I'd be sure that I'm able to do all the process w/o any mistake.

As far as I've understood (and having checked lots of forums and disucssions about that issue) it's a pretty difficult work to swapp that mSATA because of the functionality of itself, the chaotic Dell's BIOS or whatever. Now that you'd be some kind of an expert in doing this operation can you please do a "dummies" guide to all the process? I'm kind of a newbie in changing parts in a laptop and when the tutorials start talking about techical operations like seraching among the BIOS or multiple windows installing I get lost. Not necessary to do an extensive explanation, i don't want to be a pain in the , but maybe some kind of a "in a nutshell explanation for dummies". I think that a lot of people around are looking for a tutorial like this and having checked the XPS15wikia "how to..." I think that yours is the best one.

Thank you, thank you very much!

 

My problem is that I did this months ago and may not remember everything I did for the installation/upgrade. Also, if you have never opened up a computer or if you're unsure or uncomfortable about the whole installation, then it may not be for you to do the upgrade. I ran into problems, and while I'm no expert, I've done this type of work before and was eventually able to solve the problems. If you don't know what you're doing, you could possibly void the warranty, or you might have to pay someone to recover the problem.

I'll think about it over the weekend (as you should do also), and get back to you...

 

Yes, I think that opening my new laptop w/o the technical skills would be pretty risky, but with the propper instructions and having checked some tutorials and advises it is a regular operation.

It is not super necessary to me to upgrade the mSATA, but I'm always working with autoCAD, 3Dmax and some other huge multimedia programms and I need both HDD and SSD. Also, when you receive the laptop it's pretty empty, and I think that's the best moment to do any tech upgrade, cause tehre are not many files in it to be lost. The mid-tier it's the best price/specs option and I'll keep checking some ways to upgrade that bothering 32GB mSATA.

I think that the main problem with this upgrade is that I don't know in wich way is the XPS 15 using this SSD, if the OS is located in the 32GB or in the HHD. I've listened that the SSD is used like a co-working unit linked to the HHD, raided to it, so the way to remove that link is to de-raid it in the BIOS and disable all the Intel Rapid's software -> Swap the mSATA's -> Now is where I start getting lost, and I've read by your experience that it's where all the troubles started. SSD clonings, back-up copies, multiple OS installations... I think that basically what is necessary to do is to clone the content of the HHD to the SSD, so the OS wi'll be located in the SSD, but it sounds too easy to do so it'll be for sure full of troubles.

Dont worry, I'll think a lot about upgrading my XPS 15 after this looong wait (checked all the Dell's shipping forums twice). I want a very fast/powerfull/light laptop, but w/o turning it into a brick.

Again, thank's a lot for all your advises and for taking into consideration my situation

 

The operating system resides on the HDD. The SSD acts as a buffer to keep as much of the OS in memory and minimize the need to read from the HDD. The mid-tier configuration is great right out of the box. I only did it just because I wanted to see if it could be done. I think you would be fine with leaving the configuration as is.

When doing the upgrade, the hardware upgrade is not the big problem. It's the software side of the upgrade that can be the issue. If you don't care about losing the original installation, you could disable the "intel rapid storage technology" in the BIOS. Then install the new SSD and disconnect the HDD. Install a clean copy of Windows from Dell's recovery software. It comes on a memory stick that you can order on line from Dell and you would receive the software within two days (if you're in the US). Once the OS is installed and working, reinstall the HDD and format the drive. That as easy as it gets. If you want to preserve the installed copy of Windows, then it becomes much more complicated.

If you're never done any of this before, or if you've never built or serviced your own computer, then I would not recommend doing this yourself. You can easily place this computer in a state that you can't fix, and you would also void your warranty making any repair from Dell costly (you would pay for the repairs). If you really want to do this, consider finding a repair shop or a friend that can make the upgrade. From what you describe, I don't think you really need this kind of upgrade. I've worked on computers as a job and a hobby, so it was easier for me to do this upgrade. I wish that I could help you out more, but I'm in school right now and carrying a full class load. If you decide to move forward with the upgrade, I would not be able help you.

I think you bought a good solid computer and what ever you do, I wish you good luck!

 

Wow, thanks alot for all the advises. I think at the moment i'm not for upgrading the mSATA, but it's usefull to know how to do it and that there's people that is always ready to help.