Bios Recovery HELP :)

Ok , so I purchased my XPS 9550 just less than a month ago , I've been through all the most common issues (flickering, blue screens, etc) which most have been fixed through updates but I decided it just cant beat my Precision M6800.. well since Best Buy has their return period extended I've decided to return the unit so I backed up my recent work and tried to do a factory restore, it kept freezing when I pressed f8 at boot, finally I got it to at least display the Dell Logo with a spinning circle and "PLEASE WAIT" , well I waited at least 1/2 hour and nothing , so I went to reboot the machine and it's dead. the power button and keyboard light up but nothing else, if I hold CTRL and ESC at boot it will try to read from a USB drive which leads me to belive its looking for a bios file but the newer dell bios does not let you extract the HDR and ROM files.

If all else fails I will just return as is but it would be nice to wipe my drive of my data before returning but I don't have a PC which supports the newer SSD that's inside the notebook, if I am missing something or can wipe the drive externally please let me know.

Thanks in advance

 

For the bios it should suffice to place the updater .exe in the root of a bootable usb stick. Unless it were intended for non-DOS flash? Either way, it should be possible to extract the roms from the installer using a hex editor. Could have a look if you want, just upload the files somewhere.

To wipe the ssd; there's lots of very cheap adapters for every kind of form factor. Hook up to usb port and you're good to go. Google-fu 'M.2 usb adapter' / 'mSATA usb adapter' / 'SATA usb adapter', shouldn't set you back more than $15 or so. Might get a universal-type while you're at it; also useful for writing full image backups.

 

Currently, I don't believe there are any M.2 SSD enclosures that support NVMe.

 

NVMe is PCIe standardised, so an M.2 pcie adapter will work. Only need to make sure the adapter is not M.2 with SATA interface.

 

Would love to find such a thing.

Do you have actual experience with one that works with a NVMe SSD? Or a link to someone who has one working with a NVMe SSD? Specific make/model that would work?

Here's an example of a M.2 PCIe SSD enclosure that explicitly states it does NOT support NVMe drives (only AHCI ones): http://www.bplus.com.tw/Adapter/U3M2M.html

And a link to someone else who has gone through several M.2 PCIe enclosures and can't find one that will work with NVMe SSDs here.

A recent (4 days ago) link where someone says you CAN'T put a Samsung 950 PRO (another NVMe SSD) in an enclosure here.

 

Worked great with a Samsung 950 PRO -Series 512GB PCIe NVMe:

 

Yes, I know about the Lycom DT-120 already. It's a desktop PCIe card. It's not an enclosure nor something you can connect via USB to a laptop. Would work in a pinch if you've got a desktop PC.

 

Hey thanks guys, I decided to just order one of the PCIe adapter cards, newegg had them with good reviews, I will use it in a desktop, besides with this upcoming technology it's probably good to have one around anyway for future data recovery issues. FYI the one I ordered was the ($26.99) Addonics M2 PCIe SSD - PCIe 3.0 4-Lane Adapter

 

Neat, can't have too many adapters .

Ah, that. Could use a pcie docking station in turn; adapter within an adapter .