CoreStore MV Mini-PCIe SSD in XPS L502x

I just received a 64 GB SuperTalent CoreStore MV to try out in my XPS 15.

It's very small--to be expected for the form factor, but still.

Anyway, I plugged it in, and when I booted the system, Windows recognized that an SATA device was attached on the PCI bus, though it didn't have any of its own drivers.

I grabbed the drivers from SuperTalent's website and tried to install them. Two of them installed just fine, however when I tried to install the third driver, which replaced what Windows assumed was an "SD Host Controller", I got a BSOD: "Page Fault in Nonpaged Area" in nvumis.sys, the driver for the SSD.

My next step was to see if the Windows installer would work (to isolate issues with other drivers or software). I loaded the driver from the hard drive, but the installer hit the same BSOD.

I'm going to try re-downloading the driver to make sure it isn't corrupted. There is also a firmware upgrade available, but the firmware flasher won't run in 64-bit, and in XP mode it can't see the drive because the driver isn't installed. I'll also run some diagnostics and get in touch with SuperTalent. I'll report back when I know more.

EDIT: According to one poster on another forum, apparently Dell is working on a BIOS update (A06) to allow it to be bootable, but I'm not sure that would cause my BSOD issue.

 

DakkonA, what are you going to use the CoreStore for? I assume it's a small drive that mounts near the wifi card, but that's all I know about it.

 

I intend to use it as a boot drive once that's possible, assuming the report is correct. I have just a tad more than 50 GB (useable max of the 64 GB drive) of programs including Windows, so I may judiciously use directory junctions to move certain programs to the HDD. The 100 GB (128 GB raw) version won't be out for another several months, so we'll see if I need the larger capacity.

There's someone over at SuperTalent's forum that reports they've gotten their drive useable in Windows on an L502x as a data drive, so I'm wondering if I just have a bad drive.

EDIT: Yeah, it's just this small Mini PCIe card that fits right into the WWAN/TV tuner slot, though I needed to steal a screw from my old laptop to secure it.

 

The latest firmware must be run from DOS, not windows. Instructions are in the .pdf

CoreStore™ MV / MP Firmware upgrade – the following firmware upgrade has been provided for improved reliability and compatibility.
fw_upt_v2037.zip (448KB) 04-23-11

Super Talent Technology - SSD Memory and Flash

 

Crap. I thought the program was supposed to create a DOS-bootable stick, not that I had to do it myself... I guess I'll find out if that works.

 

Damnit, it shouldn't be this hard to make a bootable DOS disk. Every USB version I try results in an infinite blinking cursor

 

I always have problems making a bootable USB disk myself. I usually end up making a bootable CD instead.

 

I finally got a boot disk working: Downloaded the Ultimate Boot CD and used its usb utility to make a USB version of it.

Unfortunately, the drive's firmware was already up to date, so no help there.

 

That sucks man. Hopefully A06 will get it running for you. Can you post a link to the forum post about it? Id love to read more, been thinking about a soda creek drive to augment my storage. 120GB vertex 2 just isnt big enough despite the speed.

 

www.supertalent.com • View forum - CoreStore MV/MP I'm "BioTurboNick" there. Aside from the obvious L502x thread, the "can't install windows" thread is also about the L502x.

The Intel drives unfortunately probably won't work because it requires the PCIe port to have an SATA controller on it. So if you see something that says it is "mSATA" it probably won't work.

 

SuperTalent support says it's probably drive with some bad NAND. RMA it goes. Tune in next week for more adventures!

 

I got one of these in 32GB. Arrived this afternoon, and laptop refuses to successfully boot into windows with the card installed. Looks like mine might be fried as well. Got it from Amazon. You?

Edit: Meh. Went ahead and returned the bad card. No replacement, as Amazon is out of them at the moment. Time to go shopping again...

 

SuperBiiz.com here. I was able to boot as long as I hadn't tried installing the drivers. You couldn't even get to that step? Hmm...

 

Yeah. I put the card in the wwan/tv slot, hit the power button, and it hung on the windows logo. I hadn't tried to install any drivers for it or anything, as the instructions for it say to just plug it in first if attempting to use as a data drive.

If you tried to install the card without drivers, would it show up in your BIOS? Mine didn't, and I don't know if that's supposed to be normal for these things. I haven't tried to play around with the m-pcie slot before.

 

The BIOS doesn't recognize it right now, but as I mentioned someone is reporting that the next BIOS release will add support (required for booting from it), but who knows.

 

Anybody got anywhere with this with the new A06 bios?

 

I tried it, as I posted on the A06 thread. I thought initially it was doing something different as the driver installed correctly, but I never saw the drive show up anywhere other than Device Manager. And then future attempts saw the BSoDs again, so I'm not sure what exactly is going on.

 

I have a Dell XPS 15 and I'm really interested in such method for having an SSD drive in my laptop. I've been following your thread in Super Talent forum as well
www.supertalent.com • View topic - CoreStore MV 32 or 64 on Dell XPS 15 (L502x)

Have you tried the initialization process that SSD-James says in SuperTalent forum? Here is a video that shows how to initialize your SSD:
how to initialize an SSD or HDD - YouTube

Please try it and let us know if it fixes your problem.

Cheers

 

It never showed up in Disk Management at all--no "initialize disk" prompt or anything.

 

Even though it has not prompt you to initialize it in the Disk Management, check down there where all your drives are installed; Isn't there any other drive except the ones you already have? (just to be clear, I'm not talking about the upper window, what I mean is the one under that where you should scroll to see your drives and they are listed as Drive 0, Drive 1...)
Cuz you're saying that the new device is detected in the Device Manager and if the drivers from Super Talent work correctly, this new volume should be visible under Disk management when you scroll down through you drives.

Can you please upload a snapshot of both your Device Manager (with each and every subsection opened up) and Disk Management windows?

We should get this mini PCIe baby running it is a great solution for all of us!

 

Neither place, I checked pretty thoroughly. I don't want my $180 drive to be useless haha.

The other problem is that often the computer has trouble even booting with the drive in the slot. Windows will hang (or just take a really, really long time) to boot. And I uninstalled all the drivers to troubleshoot, so I lost the "looks like the drivers are installed" version of things. When I get some more time next week I might try to recapitulate that.

I'm hoping someone else will have tried so I know it isn't just a bad drive (again) or bad computer, or some combination of software etc. that is a problem.

 

Oh man, it seems the drive is awfully problematic...
Here is my E-mail: [email protected], if you managed to get it working please let me know...

 

So is it work in the l502x - bios a06?

 

These drives do not work in the XPS laptops. The slot interface is not implemented by Dell in such a way to allow it. Hardware prevents it, NOT software/BIOS. At least that is what I have seen elsewhere.