XPS 15 9550 drive upgrade

I currently have the 32 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD in my laptop. Does anyone know if it's possible to remove both the HDD and SSD, and slot in a 240 GB or larger SSD chip in place of the 32 GB SSD? I'm not sure if the SSD + HDD combo drives have the same port as the laptops with just an SSD.

Note: I do not want to put in a 2.5" SSD in the hard drive bay; I want to get a PCIe SSD.

 

You can remove the 32gb cache drive and put a m.2 ssd in it's place. You can keep the 1tb mechanical hard drive in there if you want.

 

Thanks. Would a Samsung SM951 work in the m.2 slot?

 

it will

 

As Custom90GT mentioned, yes it will. Currently, the "fastest" drives are M.2 NVMe drives, which are the Samsung SM951 or Samsung 950 Pro models.

However, it's also worth mentioning that while M.2 NVMe drives are faster than M.2 SATA drives, you don't get any real-world performance benefit for that extra speed. Applications don't load faster, Windows doesn't boot faster. The only times you'll ever notice the additional speed of a M.2 NVMe drive are when running storage benchmarks, or large sequential file copies.

So if you're looking to buy the fastest drive available just for bragging rights or personal satisfaction of owning "the best," then by all means get a Samsung SM951 or 950 Pro. But if you're looking for the best way to spend your money, you're honestly better off buying somethign like a Samsung 850 EVO in M.2 form factor.

 

Sorry for the noob question, but I also have the 1TB+32 SSD XPS15 variant - if I wanted the boot time/application load times to be faster, which drive would I be replacing? The 1TB or 32SSD? I need to reinstall Windows 10 as well, since the original harddrive doesn't boot anymore (it just loops around and around in the BIOS).

 

You can choose to decide which ever you like. If you want to stick to a smaller form factor.. replace the 32GB m.2 ssd with a higher capacity m.2 ssd, If not, replace the 1TB factory drive 2.5" drive with a 2.5" SSD.

It all depends what you want to do, some users like me have ripped out both drives and upgraded the m.2 slot, then upgrade 56Whr battery for 84Whr battery.

I started by keeping the 1TB drive as spare storage but realized i didnt need that much storage and favored more battery life since i travel for work.

 

Thanks for reply! Would you mind if sent you a PM for some help on actually getting the OS (W10) installed on the 2.5" SSD? It'll be my first time ever doing this, and the bricked HDD I have in there right now isn't making me all that confident lol

 

it would be faster to buy a external for the ssd to make an image of the hdd first before installing the ssd

and one more thing.... remove the 32 gb ssd

otherwise what you will have to do is change the bios settings to ahci in setup and then just reinstall windows on the ssd and use the 32gb as storage.

because leaving those 2 drive is raid will make it slower

 

whut?

changing a drive breaks the caching mode so you need not worry, swap the SSD for a m.2 NVMe and leave the 1tb in for storage/backup. Install to the new drive.

Cache mode is software via intel RST.

 

Yes,
I bought my xps few weeks back with 32 gb m2 and 1TB mechanical. Bought Samsung EVO 850 m2 512GB and installed. I don’t need more than 512 GB at the moment and the benefit with leaving the OS on the 1TB mechanical is, if you need to return the laptop for repairs you can just switch back to the original drive/s, and not worry about getting a replacement laptop where they keep your newly purchased SD.


If I need more Space I will just buy another SSD drive and put in the empty slot. Think the laptop becomes like 150 Grams lighter without the Mechanical drive J:


It was easy to change as well, and I’m not an expert in the area. Make sure you change in the BIOS to ACHI, and create below ISO for clean install.


Note, if you create the below ISO and it doesn’t show in the boot menu after pressing F12, go back to the BIOS and chose “Go back to default bios settings”


It happened to me, though the Samsung Eva drive was faulty or something or I did something wrong when removing HDD’S. But it was just down to that.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ean-install-guide-custom-iso-download.789769/

Hope it helps.

 

Thanks for the tips! Would you mind spelling out the steps to installing W10 onto either of the drives (2.5" or the M2)? I'm a giant noob at configuring this stuff

 

click my sig, read and download.

 

Thanks!

 

GoNz0 guide is extremly helpful (thanks GoNz0). Below link ca also help on step by step with pics.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/nbr-windows-10-clean-installation-guide.781178/