Dell XPS 15 L502X HD upgrade

New to the site, first post...

I want to upgrade the factory hd in my XPS 15 L502X to a Kingston 240GB SSDNow KC100 SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5" ssd. I don't want to use a caddy in the optical drive, I want to swap the hd itself. Will the ssd I've picked will be compatible with my computer?...Also, I've heard bad things about ghost 15 for drive clones, so I thought I could use a SATA Wire to USB cable SATA Wire - usb 3.0 to 2.5 sata hard drive adapter

I just want to know if everything will work before I start ordering parts. I really appreciate any input I get.


P.S. I figure I might as well add some memory while I'm digging around in there, so any tips on what ram would be best or how much l502x's are expandable to would also be appreciated.

 

i know if they are both sata and size and heat aren't an issue that it should work and that notebook drives are 9.5mm while some other other 2.5 inch drivers are 12mm think and won't fit in some notebooks.

 

Welcome to the forums!

Is there a reason that you have decided on a Kingston KC100?


To save others some searching:

See (for specs):
Kingston Releases Business Class KC100 SSD

See review:
Kingston SSDNow KC100 120GB SSD Review | Motherboards.org
(Definitely take the above reviewer's take on this drive with a grain of salt...).

See:
AnandTech - Dell XPS 15 L502x: Now with Sandy Bridge


First, is your system at 8GB RAM already? If not and assuming you are running Win7x64, then I highly recommend it for a more balanced and smoother system performance (and even more so with the SSD). Note too that 8GB RAM is the maximum you can install on these systems, unless you want to try the 8GB RAM SoDIMMs ($$$).

Any standard 9.5mm (Z-height), 2.5" SATA storage device should fit in your system with a simple swap, as you want to do.

As far as cloning software goes - there are none that I would recommend with an SSD - especially coming from a HDD installation. While they will work (technically), they will not allow Windows to adapt itself to the SSD (as Windows will do on a clean install), nor will they ensure that your new SSD is aligned (which will greatly impact performance and longetivity by creating much more writes to the nand (increasing write amplification WA) with every write the O/S requests.

You are far better off doing a clean Win7x64 install to your SSD and ensuring that any drivers are the latest available.

The Kingston SSD you have chosen is based on the SandForce 2281 controller and is not the most stable SSD offered at this time - with the drive BSOD'ing randomly, and/or simply not even being seen by the BIOS and needing a SE (Secure Erase) or even a few RMA's to get a good, working copy. Some people have simply given up on this ssd/controller combo as their systems were simply not stable and unusable with them even when RMA'ing a few times and there was no relief.

There is a new firmware that is supposed to have fixed these issues, but it is too early to tell if the issues have actually been addressed (as the firmware is not widely available to all SF based SSD's).

See:
AnandTech - SandForce Identifies Firmware Bug Causing BSOD Issue, Fix Available Today


I would be very interested in knowing how you use your system and that information will help in giving a better recommendation for you, but I can easily recommend the Intel 510 Series 250GB model as the best balance of reliability and performance (albeit at a higher cost) and you will find many on this forum that will recommend the M4 for the high performance and great price.

At this point, either are a quantum leap over the SF based SSD's and their numerous problems and issues (performance-wise, my biggest being that instead of DuraClass technology helping me get the highest performance when I'm using the drive the hardest - it actually slows down the drives performance to sub-HDD speeds. And, that is when it is working, of course. Keep in mind too that they took almost a year to admit that this BSOD 'bug' was even their responsibility: they blamed everyone else first. Including the users, the users systems, MS, Intel and the girl next door before they put their energy into actually solving the problem (if they've solved it, of course - time can only tell).

Give us a typical usage scenario for you and we may be able to give more suggestions on getting the best performance from your system.

Hope this information is useful to your decision making process.

 

I just picked the Kingston because I've had kingston hard drives before. The Intel 510 looks like a better option though...and I'm running 6gigs of ram at the moment, so I definitely plan on expanding that to 8. Thank you for the help, I really appreciate it!

 

I would recommend the Crucial M4 (up to SATA 3) and/or Samsung 470 (up to SATA 2) but they recently released an updated model to their 470, the Samsung 830 (up to SATA 3), you can take a look at that. I think you'll find that a 256GB from the 470-series will be the cheapest ranging from $270-$325 on eBay but it's also a really great performer, and I haven't had any complaints at all. If you need a SATA 3, I would take a look at the Crucial M4, as it's one of the better SATA 3 performers.

 

I want to get a 2gb ddr3 board for machine, any recommendations?

 

I think you may have to start a new thread...

 

thanks for the tip