Dell XPS 1TB Hard Drive change to an SSD

[thegrizzz]

Hey Guys,

I have just purchased the dell XPS 15" with the i5 and 1TB 5400RPM Hard Drive + 32GB Solid State Drive and is currently in transit.

First up, I was wondering how the SSD works as it is apparently set up as "intel rapid store" or something along those lines to speed up the Hardrive. Is this efficient or come close to the performance you see from a single SSD?

Also thinking of changing the hardrive if it was possible to change out the 1TB Hard drive and replace it with an SSD.

If this is possible, do I need to physically change/Upgrade the the 32gb cache or is there something in the bios I can change to just use the two separate drives?
For example, put windows 10 on the 32gb SSD and the rest of the computer files on the new SSD?

Thanks for your time!

 

[drtweak]

the 32GB SSD is only a cashe and you can't use to store stuff on if you set it up that that way. 32 GB is pretty small to install windows on. If you replace the SSD more than likely that SSD would be faster than that 32GB SSD as well.

 

[thegrizzz]

the 32GB SSD is only a cashe and you can't use to store stuff on if you set it up that that way. 32 GB is pretty small to install windows on. If you replace the SSD more than likely that SSD would be faster than that 32GB SSD as well.

You would recommend changing both hard drives and still having the SSD as a cache?

 

[drtweak]

if you install a SSD their is no point to the Cashe. All the SSD cashe does with the 32GB drive is when you write files to the hard drive it writes them to the Cashe first, making it seem like it has written the files, then in the background the files are being written to the HDD from the SSD

 

[thegrizzz]

if you install a SSD their is no point to the Cashe. All the SSD cashe does with the 32GB drive is when you write files to the hard drive it writes them to the Cashe first, making it seem like it has written the files, then in the background the files are being written to the HDD from the SSD

Awesome, i thought it did something like that. Might just replace the Hard drive with an SSD alone. Then will i be able to install windows on there and not worry about the 32gb cache?

Thanks for your help

 

[drtweak]

yea if you install a SSD in place of the HDD don't even both with the Cashe SSD. Their would be no point to it.

 

[Harry1957]

Just thought I would give you my experience with an upgrade. I upgraded the 32GB ssd with a 512GB ssd. I then cloned the OS to the ssd from the HDD using 64GB for the cache and placing the OS on the other partition. This also leaves greater than 100GB of storage on the ssd on top of the 1TB on the HDD. I have to say this made an amazing difference - the start up time went from a couple of minutes to less than 30 seconds. Overall the machine feels more responsive although I do not think it has improved the battery life significantly.

 

[thegrizzz]

Just thought I would give you my experience with an upgrade. I upgraded the 32GB ssd with a 512GB ssd. I then cloned the OS to the ssd from the HDD using 64GB for the cache and placing the OS on the other partition. This also leaves greater than 100GB of storage on the ssd on top of the 1TB on the HDD. I have to say this made an amazing difference - the start up time went from a couple of minutes to less than 30 seconds. Overall the machine feels more responsive although I do not think it has improved the battery life significantly.

Thanks for your response, that's good to know!
farrrout a few minutes is pretty long. Just wanted to ask why you changed the 32gb cache instead of changing the HDD to an SSD? Wouldn't it be easier/more efficient to just change out the 5400RPM hard drive for the 512gb SSD? Was it a noticeable difference with the battery life when you changed?

 

[Harry1957]

Just thought I would give you my experience with an upgrade. I upgraded the 32GB ssd with a 512GB ssd. I then cloned the OS to the ssd from the HDD using 64GB for the cache and placing the OS on the other partition. This also leaves greater than 100GB of storage on the ssd on top of the 1TB on the HDD. I have to say this made an amazing difference - the start up time went from a couple of minutes to less than 30 seconds. Overall the machine feels more responsive although I do not think it has improved the battery life significantly.

Thanks for your response, that's good to know!
farrrout a few minutes is pretty long. Just wanted to ask why you changed the 32gb cache instead of changing the HDD to an SSD? Wouldn't it be easier/more efficient to just change out the 5400RPM hard drive for the 512gb SSD? Was it a noticeable difference with the battery life when you changed?

 

[Harry1957]

Hi thegrizzz

No particular reason to keep the HDD other than I do a lot of photography and video so the capacity of the HDD is good. Also (and I do not know if this is true) I have read that ssd's tend to fail dramatically whilst the HDD can give you some warning. Probably not an issue if you are very good at making backups but I tend to forget for long periods! I must say I did not find switching the ssd's over or cloning the OS very difficult (providing you do some research first to avoid the pitfalls). There is an advantage of using just the large mssd in that if you have bought the version with the small battery it would allow you to put the larger battery in the laptop - assuming Dell sell them. I have not noticed any difference in battery life with the upgrade I did.

 

[thegrizzz]

Hi thegrizzz

No particular reason to keep the HDD other than I do a lot of photography and video so the capacity of the HDD is good. Also (and I do not know if this is true) I have read that ssd's tend to fail dramatically whilst the HDD can give you some warning. Probably not an issue if you are very good at making backups but I tend to forget for long periods! I must say I did not find switching the ssd's over or cloning the OS very difficult (providing you do some research first to avoid the pitfalls). There is an advantage of using just the large mssd in that if you have bought the version with the small battery it would allow you to put the larger battery in the laptop - assuming Dell sell them. I have not noticed any difference in battery life with the upgrade I did.

Hi Harry1957,

I have decided to go down the path of changing the M.2 SSD and keep the 1tb for storage.

Did you set it up in a way that it acted as two separate drives or did you still have a part of the SSD used as a cache for the HHD? you also mentioned that you had greater than 100gb on the SSD, wouldn't this have alot more, say over 400gb left? even with the 64gb cache?

So your system at the moment is configured with a 1tb HD and a 500GB SSD with a 64gb partition for the cache?

Just one other question, How did you go about installing the operating system on the m.2 given that it is pair together in the bios and the partitioning to still enable a cache?

Thanks for your time!

 

[Harry1957]

Hi thegrizzz

No particular reason to keep the HDD other than I do a lot of photography and video so the capacity of the HDD is good. Also (and I do not know if this is true) I have read that ssd's tend to fail dramatically whilst the HDD can give you some warning. Probably not an issue if you are very good at making backups but I tend to forget for long periods! I must say I did not find switching the ssd's over or cloning the OS very difficult (providing you do some research first to avoid the pitfalls). There is an advantage of using just the large mssd in that if you have bought the version with the small battery it would allow you to put the larger battery in the laptop - assuming Dell sell them. I have not noticed any difference in battery life with the upgrade I did.

Hi Harry1957,

I have decided to go down the path of changing the M.2 SSD and keep the 1tb for storage.

Did you set it up in a way that it acted as two separate drives or did you still have a part of the SSD used as a cache for the HHD? you also mentioned that you had greater than 100gb on the SSD, wouldn't this have alot more, say over 400gb left? even with the 64gb cache?

So your system at the moment is configured with a 1tb HD and a 500GB SSD with a 64gb partition for the cache?

Just one other question, How did you go about installing the operating system on the m.2 given that it is pair together in the bios and the partitioning to still enable a cache?

Thanks for your time!

 

[Harry1957]

I replaced the 64GB m.2 ssd with a 250GB m.2 ssd hence the 100GB left after creating the cache and installing the os on it. I have it set up that the os boots from the m.2 ssd although I have kept a copy of the os on the HDD just in case the ssd crashed at some point. You have to go into the intel rapid storage programme and disable rapid storage so you unlink the m.2 ssd from the HDD before you replace the m.2 ssd with the larger one. Once the new ssd is installed you go back into the intel rapid storage programme and reinitiate the cache. If I remember correctly the programme allows you to select a cache size so you just select the maximum allowed which is 64GB. You now have the 64GB cache active and the remainder of the memory available for the os, programmes etc. I used Paragon disk copy to then transfer the os (and any other files you want) over to the m.2 ssd. The Paragon programme actually recognised the m.2 ssd as the boot drive automatically but just to be sure I would go into the BIOS on first boot up to check. Unless you really know what you are doing I would recommend using the Paragon (or what ever disk copy software you use) default settings rather than manually selecting what you copy over. I am by no means an expert in these matters but I hope that makes sense? At the risk of stating the obvious before doing any of this create a recovery disk and a disk image as backups.