Solved!
Go to SolutionXPS 15 9550, doesn't recognize 970 EVO
Hi:
I'm trying to figure out how to get my XPS 15 9550 to recognize a Samsung 970 EVO.
I've tried to follows the instructions I found here:
https://www.windowscentral.com/upgrade-ssd-dell-xps-15-9570
and the discussions here:
I can't seem to get anything to work. At this point, I've reset the BIOS and everything back to the original configuration. So, RAID is on, UEFI Secure Boot is on.
I'm at a loss as to what to try next. I was able to clone the original SSD onto the 970. I would prefer to use that. However, if needed, I'm willing to just wipe the 970 and start with a clean install.
I've thought about calling support, however, I suspect that changing the SSD is out of scope for support, and I will be charged accordingly.
Any guidance that you can provide would be appreciated.
-marc
Hi
I'm looking into web just now because I would like to do the same of you on my XPS 15 9550
My only concern is: maybe XPS 15 (9550) do not accept 970? (and you require 9560 9570?)
For sure 9550 accept 960 as you can find here (https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read-Only/XPS-15-9550-NMVe-PCIe-Samsung-960-Pro-compatible/td-p/5173515)
but 9550 has different configuration compared to 9560 (look here https://laptopmedia.com/laptop-m-2-ngff-ssd-compatibility-list/)
I hope someone could help us!I'm confused when you say you can't get your system to "recognize" the 970 Evo even though you were able to clone your original SSD onto it. Unless you used another system to perform that clone, then if your 9550 was able to clone to the 970, that means it recognized it. If you're having trouble booting a cloned installation, that's another matter. Often it helps to disconnect the source disk the first time you try to boot from a clone, and some cloning tools like Macrium Reflect even have a "Fix Boot Problems" routine to help with situations like this because booting after a clone can be tricky sometimes, especially with UEFI-based systems.
The drive is recognized when it is in a USB to M2. Adapter.
When I remove the original drive from the motherboard and replace it with the new drive, it is not recognized.
When I boot the laptop, I get taken to the diag screen and informed there is no bootable device.
Interesting, nice to see there are finally NVMe to USB adapters on the market. There weren’t when I last checked. Now if they could just make one that supports both M.2 SATA and M.2 NVMe SSDs rather than only one or the other.
Weird that your previous SSD didn’t show up under System Information because I think it should. As one last idea just to rule out possible issues with the adapter, if you have a separate external hard drive (or large flash drive), try capturing an image of your existing SSD to a file, installing your new SSD internally, and restoring the image onto it that way. Your imaging software should have a way to create bootable media to accomplish this. I admit this idea is a long shot, but I’m thinking of past cases where some external hard drive enclosures claimed to support drives larger than 2TB even on WinXP, and they did that by incorrectly reporting the drive’s physical sector configuration. That worked, but it meant that if you ever tried to read that drive from an internal SATA port (or an enclosure that didn’t lie about the sector type), the data was unreadable.
Here is the M.2 to USB Adapter: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H1RF39B/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 .
When the drive is mounted internally, it is not shown in the system info section of the BIOS. However, the original SSD that was factory installed doesn't show up either.
If I press F12 during boot, I can get to, I think, the Device Configuration screen. The original SSD shows up there, but the 970 doesn't.
@mhsimkin wrote:
The drive is recognized when it is in a USB to M2. Adapter.
When I remove the original drive from the motherboard and replace it with the new drive, it is not recognized.
When I boot the laptop, I get taken to the diag screen and informed there is no bootable device.
Can you post a link to the specific USB to M.2 adapter you're using that works with the 970 Evo? Also, try going into the BIOS while the SSD is installed internally and check the top section, I believe called "System Information" and see if it's recognized there. If it is, then the device isn't bootable because of something involving your cloning process, not because the system doesn't work with it.
Hi. I just wanted to provide an update.
I think the issue is related to sector size. The original factory SSD has a sector size of 512.
When I place the 970 EVO in the USB adapter is shows a sector size of 4096. Whether the USB Adapter is reporting that, or the 970 does actually have a 4096 sector size I don't know.
I'm going to have to do a full drive back up to an external HD/SSD and then a restore to the 970.
I will let you know how things go.
Thanks for all the help.
-marc
giladreich
2 Posts
10623
1
Posted November 18th, 2018 11:00
Yup indeed, I tried almost any kind of configuration combination in BIOS.
Forgot to mentioned that I managed to sort it out yesterday after spending some time on it.
I had to manually convert my Samsung 970 Pro SSD to GPT from MBR.
The funky thing that at the first shot trying to boot into it, it didn't work. The windows installation went successful but in the next restart it couldn't boot even though it was set to GPT. But at the second shot installing windows again, it suddenly managed to boot into the drive...
I should probably also mention the BIOS configuration I used so hopefully it helps some others in the future:
* Secure Boot -> Disabled
* Legacy ROMs Devices enabled (This option can be found under `Advanced Boot Options`, so you can boot to a USB devices, i.e your windows installation).
* Instead of using Raid On change to AHCI.
* Boot Sequence set to UEFI.