New Laptop Has 2 M.2 NVMe SSD Slots

[kaywhyn]

My new laptop arrived today, and I wanted to get some help regarding putting 2 SSDs in it, as I've been unable to find guides online that explain what and what shouldn't be done. My laptop has two M.2 SSD slots, and according to the manual they can support either 2230 or 2280. I don't have problems doing the installation itself, as I've done hard drive upgrades before, just never ever used a machine with two hard drives installed. Right now, it has one M.2 SSD in it, and I plan to stick another M.2 SSD in it that's much faster than the first one where I plan to install Windows 10 on it. If I do this, is it recommended that I wipe out Windows 10 that's pre-installed on the stock SSD? I haven't opened the box yet, and it should be fine to simply stick in the second SSD from the getgo, right? Also, I think I have seen plenty of guides that say that it's recommended to remove the first SSD before installing Windows 10 on the second one to avoid issues during and after installation. In a way, I'm kind of reluctant to do so, since the first SSD is in a heat sink. Do I need to reformat either of the SSDs? Or would you say let the Windows 10 installation handle the partition making? So far, I've always deleted the partitions using the Windows installation, never the disk manager after logging onto Windows.

I'm quite excited to be using my new laptop soon, as it's a newer model of the one I'm currently using that's no longer being produced, and hopefully won't have any prominent issues that the first batch released earlier this year had. I just want to make sure I don't run into any technical issues with two internal SSDs while setting it up out of the box. Until this laptop, I have used laptops with only 1 internal SSD slot for the past 13 years, so I don't have any experience with multiple internal SSDs.   

[WillLem]

My new laptop has the same SSD type, I'm considering upgrading it to a larger one. I plan to clone my existing drive to the new one using an external M.2 to USB adapter. I'm used to working with SATA drives so I'm not sure if that will even work, but I figure it's worth a try.

With regards to installing Windows on 2 separate drives, I can't see that being an issue at all. It's possible to install multiple versions of Windows on just one hard drive, so with 2 I imagine it's basically the same procedure but rather than partitioning a single drive, you simply select which of the 2 drives you want to install Windows onto. As you've mentioned, the installer software should be able to handle that.]

Whatever you do, back your stuff up first!

[namida]

It's no different to an SSD + HDD combo setup, except that in this case, the HDD is actually a second SSD. You can install the OS on whichever one you want (but probably should install it on the faster SSD).

The other thing - check whether the M.2 slot is SATA or NVMe, or both. If it only supports one, you can't use a drive of the other type. If it's NVMe, it'll also be either PCIe 3 or PCIe 4 - if the laptop only supports PCIe 3 (and my understand is that so far, only AMD laptops support PCIe 4, but this may be out of date by now), you can still use the drive but it won't reach its full speed. And if you've got the option - you absolutely want NVMe.

[kaywhyn]

Thanks for your replies, gentlemen

My new laptop has the same SSD type, I'm considering upgrading it to a larger one. I plan to clone my existing drive to the new one using an external M.2 to USB adapter. I'm used to working with SATA drives so I'm not sure if that will even work, but I figure it's worth a try.

I think you should be fine. I would clone the OS as well, since it does save a lot of time, but I have read online that it's just better to do a fresh install since you're less likely to run into compatibility issues this way. At least that's what I did when I swapped out the stock hard drive with a new one in my current laptop. I somewhat have a lot of programs, but it's not a problem, since I can easily reinstall them anyway.

Whatever you do, back your stuff up first!

I do this weekly, and I highly encourage everyone to back up their files. I can't tell you enough how having them backed up has saved me a couple of times from near disaster. One time in college, my laptop caught a virus, and I took it to my university's technology center, and the reps told me the best way to get it fixed was to reformat my hard drive. Luckily, my brother had set up a backup schedule on my external hard drive since my move-in day, and so I was able to easily restore my files after I got my device back. This was near the end of my first year of college.

Another time, about 3-4 years ago, my hard drive was failing in another laptop that I had gotten since, and once again file backup to the rescue. The really bad thing was that I hadn't backed up my files in months/years, but luckily for me I started doing it just before my hard drive failed. So, since that incident, I had made sure to get back into doing weekly backups with my current laptop that I had gotten after that.That was the first time I had done a system image restore.

The other thing - check whether the M.2 slot is SATA or NVMe, or both. If it only supports one, you can't use a drive of the other type. If it's NVMe, it'll also be either PCIe 3 or PCIe 4 - if the laptop only supports PCIe 3 (and my understand is that so far, only AMD laptops support PCIe 4, but this may be out of date by now), you can still use the drive but it won't reach its full speed. And if you've got the option - you absolutely want NVMe.

It's NVMe, with a PCIe 3 connector. You're absolutely right about AMD currently being the only type of processor that has PCIe 4, although I think Gen 5 and Gen 6 are just about to emerge. And yes to NVMe over SATA. Much faster.

I do have one concern, though. From what I been reading online, people have said that there are booting into Windows issues after they wipe out Windows on one of the SSDs due to the MGR missing. Or is that if you wipe out the OS on the stock SSD before you have installed Windows on the second SSD? I just want to make sure this doesn't happen after I install Windows on the second and faster SSD and then I wipe out the preinstalled Windows on the stock SSD that my laptop came with. Also, is it better to delete the partitions via the Windows installer, or use the disk manager feature of Windows?

[namida]

I do have one concern, though. From what I been reading online, people have said that there are booting into Windows issues after they wipe out Windows on one of the SSDs due to the MGR missing. Or is that if you wipe out the OS on the stock SSD before you have installed Windows on the second SSD? I just want to make sure this doesn't happen after I install Windows on the second and faster SSD and then I wipe out the preinstalled Windows on the stock SSD that my laptop came with. Also, is it better to delete the partitions via the Windows installer, or use the disk manager feature of Windows?

I've never run into such issues. The only thing like this I have run into - if you're creating the Windows 10 installer USB via Rufus or a similar tool (rather than MS's official tool), be sure to format it for UEFI.

[kaywhyn]

I've never run into such issues. The only thing like this I have run into - if you're creating the Windows 10 installer USB via Rufus or a similar tool (rather than MS's official tool), be sure to format it for UEFI.

I use MS's tool. In that case, I'm probably just worrying for nothing. I guess I'll give it a go and then I'll report back on whether it was successful or not. The thing I think that's really dumb, though, is how for this newest Dell XPS 15" model the company doesn't even provide the screw you need to hold the second M.2 NVMe SSD in place. The nice thing, however, is that my current one uses the exact same screw, so I think I'll just go ahead and use that screw for the time being while ordering another one on Amazon. I was at my local hardware stores Home Depot, Lowe's, and Ace Hardware earlier, and none of them had the M2x2 screw. So, it looks like my only option is to buy the screw online on Amazon. Not a problem, they're quite cheap anyway.

[namida]

I've never run into such issues. The only thing like this I have run into - if you're creating the Windows 10 installer USB via Rufus or a similar tool (rather than MS's official tool), be sure to format it for UEFI.

I use MS's tool. In that case, I'm probably just worrying for nothing. I guess I'll give it a go and then I'll report back on whether it was successful or not. The thing I think that's really dumb, though, is how for this newest Dell XPS 15" model the company doesn't even provide the screw you need to hold the second M.2 NVMe SSD in place. The nice thing, however, is that my current one uses the exact same screw, so I think I'll just go ahead and use that screw for the time being while ordering another one on Amazon. I was at my local hardware stores Home Depot, Lowe's, and Ace Hardware earlier, and none of them had the M2x2 screw. So, it looks like my only option is to buy the screw online on Amazon. Not a problem, they're quite cheap anyway.

While I don't know for sure (I've bought an M.2 SSD once - Samsung Evo 860 1TB - but I don't recall), I would have expected it to come with the drive, not with the laptop.

[kaywhyn]

While I don't know for sure (I've bought an M.2 SSD once - Samsung Evo 860 1TB - but I don't recall), I would have expected it to come with the drive, not with the laptop.

It doesn't, unfortunately. You are correct in remembering that the hard drive you bought does not include the screw you need to hold it in the SSD slot. I bought the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB earlier this year, and same thing, nothing but the drive is included. Therefore, it's up to the customer to provide his or her own screw to hold the hard drive in place, which again I think is really dumb. However, I found a thermal bracket on Amazon that will come with the screw that I need to hold the 970 Evo Plus in place. It's supposed to come later today, so once that comes I will open up the box that my laptop came in and set it up. Also, I think I will err on the side of caution and take out the first hard drive before installing the OS on the second hard drive to ensure that no conflicts/issues come up during and after the installation. From what I've been finding online, it's not necessary to take out the first hard drive before installing the OS on the secondary drive, but most remove it first because of how sometimes files getting installed in the unwanted hard drive.

update: just as I thought, it was some other hard drive you bought. I vaguely remembered seeing online that the 860 Evo is a 2.5" hard drive, not an M.2

[kaywhyn]

All rightie, Windows installation on the second SSD drive went without a hitch (probably because I took out the stock SSD first before installing the OS on the one I stuck in the second SSD bay) and now I'm up and running on my new laptop. C is the secondary SSD I stuck into the laptop which is now the primary drive, the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB, while E is the stock SSD that my laptop came with, which also happens to a Samsung, a PM981a 1024GB (1TB) and is now the secondary drive. I have the Evo Plus to be 1st in the boot order, which is exactly what I want. No screen ever came up asking me to select which drive to boot to, so I think this is working properly. See attached.

Normally, Dell laptops don't seem to come with a Samsung drive. They usually come with a SKHynix drive. I guess I lucked out here. On the other hand, I think it depends on the hard drive capacity you order the laptop with. If I had gotten either a 256GB or 512GB instead, I think it would had came with a hard drive from a different brand. I couldn't really find any speed info on the PM981a, but it seems that it's only slightly slower than the Evo Plus I stuck in the laptop. Thus, I hesitated in sticking in the secondary SSD, but as you can see I ultimately decided to do it, just because I think it's a good idea to separate my files in the secondary hard drive and put my games in the primary hard drive.

The most frustrating part was taking the base cover off. In the Dell XPS 9500, it is considerably harder to take off than in my previous laptop, the Dell XPS 9560. I probably spent almost a good hour trying to take it off. I went to buy a pry tool set earlier today to help me get it off. I was almost tempted to take it to my local Best Buy and ask one of the Geek Squad people to help me take it off due to several repeated failures in getting it off, but I was able to finally get it off myself.

So far, all that's installed in both drives is just Windows. So, my question is do you think it's necessary to reformat and wipe out the preinstalled Windows on the E drive? Would anything bad happen if I did? Or should I just keep Windows on it as well? They're both Windows 10 Pro, btw. The plan is to simply install my games on the C drive, while everything else, like pictures, videos, documents, etc will go on the E drive. I might end up changing that to the letter D.

update: ok, I have attached the benchmark results for both Samsung SSDs. First one is the stock SSD that my laptop came with, while the second one is the 970 Evo Plus that I stuck into the laptop earlier today. Wow, the stock SSD is almost just as fast, so technically it doesn't really matter where I install the OS. Oh well, I chose to make the 970 Evo Plus my primary drive even though I'm not going to see much performance gain compared to the stock. So really, the reason for 2 SSDs is just to separate my games from my other files.

update 2: ok, I used the Windows installer and deleted the OS partition on the stock SSD and thus all the free space is back. I'm not sure how I can separate my pictures/documents/videos from the other stuff like games that I want to stick in the primary SSD, the Samsung Evo 970 Plus, from my external hard drive, since I backed up the entire C drive to it before I set up this laptop. The best I came up with is restore all my backup files to the secondary hard drive and then once it's done I can simply move the files I want to the primary hard drive. Is this a good idea?

[kaywhyn]

All rightie, I finally have everything set up on my new laptop and hence I'm good and ready to go! Didn't take as long as I thought it would, although I thought there were cases where I had to reinstall some games but I surprisingly didn't have to. As I mentioned above, I restored all my files to my E drive, the stock SSD, and then I simply cut and transferred all the gaming files to my C drive, the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB SSD I stuck into the second hard drive slot. In total, each hard drive used up about 300GB of space, meaning if I only had one hard drive, it would take up about 600GB of space total on my 1TB hard drive, which is the current capacity on my old laptop. I'm liking this even split in the capacity of the two hard drives a lot, so it definitely made me wonder why I have been opposed to getting machines with two hard drive slots for a long time. For this particular laptop, for some reason it's not listed that it comes with two M.2 NVMe SSD slots.

My biggest gripe, though, is how my new laptop does not have the old standby behavior that I'm used to due to the more recent Windows 10 versions. The old behavior I really liked was how I could press the power button to put my computer to sleep and then when I'm ready to use my laptop again, I could simply wake it up from sleep and pick up where I left off. Not so here. Instead, pressing the power button simply turns the display off, and when I open the lid the display comes back on, meaning the laptop doesn't even sleep. Apparently it's something that Microsoft decided to remove, so I'm not very happy about that. As much as I hate to, I guess I'll use hibernate. Even though you don't resume where you left off as quickly as you do from standby/sleep, at least I won't be taken by surprise with the computer not ever being in a state of rest this way. This is the very first time I'm using hibernate. I have always used sleep mode. I really wish they bring the old sleep state back.

Anyway, just wanted to give an update on how everything is with my new laptop and that I'm up and ready to go. Now that I'm done setting up and installing everything, I'll be ready to jump on the recording Lemmings video wagon soon. It definitely seems to be many times better and faster than my old laptop so far. Time will tell, since it's only been a few days working on the new laptop so far.

My specs if anyone cares:

Dell XPS 9500 (2020)
i7 10875H Intel processor, 8 cores
Intel 630 UHD
NVIDIA GTX 1650 Ti 4GB
32GB RAM
1TB SSD (I lucked out with getting a Samsung one as the stock SSD)

[namida]

The sleep thing is just a setting:

1. Open Settings
2. Type in "power button"
3. Click "Power and Sleep Options" (probably the only result)
4. Click "Advanced Power Settings" (small text link on the right)

I think you'll be able to figure out the rest from there.

[kaywhyn]

The sleep thing is just a setting:

1. Open Settings
2. Type in "power button"
3. Click "Power and Sleep Options" (probably the only result)
4. Click "Advanced Power Settings" (small text link on the right)

I think you'll be able to figure out the rest from there.

For #4, I don't see Advanced Power Settings. All I see is additional power settings (see attached screenshot)

[namida]

Sorry, "Additional power settings". It's at the bottom in your screenshot (this might be a window size thing; it's on the right for me).

[kaywhyn]

This sleep thing appears to be nonexistent on specific laptops. For the Dell XPS 9500, pressing the power button will simply turn off the display, making you think that the laptop is asleep but it's not. Opening the lid will turn the display on and will simply be where you left off. Hence, I have read a lot of things online where many owners have put the laptop in their bag and be confused why their laptop is so hot/warm. I believe it's also a Windows version specific thing. On Windows 10 version 2004 and after, supposedly this sleep state got eliminated so that the CsEnabled registry entry doesn't work anymore to disable s0, what is known as modern standby, even if you add it. Interestingly enough, my old laptop was still able to sleep just fine despite upgrading to version 2004. Then again, it's a Dell XPS 9560, so again it just might be certain laptop models that don't have it.

In any case, I think it's really dumb that it's not available for my new laptop and so I guess I have no choice but to either hibernate or shut it down. That's a shame too. I'm very used to putting my laptop on standby/sleep and then quickly resuming where I left off. Hibernate is mostly the same, the difference is that it saves way more power due to being in a much more minimal state than standby/sleep but it's also slower in continuing where you left off. Or, I might just reach out to Dell support and see if they can help me with my issue. After all, I do have a 1 year warranty, meaning until next October.

[namida]

I'd have to wonder - on a new PC, is hibernate actually going to be that bad? I'd figure with the speeds of modern RAM and SSDs, it'd probably only take a couple of seconds to fire up? (Not sure from experience - my best PC is 6th gen i7, DDR3 RAM, SATA SSD. Apparently, a current-generation Ryzen 3 would outperform it - probably getting towards time for an upgrade then!)