Dell M6500, mSATA and the FCM slot

I still have my old M6500 with me. It currently has Windows 10 Pro on it and working nicely!

To install Windows with only the mSATA, and no other drives, you must first enable the Intel RAID option in BIOS. Don't worry, you don't have to use the RAID function but you must definitely enable it. If you don't, it will do funny things like what you have discovered. Mine was quite similar, except it was able to detect the mSATA and let me install Windows. However, it just will not boot into it.

If you put in other drives with the mSATA and install Windows, you will find the boot partition on drives other than the mSATA. So once you remove the drive with the boot partition, your system will no longer function.

Once you have completed the Windows installation on the mSATA, you can start putting the other drives back in.

Don't ask me why, it is a quirk with the M6500 and there were several owners/previous owners who discovered this before me and one of them told me how to get it working in the M6500 owners thread.

 

Okay I tried enabling raid and that did allow the computer boot all the way into the
windows install.

Right up until the point where you choose what drive to install windows to.

That page is blank because the computer does not recognize the drive in this
configuration. When I go to the BIOS the mSATA drive is not even available as
a boot option.

I did get it to work however.

I installed windows to a normal SSD drive then used Samsung Data Migration software
to clone the windows install to the mSATA.

I tried to boot this new cloned drive in RAID mode with the same result (windows would
not recognize the drive). Once I changed from RAID to AHCI and installed a drive
in each drive bay the laptop booted just fine and all was well.

I also cloned the windows install to the 1TB drive but that would not boot at all.

At first I had an error when I tried to clone the first time, then it seemed to work
when I tried to clone the second time. Yet it would not boot. It threw up some
error saying that files were missing (\boot\bcd) and I am not quite sure whats
going on there.

At any rate I am trying to clone it again to see if maybe it might work, but all
indications are that the 1TB is not going to work.

 

Ok I take it back. I tried the setup again, and for some reason this time round it didn't work.

It will ID the mSATA drive correctly in the FCM slot and let me install the OS etc. It will boot into it fine as well. However, once I stick the other drives back in, it no longer ID the mSATA as a actual bootable drive! ODD!

It worked before!