Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

I'm running a Samsung SSD 840 Pro 128GB for about 2 months now, without any issues. I dunno about Samsung Magician, cause I'm running Arch Linux x64 on it, but I was able to update the SSD firmware with using an external CD-Drive. I'm sure, USB-Sticks will work, too.

Link: Samsung SSD (Solid State Drive) 840 series | Samsung SSD Website

Scroll down to "Samsung SSD Firmware Updates for Mac Users" and download the ISO for your SSD. Boot from it and flash your drive. As for Windows, you probably lack drivers for SATA3 or something like that. Check your Device Manager (Press Windows-key, type devmgmt.msc and press Enter) for any unknown devices. But there are no known hardware compability issues - you're probably just having software problems.

 

Thanks for the reply! I'm new to this so I just want to make sure I'm understanding this right...

1) download correct ISO for the SSD
2) Put ISO on SSD (ISO is only file in SSD)
3) Go into BIOS and tell computer to boot from SSD which is attached via the SATA to USB cable
4) ISO will then flash newest firmware to SSD

If that is correct...after it flashes I should have the option to restart the computer and access the BIOS again so I can set the main drive (not SSD but original HDD that Win7 is loaded on) to boot first, correct?

Thanks! I've never done this before and don't want to destroy anything.

Thanks!

 

Um, no that wouldn't work at all. I'll clarify in a moment, but first let me ask a question: How are you currently attaching your Samsung SSD to your system when you try to find it with Magician? Based on your reply it sounds like you've got a spinning drive in the system itself and you're using a SATA to USB adapter to try to find it with Magician? That won't work. Magician only works with SSDs attached via SATA. So that could be your issue. If you are in fact using the SATA connector, which exact Samsung 2.5" SSD are you running? If you have an old PM800, it's not supported by Magician. I doubt it's a driver thing, but it couldn't hurt to install the latest Rapid Storage AHCI/RAID drivers. Another possibility is that Magician may not work when the SATA mode in the BIOS is set to Intel Smart Response, but I'm not sure and can't test that theory on my own system.

But if all else fails (and just for your general knowledge), an ISO file is an image file used for burning a CD/DVD, not a file that you can just copy onto any device to make it bootable. You'd need to use an app like ImgBurn to burn that ISO as a bootable CD/DVD. You'd obviously need an external optical drive with this system, or you could install your SSD into another system that has an optical drive and flash it there. If that's not an option, it may be possible to use that ISO to create a bootable USB flash drive, but that doesn't work with all ISOs. But whatever you do, once you burn the disc, boot the system off of that CD while the SSD is attached and it will update your firmware.

 

Thanks for your extremely helpful reply!

Using a Samsung 830 256GB SSD

1) Spinning HDD is in the body of the laptop. I am using a USB to SATA cable with the SSD connected to it in order to try and recognize the SSD. This is probably why Magician cannot find the SSD.

2) I'll ImgBurn the ISO to a new CD using another computer.
Few questions regarding "boot the system off of that CD while the SSD is attached"...
A) Boot from CD by changing boot order in BIOS? As shown here How to Boot a Computer from a CD: 5 Steps (with Pictures)
B) During the firmware update process, can the SSD be attached via the USB to SATA cable or does it need to be in the actual SATA port where the current spinning HDD is?

3) Now I am getting concerned about the cloning process. I plan on using EaseUS Partition Master and following this: How To Migrate Windows 7 to a Solid State Drive
During cloning my HDD to the SSD, can the SSD can be attached via the USB to SATA cable?

This is extremely helpful and want to express my gratitude.

Thanks again!

 

No problem, happy to help! To answer your questions:

- The firmware flash will only work while your SSD is connected via SATA, not USB.

- Given that the reason Magician's updater hasn't worked for you is because you've been testing over USB thus far, I would recommend skipping the CD boot option for now. Just clone your hard drive to your SSD (which you CAN do while the SSD is attached over USB) and then run the firmware update through Magician after you've installed it into your SATA slot. You don't have to do the firmware update first.

- For cloning, I would recommend skipping that entire guide you posted. If you use the right tool, all of the pre- and post-clone steps they list are at best completely unnecessary and at worst counterproductive on both Win7 and Win8.1. Speaking of which, the cloning tool I'd recommend is Macrium Reflect Free, which as the name suggests is free. It's also pretty easy to use, can manage situations like cloning from a larger capacity HDD to a smaller SSD (which not all cloning tools can) and since it's a file-level copy rather than sector-level, you don't have to worry about defragging your existing drive or aligning sectors on your SSD. For post-clone steps, while the guide is right that SSDs don't require defragmentation (in fact it's actually bad for SSDs), Win7 detects SSDs and skips defragging them even when it's still enabled (which is nice if you also want to defragment external drives on a schedule), and on Win8.1, the disk defragmenting tool actually performs TRIM operations on detected SSDs rather than defrags (which it continues to do on spinning disks), so it's worth keeping it enabled no matter what type of drive you've got. I also disagree with their recommendation to disable indexing. An indexed search is always going to be faster than an unindexed search, especially on large data sets, even when the data is on an SSD. After all, if an SSD can read the raw data faster, it can also read the index faster. The only exception I'd make to that rule is if you had a tiny SSD and literally couldn't spare the disk capacity to store the index itself, but that doesn't sound like it would apply in your case.

- If for whatever reason you can't get the Magician option to work even after your SSD is installed in a SATA port, how to boot from a CD depends a bit on the system you'll be using. First, you'll have to make sure you actually have legacy (non-UEFI) boot options available, which means making sure the BIOS in the system you'll be using is either set to UEFI and has Legacy Option ROMs enabled (sometimes also called CSM or Compatibility Support Module) or is in full Legacy mode rather than UEFI. Otherwise, unless Samsung's firmware updater supports UEFI booting (doubtful), you won't see it as a boot option. Once you sort that out, you can either move the CD option higher in the boot order, or just go to the one-time boot menu and manually select it. The latter is far easier since you don't need a configuration change, but not all systems have one-time boot menu options.

 

Thanks a ton.

Doesn't updating the firmware on the SSD wipe all the data on it though?

I'll clone my current HDD onto the SSD using Macrium Reflect Free and the USB/SATA cable, install the SSD into the main SATA position, start-up the computer again and check for functionality. I'll then create a back up of the entire system and update the firmware.

Hopefully magician works after all this. I don't have a win7 re-install disk as the system came with win8.1 backup.

Thanks!

 

Nope, firmware updates only wiped SSDs in the very early days of SSDs. Those days are long gone. It turned out that people didn't appreciate having to back up their entire system and reimage it just to install a firmware update.

I wouldn't bother taking a full backup of your system before reimaging. Keep in mind that even if the firmware update does corrupt your data, you've still got an intact backup on the spinning drive that you just cloned over to the SSD, so worst case you just have to clone it over again.

 

Hi guys, what a nice thread, wow! I scrolled through almost all pages but cannot find an answer to my following question: I want to buy myself the M3800 with QHD Display, but am not sure about using it together with an FHD 24" Monitor in extended mode. Somewhere I read about problems occuring due to the QHD+, when windows are shifted from one display to the other. Does anybody observe problems with the extended desktop view using an additional Monitor in Win8.1?

I am really not sure if I should buy an FHD or an QHD+ because normally I am used to work with extended desktop. If problems occur, maybe I should buy the FHD...

any recommendations / sugestions? thanks!!

 

Art,
I have a 1920x1200 external screen and the QHD screen. Here is the scoop.
Win 8.1 can run in one of two modes. One is independent scaling for each display. In that case the text on the external screen looks fuzzy. This actually applies to things like lines and icons as well. IMHO it makes the secondary screen good only as a secondary display. By that I mean I wouldn't want to plug in a keyboard and mouse and then use the external screen as the primary display as I sometimes did with the M4400 I had before this system.

Option 2 in Win 8 is to turn off the multi-diplay scaling. In that case the external screen will look plenty sharp but the 150% scaling I've applied to the primary screen would also apply to the external screen. The icons on the second screen would look huge and the large size text makes the text more like working with a large, low resolution monitor (say a 1366x156 screen vs 1920x1200).

If you are running Win 7 you don't get the option to do #1.

I think the handicapped second screen is a real bummer as I used to use a second screen a lot. However, I think the QHD screen is still worth it. With the QHD screen I find myself needing the second screen less often. I often work with two windows side by side. With the 1920 wide screen a PDF with small text is often not readable when I select full page. Sometimes it's even hard to read with full width. In cases like this I would put the PDF on the second screen. Thanks to the extra resolution of this screen I can do a half screen, full page PDF just fine. Also, webpages like ebay that are really too wide for even XGA screens (1024 wide) can be half screen on this display just fine.

The ultra high resolution isn't perfect but I'm overall happier to have it than not.

 

I wrote up an article for the XPS 15 Wiki covering multi-display setup options for mixing a QHD panel and a FHD panel that you may want to read. It gives you all the gory technical details if you want them and spells out your options. Here you go: Multi-monitor Setup - XPS 15 Wiki.

Regnad's reply is pretty good, but (as you'll see if you read the article), there are a few points that should be clarified. One is that under Option #1, the external display doesn't necessarily have to be the one that's fuzzy. You can configure it as primary and have it look perfect -- at the cost of making your built-in panel look a bit fuzzy. And I agree that Option #2 isn't really viable since there's no single scale factor that works well on both types of displays.

And I'll add a few more options that Regnad neglected to mention:

Option #3 (which is what I do): Don't use the built-in panel with an external panel, unless that external panel is also QHD. I use the QHD+ panel and enjoy its full glory when I'm away from my desk, and when I'm at my desk I use two external panels.

Option #4: Set the built-in panel to 1600x900 whenever you're also using external non-QHD panels -- or 1920x1080 to get more real estate with SLIGHT scaling blur (nothing like what you're used to on other panels though because the QHD+ panel's pixel density is so high). Obviously you give up the sharpness benefit of QHD during those times, but it allows you to run a single scale factor and not have things be as blurry as they are with the per-display scaling functionality enabled, and of course you still get to enjoy QHD when you're away from your desk.

Option #5: Use this as a rationalization to buy an external QHD+ panel.