Dell Precision M4600 transfer Windows from included HD to SSD

For anyone who wants to install Windows XP or 7 from scratch on an M4600, here is a manual outlining the correct order of installation for the drivers (I told you it's not easy). It says Dell E Family in the header, but the M4600 is included in the document under 3rd generation Dell laptops:

Dell Business Client Re-Image “How-To” Guide Latitude E-Family & Mobile Precision (Revision 3.0 A03 May 5th, 2011)

Done properly, the 38 page step by step installation manual looks like a several hour project, in the best case, at least if you want all of the laptop devices to actually function.

 

Not sure why you would have to install 46 drivers when less than 10 are needed but then again I don't like to install stuff that I don't need Take care

 

Why partition an SSD? I would always use a single partition with an SSD to even out the write wear across the entire surface (i.e., data area).

 

Actually you can download an iso for windows and legally install from that with the license that comes with your laptop. There's not a thing wrong with that. NO reason whatsoever to pay for two licenses! And anyways, dell WILL send you a windows disk for windows 7 ultimate.

I tried to image my original drive onto my new SSD; I did everything right, and plugging the drives into another computer, they looked the same, but the SSD wouldn't boot for some reason. It kept hanging with a black screen.

So I had to do a fresh installation, and it didn't take hours and I didn't have to install 46 drivers. It took maybe 20 minutes to work through the recommended installation order driver list, installing the handful of APPLICABLE and needed drivers with a couple reboots, which were quite fast with the new SSD...

 

Will dell only send you a win 7 ultimate cd or will they also sen me a professional one if that is the version I purchased my laptop with?

 

Did you enable AHCI via the registry, before you backed up your original Windows installation? That's the number one thing people forget to do when moving a Windows image from a conventional Hard Drive to an SSD, only to discover that they cannot start Windows, because it is not loading the AHCI driver on (Windows) startup, even though AHCI is enabled via the BIOS.

 

They'll send you whatever your laptop came with.

Aha, this must've been my problem, as I did not!

 

I must have forgotten to do this too.

 

OK, so the Windows transfer issues are probably related to forgetting to enable AHCI in the registry. What happens is that when Windows 7 is installed on to a conventional HD, the AHCI driver is disabled (because, it is mostly only needed for SSDs and because it is most likely disabled in the BIOS). So, you should enable it before you do a backup of what is installed, or an AHCI SSD with the image may not be able to load windows, since AHCI is mandatory for many AHCI supporting SSDs, especially if enabled via the BIOS. If you don't enable it via the BIOS, things will either work fine if your SSD manages to fall back to SATA or is so old as to not even support AHCI, or you will not even be able to boot off of the SSD to get to the Windows failed to load Stop message, because the BIOS will not be able to read the boot sector off of the SSD (i.e., boot failure or failure to find device). Note, that AHCI is required for proper TRIM support and possibly for NCQ (Native Command Queing), as well (See: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-performance-tweak,2911-2.html).

I know it's stupid, but I did some research in this area and AHCI and the Intel RAID driver which is also disabled by default in the registry, unless Windows 7 was installed on a RAID setup, are the two most often forgotten pieces that need to be enabled prior to a Windows OS transfer. People eventually realize, after mounting the SSD or enabling RAID that they need to turn on AHCI/RAID in the BIOS. However, without the Windows boot time drivers being loaded for these configurations, Windows just fails to load with a Windows STOP blue screen. I am not sure if it is possible to do a repair via a Windows 7 original disk and have the drivers get enabled this way. But, the best approach is to just enable them in the registry, before starting on the backup / restore path. If only this tidbit of information was clearly documented by Dell and other laptop vendors, people wouldn't be wasting hours trying to figure out failed boots and possibly failing in the end, as some of you already have.

In the unlikely event that you are missing the AHCI driver, which I don't think is possible with Windows 7, but may be the case with prior versions of Windows, do not make a backup of the HD prior to installing it. The best way to go about that is to probably first enable AHCI via the BIOS, boot into Windows and hope that Windows does a drive rescan and allows you to install it off of Windows media, assuming that your conventional drive supports AHCI (or maybe even if it doesn't). I don't know how you can do this without windows media, unless downloading it from microsoft works when it asks you where to search for the driver. I am pretty confident that the AHCI driver is installed on the M4600 and simply disabled, which I think is the default on Windows 7 if AHCI is turned off in the BIOS and / or there are no AHCI devices present at Windows install time. The same is most likely the case for the (optional) RAID controller driver, unless you bought the laptop with RAID enabled. When I actually receive my M4600 laptop, which has been delayed once again, I will try to update this post with info about whether the two drivers come preinstalled.

See this website for specific registry modification instructions for both AHCI and RAID: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976
Additional info about the RAID controller driver, if you want to set up raid: http://ssdtechnologyforum.com/threa...sys-vs-iaStorV.sys?p=1957&viewfull=1#post1957

 

Ok so I got my laptop today and it has win 7 installed on the HDD but not on the SSD even though I stated that the SSD was the primary hard drive. What should I do? I also have the operating system disk for win reinstall. Please help since I am a big noob regarding this stuff