Dell Precision m6500 failure with Crucial m4 256GB mSata SSD

Hi all and especially Dell Support people,

I just exchanged my mSata OCZ Nocti 120GB mSata drive with a Crucial m4 256GB mSata and my system does not boot any more. I get a "Minicard SSD failure".

Can anyone confirm if Crucials m4 mSata 256GB should work in an m6500?


Some info on my system. Please ask if more info is needed.

I am using BIOS A09, running in AHCI mode.

Disk 1 is a Crucial m4 2,5" 512GB, Disk 2 a Seagate 500GB 7200rpm harddisk.

I tested with only the 500GB harddisk and the m4 mSata.
Same error. So I do not think that it is the disk limit of older BIOS versions.

I tried RAID mode, where the m4 mSata is found and shown with correct size. Reinstalled Windows 8 x64 only to find that in RAID mode Windows does not find its boot disk? Not sure if I need to setup a raid for my to 2,5" drives. But pairing a HD and an SSD in Raid 0 does not sound good to me, so I didn't try that.

Going back to AHCI and Nocti plus my two 2,5" drives gets me back to a booting system.
Retested with m4 and "Minicard SSD failure" again.
So I do not think that I made a mistake when I inserted the m4 in the mSata slot.

Unfortunately I do not have another laptop with an mSata slot available (colleagues are using Latitudes), so I cannot check if the mSata drive has problems. But remember, the m4 mSata drive was found in RAID mode and showed a size which made sense for a 256GB drive. We are trying to get an mSata to 2,5" adapter but that might take a while.

Could it be a BIOS issue and does maybe a newer BIOS than A09 fix this?

Thanks for any hints on this issue.

--
Sven

 

Its possible you have a bad ssd. Especially since the Nocti works when you put the card back in the system. You can get one of these HotDeals4Less.com - RunCore mSATA Mini SATA PCI-E SSD to SATA adapter MSATA-ADPT cheap to test your mSATA card on other computers.

 

Yes, as I had written above, we did already order an adapter, not sure how long it takes to arrive.

If the RAID mode would not have seen the mSata as well I would have a better feeling that it is "only" a bad mSata drive. But in RAID mode the mSata drive was listed only in AHCI mode the error occurs.

--
Sven

 

You said you were trying to get an adapter, that is why I provided a link to an adapter. If you are in the US you can order one from amazon and have it tomorrow for about $20.00.

Anyway, 20 seconds on google found that this problem is not isolated to you, so it may be a crucial issue. 256GB m4 mSATA SSD Works in M6500 (... SORT OF) - Crucial Community

 

You may look here

And here

But it seems not to be possible with crucial mSata ssd for now

You said you exchanged OCZ Nocti 120GB mSata drive with a Crucial m4 256GB

Would it be possible to have both? one in FCM and one in WWAN?

 

That second link is good advice. I always install windows with only one drive installed then install the others.

 

Sorry for not providing you with everything I did in enough detail: our IT unit takes care of purchases and they do organize the adapter buying. So I my have misused the word "try".

I had found that crucial forums entry but it did not provide a solution. So what use is it? As I think it is more likely a problem of the m6500 BIOS I did ask here in the forums where some Dell supporters are looking at posts with hopefully some Dell internal knowledge.

And to save another suggestion: we did already start a Pro Support call with Dell in Europe. Just wanted to use an additional source of information by using this forum.

Thank you for your help.

--
Sven

 

I did find that crucial entry before by searching for "Minicard SSD failure". But no solution, so I did not refer to it in my post,.

The error "Minicard SSD failure" occurs before any boot device is searched, so I do not think removing drives does help. Nevertheless as older BIOS versions had problems with mSata and two additional drives I did remove disk 1 but that showed the same error immediately after powering on the laptop. I did not remove both drives yet. Will give it a try later on.

Is that expected to work?

I am using an UMTS card in the WWAN slot so it is not free anyways. I do only use the FCM slot for mSata.

--
Sven

 

Well I don't konw, and I didn't find the answer with a google search

 

I did just try to start with only the m4 mSata drive and got the same "Minicard SSD failure".

I hope you understand thatI do not want to try putting both mSata cards in WWAN and FCM as I do not know if that could cause any damage to the m6500 or one of the mSata cards.

--
Sven