Dell Precision m6500 failure with Crucial m4 256GB mSata SSD

No matter if paired with none, one or two 2,5" drives the m4 mSata just does not let the m6500 get far enough to install any OS.

--
Sven

 

Does the card work if the BIOS is set to RAID mode, and the drives aren't in an array? I was a little confused by your message earlier.

 

In RAID mode I see the drive in the list displayed by the RAID BIOS. None is part of an array. And I do not want to test HD + SSD as RAID 0.
The mSata does not show up in the list of bootable disks when using RAID mode. Didn't care about that and reinstalled Windows 8 x64 from a USB drive on the m4 2,5" in slot 1. After Windows setup needed to reboot it did not find a bootable disk. I restarted Setup from USB and tried repair options. I found the windows installation on F: so the installations copy phase succeeded - kind of. Tried bootrec and bootsect but it did not give me a bootable disk when restarting the m6500. That is where I gave up and went back to AHCI and my old mSata for now...

--
Sven

 

Nobody else from Dell with some information on this issue?
Havoctex? Dell-Mano_G?

PS: mSata adapter should arrive tomorrow to test the m4 mSata disk in a 2,5" slot.

 

Finally it is working. What an Odyssee...

mSata-to-2.5"-Adapter took forever to arrive, m4 mSata didn't work in it, except some times over USB or eSata but not to get it really working. RMAd the m4 mSata which took additional time and so on.

BUT, since yesterday, there is a new firmware from Crucial for the mSata m4: Crucial.com Product Downloads - Firmware Updates


But how to get it installed as you need the drive attached in a running Win7 or Win8?
All Dell machines I had at hand would not recognize the m4 mSata enough to update the firmware. Finally a decent Latitude of a colleague with an eSata port with an external USB/eSata HD case for the mSata-to-2.5 adapter with the m4 mSata SSD in it recognized the m4 mSata and the firmware update procedure did start. A bit nervous as the given update exe from crucial reboots windows and then it takes much longer until the boot process finds the firmware update system. Update succeeds with a warning that something timed out but the promising message that the update might have succeeded - huh, thrilling... Another automatic reboot which took again forever until finally Windows 8 was up and running again. Now I took the m4 mSata out of the adapter, put it in my m6500 mSata slot rebooted into Win8 and have a working m4 mSata 256GB

HTH a few others with a similar setup,
SvenC