Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

I just reimaged my boot SSD w/ Windows 7 and left ~8Gb Over-Provision for Garbage Collection in RAW (unformatted/unallocated) space at the end. While subjective - the snappiness/smoothness of the machine has greatly improved in my opinion. The space I set for this should have been greater but I calculated from the Mfg. size when it should have been adjusted for Windows formula. 256Gb = 238Gb in Windows. Minus ~10% (~24Gb) = ~214Gb allocated for Windows. Next time.

To check if TRIM is enabled run Command Prompt as Admin and type: fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify
If the return value says 0 then TRIM is enabled. 1 means it is disabled. During install setup checks for a spin rate, if it is 0 then it's an SSD and should enable TRIM.

Good info:
Using Fsutil behavior
Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives - Engineering Windows 7 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Thanks to Tijo for the Over-provisioning tip.

 

That's is step 1 of making sure TRIM will work. Step 2 is to verify that it works by using a tool called TRIMcheck. It writes data to the drive, deletes it, and then verifies if TRIM actually cleared the written data.

The tool.
The tool's source code.
Write up on the tool.
Forum thread on the tool.

Add this little utility to your toolbox.

Yes, this tool will show that LSI Sandforce-based drives without the latest 5.0.x firmware (specifically firmwares 5.0.3 and below) do not have a working implementation of TRIM.

 

Good news for firepro owners that like to monitor stuff. GPU-Z 0.6.7 picks up the M6000 correctly.

 

About to get an SSD here and wanna check to see if the 750GB HD that came with the laptop can be moved to that 3rd bay and fit there?... Reason asking is bc I'd like to keep it but want to keep the DVD drive n the optical bay...

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

Not sure what you mean by "3rd bay" but there are two standard 2.5" bays in the M6700 that you can use and you sure can move your hard drive into one of them. If you want to use a third 2.5" drive you'll have to sacrifice the optical drive bay.

 

You mean the 2nd bay? I simply relocated my main OEM HDD to an external enclosure and use it for backup.

At the moment I have 66Gb free but the limited space gets used up quickly. Two fifty six is so 2000 for a C drive nowadays; it just not enough. I can't wait until my budget regenerates so I can "boost the signal."

Thanks; and it is enabled.

 

Yeah space is always in short supply. Don't know how you use your computer except I recall maybe your saying heavy with Adobe CS. Mine is setup using a mounted Harddrive for UserProfiles and ProgramData. All files saved in my User directory are stored to the HD. It's seamless. You could still create a production folder and scratchdisk and cache on the SSD.

Krane:

Here's a link: FolderLocations

Here's a guide (Bottom of the Post): Relocate Users and ProgramData Folders Example - Typical SSD|HDD configuration

Ooops! Fixed link!


Update 3/6/13: Here's a better clarification for folders relocation: re: only use in a test environment huh?
I think they meant not to try to relocate the whole profile/ProgData manually or post install.

 

Yeah I was naming the optical bay, bay #2 thus where I got bay 3 from... Was talking about the one that's empty under the keyboard. At glance it looked a lil slimmer than the current HD primary bay on the side on the laptop... Hence why I asked there...

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

Alright. Something interesting just happened to me and my M6700.

I have the Quadro K5000M with Optimus enabled, so the machine normally runs on the Intel GPU and calls on the NVIDIA GPU when necessary.

Today, I tried to hook it up via HDMI and it didn't work. Strange, it's always worked before, including just yesterday. I do some poking around and it turns out that nothing related to the NVIDIA card seems to be working and I am stuck on Intel only. I can see the Quadro in the device manager, but it doesn't show up in CPU-Z like it usually does, I can't connect anything to it, and I can't get anything to render on it.

Rebooting, reinstalling drivers, etc., no help.

I didn't make any system changes leading up to this. In fact, I've been traveling (just got back today) so I've been avoiding changes because I didn't want to be stuck breaking something while away.

I decide to switch to the BIOS and disable Optimus to go with the NVIDIA card only and see what happens then.

Now I'm running with Optimus disabled and I can't see the pre-boot screen (Dell logo) and I cannot access the BIOS. The machine works but I don't get anything on the display until it actually finishes booting up to the Windows login screen.

(At least HDMI works now! And this freaked me out, I really thought for a while that I didn't have video anymore.)

This is a bad spot to be in because I will not be able to make changes to the BIOS should that be necessary. Also if Windows needs to show something before the login screen or if I need to boot a different OS or pre-boot tool, I'm not sure how that will work. Also, this issue means there is definitely something going on that is not related to the OS, drivers, or some other Windows configuration issue.

Anyone seen anything like this before or have any insights? I'm going to ask Dell pro support in the morning but thought I would check here in the meantime.

[Edit]

One other odd thing. I have this mystery monitor that I didn't have before, not sure what's up with it, it doesn't show as attached to the NVIDIA Quadro. (It only showed up once I disabled Optimus.) I tried removing it in the device manager but it keeps popping back in.

 

Aaron,

On my other computer had an issue where fingerprint reader vanished. Gone. Poof. No restart, cold start, bios reset, nothing. I took out the battery and held the power button down for one minute and just like that as if nothing had happened resumed normal behavior.