Latitude e6520 - boot from ExpressCard or SD slots?

Swap your wifi card into that Flash SSD slot and if it appears in Device Manager then you know it's only got pci-e pins, no SATA.

From my reading this thread it appears the SuperTalent Corestore MV is about the only pci-e SSD in the mPCIe form factor on the market. All the other mSATA or mPCIe (netbook) type SSDs require SATA pins. Means you won't be able to boot from it either but should be able to run it as a superfast data drive. If this is correct, then the same SSD could then be used in place of wifi cards on a multitude of other notebooks/netbooks but with the same limitation on boot. Though there might be a way of starting the boot process on say a SD card and having it mount the mPCIe SSD part way through the boot as the systemdrive. reboot.pro forum talked about method in the "Kansas City Shuffle". Would need another level of management to sync back the system registry on the SD card.

 

I'm just wondering, maybe the UEFI BIOS in the E6x20 is not playing nice with the SuperTalent card.

It just totally kills me that Dell doesn't even offer something like this for a business-class system.

 

so there appears to be quite a menagerie of miniPCIe slots

* slots with USB only - often used for WWAN or maybe bluetooth

* slots with PCIe and USB - used for WiFi and some very rare SSDs which have PCIe interfaces

* slots with SATA - for small form factor SSDs


If the latitude E6x20 chip-set is not that new, it may only support the PCIe and USB interfaces, so the mSATA drives won't work?

I discovered this thread as I was looking to see whether a one of the expresscard adaptors which is a true PCIe interface would provide my E6420 with a bootable drive; I'm referring to one of these:
Sonnet - SDXC UHS-I Pro Reader/Writer ExpressCard/34

 

yep, quite a lot of confusion about what the SATA FLASH slot can actually do, let alone the expresscard slots in the e6520. I think Dell partially dropped the ball in not getting some of these features working right before sending this out the door, especially since it works in the m-series.

Check the E6520 owner's thread here for work by others, especially erblemoof, in trying to get SSD's working...

 

I also have a Fujitsu ultraportable (U820) with two internal miniPCIe slots, one is full-featured and used for wifi, the other is usb-only for WWAN. In exploring things which can plug into the miniPCIe slot, I came across this:

MR17 ( mSATA to Dual microSDXC UHS-I Adapter )

which is a dual-SDHC-slot mSATA adaptor. I figured it might be interesting if people get mSATA working on latitudes.


there's an MR15 which is similar but uses USB:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MR15-MR04...SDXC-SDHC-SD-half-mPCIe-adapter-/180842115021

 

Nifty looking. Unfortunately, I think the consensus is that the SATA FLASH port in the e6520 is not an mSATA port, but has a PCIe pinout instead. So, I don't think that would actually work. The MR15 probably would, but they clearly state it's just USB and non-bootable....

 

the MR15 might potentially be bootable, but I expect that it could be very tricky to make it work and of course only work on specific computers with exactly the right kind of bios. So anyone selling them would be safest to say not bootable.

My Fujitsu U820 will boot some usb bootable images that my Tecra M9 won't.

 

This device would work in the pcie-laned SATA flash slot: PM362 ( SATA to mini-PCIE Adapter )

THough once again no boot support. You could consider wiring up the 2.5" drive to this adapter so it would work *after* Win7 had booted up, then wire up a SSD to the primary bootable drive slot. I'd suggest just grabbing a normal 2.5" SSD, deshelling it and using it + 7mm 2.5" drive. They could then be stacked on top of each other in the primary 2.5" drive bay.

If you wanted to get mSATA to work otherwise I'd suggest wiring up the e-sata port internally to the mSATA SSD. You'd get boot support that way.

 

Now that's an interesting idea....internalizing the eSATA port. However, we'd need to find someplace to put an SSD or an mSATA drive...that would be quite tricky, I think.

 

Wire the 4 e-sata TX/RX sata lines to the very edge of the sata pins on the mSATA SSD (pins 21,23,33,35), then place cellophane tape over them and place it the SATA flash slot.