M6800 Owners' Thread

I got the popping noise when I didn't have the dell drivers installed. It seems to have gone away for me, but you could try messing with the "turn off speakers when there's no sound" setting in the dell drivers software.

 

Hi All,

A new member here, with a m6800 arriving tomorrow! I have read pretty much everything I could, but a lot of it goes over my head. I would like a little advice:

My machine will arrive with a 500gb hybrid drive with 8gb flash. I would like to add a 256 Crucial M550 as the boot drive, and probably leaving the 500gb hybrid as the storage drive. In very simple language what is the best way of getting the OS and everything else required to boot from the ssd drive?

I got the impression from another thread that it was important notto allow the machine to boot up from the hybrid drive prior to making the required changes. Does that mean that if the computer arrives tomorrow, but the ssd (from Amazon) does not, that I won't be able to play with my new toy?

Thanks for any help,
Steve D.

 

Play with it, but consider that you may need to reinstall windows and programs, so don't worry too much about customizing everything just so.

When you get your SSD, swap the drives, install windows and drivers, then add the other and format it.


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It's probably best to just reinstall and wipe the drive that it comes with. However, you can use acronis software to clone the disk to the SSD. However, you will have to realign the ssd, as when you image to an SSD, it almost always isn't properly aligned, and that causes poor performance, especially over time. You can find all the software for free, but it is a little bit of extra work. It just depends on if you'd rather do that, or spend a little time installing drivers.

 

In a fit of boredom today, I went ahead and tried to install the regular catalyst drivers. Interestingly enough, the card now shows up in CCC as the 8950m, and I got about a 5-10% performance boost in games and benchmarks. Not a lot, but it's something, and it was an interesting experiment. As I don't really use the professional features of the firepro card, I'll probably leave it this way for now and see how stable it is. I also don't have the option for overclocking in CCC, but I assume that's a mobile thing? If I'm wrong there, someone let me know.

I also got a mini-pci to usb adapter so I can keep my USB receiver for my mouse under the bottom cover. However, it doesn't work in the open half card slot, only in the WWAN slot. Anyone know why that is?

 

Is it not possible to install the ssd in a spare drive and clone the hybrid drive onto the ssd, then go into the bios and change the bootable drive to the ssd? When you are sure that it is booting from the ssd, then reformat the hybrid drive?

What is this alignment? I've never heard of it. I need to do some swotting up!

I did read on another thread that perhaps there are things that are factory installed on the drive that you would not necessarily get on if you just reinstalled the software that you are provided with. Does Dell not provide an 'image' on cd/DVD that they have installed on the hard disc?

Steve D.

OK. Have swotted up on alignment. Doesn't seem too onerous.

 

They don't really provide their factory image of windows or anything, but I haven't run across anything that you couldn't get through their website. However, it's not always clearly labeled what is what, so you may have some things that don't work until you figure out what driver/software package actually pertains to that.

 

One thing with HDD to SSD conversion is that you need software to do so. Acronis is one, there are a couple other free ones as well.
When you do so you have to make a complete clone/copy of the entire disk, otherwise it won't boot.
By doing so, however, the partition sizes and file locations aren't always the best, hence the potential loss in performance. Since you shouldn't defrag an SSD you can't really move them into better position.
You can adjust the partitions later, but this doesn't change their position on the disk. So if you can deal with the inconvenience it is better to start from scratch.


As far as the USB, I think that is a great idea.
Does it just not get recognized? or doesn't it connect? The first thing that comes to mind is that there is not enough power in the half card slot, but it could also have to do with recognition.

 

I thought it was a pretty good idea too, as it not only keeps the USB port free, but it keeps you from breaking off the port or damaging the receiver.

It doesn't connect at all. It's like it's not even plugged in. Plug it in to the WWAN slot though, and it's instantly recognized and up and running.

 

You can use PartedMagic or EaseUS Disk Copy, both free, to clone your drives, though that implies booting from an USB drive first. It's a piece of cake, esp. with EaseUS. You should not need any realignment with newer cloning software such as these two.

Also, there's nothing wrong in defragmenting an SSD if you use an SSD-aware program. Not that that would improve your performance in any significant way.