New M6500 Discussion Thread

Don't forget that the M6500 only supports a SATA II interface (3 Gb/s), so you obviously won't get full speeds out of a modern SSD.

 

Yeah, I understand. But I should be getting sequentials in the 500's, right?

 

No. 3 Gb / sec (Giga_bit_) is about equal to 300 MB / sec (Mega_byte_). And then there's overhead...

 

Okay, then. That's that. Thanks for the info.

 

Yeah I suppose so.

 

So, the final word on my M6500 turns out to be a 'grass is greener' cautionary tale or 'if its fixed, don't break it!

After attempting to get the Samsung SM841 mSata which I got for free to work in my perfectly fine M6500, since then I had to take it out because the machine, besides refusing to allow the OS to install completely on it, had begun to act squirrelly. It suddenly refused to install Windows updates, BSOD"s began popping up, and so I decided to revert back to my previous setup.

Fat chance. Even after reverting back, I kept getting BSOD's, Windows update issues and suddenly driver issues where, for example, the Intel storage drivers refused to install.

After hours of changing drivers, changing memory, dumping the CMOS battery, reloading BIOS defaults, trying Windows 7, 8, and 10, and such it just got worse and worse to where now nothing will install on any drive.

Sigh....

 

That's really odd @MikeBravo...

I had my fair share with my old M6500, but no matter what I do it just doesn't break.

Have you tried a different hard disk?

 

Yeah, they really are durable. My old M6400 had been through a lot (it was disassembled about a dozen times repasting, changing GPU, fans, etc.) but it still works (my sister uses it) and in fact its battery is in a better shape (lost less capacity) than this 97 Whr one on M6700.

It sounds weird that adding an mSATA disk would cause some hardware failure. I'd try a CMOS reset just in case. It helped me when I added a M6500 CPU fan on my M6400 which messed up my fan controller (the fan started constantly changing speeds) as I failed to notice that the wiring is different on the fans (M6500 uses all for wires). The CMOS reset saved the day though.

 

Changed HDD's both SSD and convential. Did the CMOS battery drain trick. Reset BIOS to the defaults. What suggests to me that it is a hardware failure probably due to installing the mSata drive is that even after draining the CMOS, NVRAM, etc., changing to a proven reliable HDD, and swapping out the memory with different, Win 7 or 10 will install, but Windows update is erratic, stopping often after installing 75% of the updates and then when forced to reboot completing some of the update install, but then when returning to update, showing that no updates had ever been installed.

Also, now no matter what trick I try, the Dell supplied Intel Storage Manager driver suddenly refuses to install as does the Dell Control Vault Broadcom driver that always did before. With the several BSOD's that began after abandoning the mSata and going back to the old setup (same OS disk that still had the proven Win 10 upgrade installed), they were either 'memory manager' failure or 'IRQL is less than zero' faults.

This leads me to suspect that something popped on the MB that affects memory and storage management.

 

After a while, remembering your suggestion and being the stubborn old cuss that I am, I put mine back together once again somehow got it running with only a few quirks. Then, I downloaded the latest version of Macrium Reflect and attempted to clone the 120 GB OCZ Agility boot drive to my 256GB Samsung SM841 as a last ditch effort to get some use out of the free mSATA as a boot drive.

No luck. Macrium fails half way through with only a cryptic error message saying something about broken pipe. Tried it several times with the same result and the same error