New M6500 Discussion Thread

Quick Google says that a broken pipe means a failure with either the source or destination disk, depending on whether it was a read or write failure. So looks like there's a problem with one of your drives, or maybe the connector.

 

Yeah, so I found out myself. This whole experiment is turning out to be a dark comedy. When I tried a second time to clone the OCZ drive I found out that because Macrium successfully copied over the system reserved partition with the mbr, diskpart won't let me delete it so I can chkdsk the whole drive. Now I'm going to have to get an external msata adapter to get rid of it.

DUH! Used the Macrium PE boot disk and it worked perfectly!

 

Hey Alex,
couldnt find the "message"-function in this forum, so I am writing here. I got the m6500 for some years in pain now. Several service replacements and overheating problems continuing. Would it be possible to get on the phone with you to talk about how you got yours replaced and which one performs better? I am from Germany too and could call you if you provide your number in a message ... I joined the forum just to contact you.
Would be really really nice! I can't stand the problems and performance of my m6500 any more ...
Thanks in advance ...

 

Got out the m6500 for first time since late March to run some OS updates and sync dropbox to it. CPU and mobo temps on the M6500 are in the mid 70s (Clarksfield i7-920xm), FX3800 GPU is in low 50s and mobo temps read in the 70s... blew out the dust (there seemed to be quite a good dust storm from that - alot of dust) and that dropped temps another 5c or so. This is while doing the updates and syncing, nothing else. I may try openning it up later and cleaning it properly. Maybe re-applying thermal paste.

* I decided to format the drives clean on the M6500 and reinstall using win10 ISO mounted on a FAT32 MBR USB flash thumb drive. After the clean install it is running at mid 50s and low 60s while performing the initial Win updates and in the high 40s when at idle. I think I maybe had some rogue services/programs when it was running hot before. I've had that laptop for 6+ years so it needed a clean wipe install.

**edit 2: The pair of SSDs in the laptop are the same that shipped with the M6500 some 6+ yrs ago.

SATA III MMDOE56G5MXP-0VB 256GB Samsung (PM800)

They consistently see about 130MBps - 150MBps read and write in samsung Magician performance test. After reading others performance #s with that same SSD it seems that is about normal for that model.

As a test, I put in a circa 2012 Samsung 830 Pro SSD (SATAIII instead of II) and it consistently performed at around 250 MBps in the M6500.

That 830 Pro I tested with was borrowed from another laptop, but after seeing the performance jump I think I'll order a couple low cost 256GB SATA III SSDs to replace the older tech SATA II PM800 SSDs. I'd like to keep the M6500 running tip-top for years to come. Even though the laptop is only capable of SATA II the newer SATAIII drives are able to get the best possible performance from that sata2 interface.

 

Hello guys - using M6500 in the office. The original battery died. When it's on AC, it's perfectly fine.

So I got a replacement (non-oem). When I use the laptop without AC, battery powers on just fine. Sometimes it shuts randomly. I noticed as soon as I go on Youtube, the laptop shuts. On AC it's fine on Youtube.

Not sure what issue this might be? Maybe the non-oem battery not giving it enough wattage?

 

Not the same as your problem, but I have never been able to run my second- or third-hand (who knows?) M6500 on mains power without the screen going black as soon as I click on anything. On battery, no problem. Eventually, after many days of Googling, I installed NVidia's PowerMizer and set it at Medium, and now it's OK.

Well I just wonder if the graphics card is mistakenly registering overheating when you are on battery, and whether it might be worth giving PowerMizer a try?

I had to download it from a a helpful individual but can't find him any more, but I just found it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/g1nil1f9ypddee2/NVPMManagerUni-1.01.zip

I'd be glad if more experienced Notebookers could check over what I've said.

 

That's useful - I'll try reinstalling the GPU driver and see if I can set it to low. It's running the AMD M7820 (5870M I think) so it's quite power hungry.

 

On the contrary, the ATI M7820 consumes half the power of FX3800M.

 

All - I've been using the M6500 for years now without issue with(4) 1TB SSD drives in two RAID0 volumes as I have an SSD in the CD/DVD drive caddy. I just recently purchased a Samsung evo 4TB SSD drive but it seems when the computer boots and I enter the Intel Matrox RAID configuration only 1.6TB of a 4TB capacity SSD drive is displayed. I did some research and seems to recognize a greater than I believe 2TB drive the Intel Matrox will need to be upgraded with the current software named Intel RST. I've always installed the Intel RST from within Windows 7 OS once all is built but it seems this Intel Matrox ROM is at a lower level showing when the computer boots and you press I believe control "I" or the like to enter the RAID configuration utility. So, have any of you been able to upgrade the lower level Intel Matrox ROM to a newer version like Intel RST and if so is there a link on Dell's site to do so? At this time on boot up I see Intel Matrix ROM v8.9.1007 PCH-M. I thought perhaps I could just continue with OS load and then install Intel RST from within OS and maybe it would see the full capacity of each SSD but then thought if the Intel Matrix ROM is at a lower level than OS perhaps the OS will only see capacity this ROM makes available. I'm seeing some downloads on Dell's site about Intel RST replacing Matrox but not sure if the download actually upgrades the version in OS or at this lower level. Any help GREATLY appreciated as I would like to use these newer 4TB SSDs to store VMs in a lab run on the M6500. It's been an awesome computer all these years with just this one challenge. Thanks in advance.

 

All - I've been using the M6500 for years now without issue with(4) 1TB SSD drives in two RAID0 volumes as I have an SSD in the CD/DVD drive caddy. I just recently purchased a Samsung evo 4TB SSD drive but it seems when the computer boots and I enter the Intel Matrox RAID configuration only 1.6TB of a 4TB capacity SSD drive is displayed. I did some research and seems to recognize a greater than I believe 2TB drive the Intel Matrox will need to be upgraded with the current software named Intel RST. I've always installed the Intel RST from within Windows 7 OS once all is built but it seems this Intel Matrox ROM is at a lower level showing when the computer boots and you press I believe control "I" or the like to enter the RAID configuration utility. So, have any of you been able to upgrade the lower level Intel Matrox ROM to a newer version like Intel RST and if so is there a link on Dell's site to do so? At this time on boot up I see Intel Matrix ROM v8.9.1007 PCH-M. I thought perhaps I could just continue with OS load and then install Intel RST from within OS and maybe it would see the full capacity of each SSD but then thought if the Intel Matrix ROM is at a lower level than OS perhaps the OS will only see capacity this ROM makes available. I'm seeing some downloads on Dell's site about Intel RST replacing Matrox but not sure if the download actually upgrades the version in OS or at this lower level. Any help GREATLY appreciated as I would like to use these newer 4TB SSDs to store VMs in a lab run on the M6500. It's been an awesome computer all these years with just this one challenge. Thanks in advance.