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    Alienware 15 factory reset and SSD help

    Discussion in '2015+ Alienware 13 / 15 / 17' started by Emsteez, Jul 28, 2015.

  1. Emsteez

    Emsteez Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi guys, I was wondering if you could help me.

    I have the AW15 with a 1TB 5400 HDD. I'm planning on swapping the HDD with a Samsung 500gb 850 evo. I'm basically wanting the laptop to be as it was the day I received it, expect with an SSD of course. = P

    Would it be possible to simply remove the HDD, take the SSD right out of the packaging and into the laptop, and boot up from the recovery USB disk I made using Alienrespawn?

    Is it this simple, or am I missing something?
     
    Emsteez, Jul 28, 2015
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  2. phoenixhd

    phoenixhd Notebook Enthusiast

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    Yep, that's what I did. Then reconnected the HDD, booted into windows and reformatted it as a storage drive.

    Annoyingly Alienrespawn doesn't let you select the drive to restore, so you have to disconnect the HDD.
     
    phoenixhd, Jul 28, 2015
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  3. Emsteez

    Emsteez Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thank you! Yeah, I bought an enclosure for the HDD so that it can be used as a removal hard drive.
    3 questions if you don't mind mate.

    1. Do I need to do anything to the SSD before putting it into the laptop?

    2. Did you need to alter any settings in the bios prior?

    3. After using the Alienrespawn recovery USB on the new SSD, will it actually be like it was when it came on the first day, such drivers and the hard drives partitions that currently exist on the HDD set up by Dell/Alienware?
     
    Emsteez, Jul 28, 2015
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  4. phoenixhd

    phoenixhd Notebook Enthusiast

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    I installed an M.2 SSD (Crucial MX200) so I've still got the HDD internal to the laptop

    3 questions if you don't mind mate.
    No, although I didn't use a 2.5" drive- I'd presume for those you'll need to unscrew the mounts of the existing HDD and use the adapter cable that's attached to it.

    No- plug in the USB stick and hit F12 (IIRC) repeatedly to get to the boot options menu, then select the alienrespawn USB and off it goes.

    I did bugger about with some BIOS settings a bit (got confused about which drive UEFI was booting off until I unplugged the HDD, booted with only the SSD, shutdown and then reconnected the SSD and then got paranoid about performance and fiddled some more) which screwed things up. Put them back to default now. TL;DR- Leave the BIOS settings well alone!

    Seems to be to me- recovery partition exists and everything else seemed "factory fresh".

    Top tip- don't panic (as I did) if your first few SSD boots are rather disappointingly slow. Looks to be windows finishing off the install/update process. I'm now well south of 10 second boots.
     
    phoenixhd, Jul 29, 2015
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  5. Emsteez

    Emsteez Notebook Enthusiast

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    Just did it there and it worked brilliantly! Cheers!
     
    Emsteez, Jul 29, 2015
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  6. Alienware-L_Porras

    Alienware-L_Porras Company Representative

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    That's awesome! We're glad it's working fine :)
     
    Alienware-L_Porras, Jul 29, 2015
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