Is my Alienware M18xR2 dead? SATA connector fried

Hi,

So this morning I smelt a burning smell and immediately the laptop shut down.

I opened up the backplate to take a look and noticed the hard drive connector was fried in the middle of the connector. (Please see attached pictures)

Is this worth fixing? Both the SATA cable and connector are fried by the look of it. Or should I just bite the bullet and get rid of the computer?

Many Thanks

Mustang




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the other solution would be to remove ur disc drive and put in a HDD/SSD adapter like i have done. The Bios still detects it as a CD/DVD boot device, but it boots from it no problems, i have a 2tb SSD in mine

 

Hi,

Where are you plugging it in? The connector on the board is damaged too. Or do you mean you’re booting from USB?

Many Thanks

Mustang


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the internal blu ray/dvd drive the m18x has uses a sata interface, same as that connector, but its underneath the palmrest. so you would have to do what i did, remove the screen/palmrest etc and take out the dvd drive and put a HDD adapter in its place

 

Oh right, ok, where did you get the HDD adapter from and how did you secure it in place?

Thanks for your help


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one of these for example: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SATA-2nd...864249?hash=item2843c7dfb9:g:CqgAAOSwiKdcWuA8

 

you have to remove the bracket off your original disc drive and put it on that adapter, theres an ifixit guide on removing the disc drive

 

here you go https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Alienware+M18x+CD+Drive+Replacement/122612

 

Oh wow, if that works that would be amazing. Thanks so much for your suggestion, I’m going to buy that now. I’ll let you know


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yep no problem, id suggest if ur going to go thru the hassle of doing that, put a decent sized SSD in there so u wont ever have to upgrade it lol. let me know how it goes

 

This exact thing happened to my M18x too. The board is currently in with a repair guy who is trying to solder a new connector to the board. Unfortunately he has lifted a connector pad while removing the old connector so I could be in trouble.
Fortunately you still have the mSata and DVD bay as options. I am also speaking with a few guys about an MXM NVMe Adapter for the slave GPU slot. I think this will be the best option.
You will need a new sata cable and they are rare and expensive

 

ah right, i forgot the r2 variant has the msata slot (i only have the r1 model which doesnt have it as reference lol)

 

The cheapest one I could find was £65, is that about right?


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https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/264837830352


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unless u can fix the connector on the board, getting the cable would be rather pointless. Maxware did make a good point tho, ur other option is also an mSata SSD (forgot the r2 had that slot)

 

How do you configure the mSATA though, I think mine is a 32GB and it’s a cache?

How do you set up an mSATA to boot from?


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i would assume it would show up as a regular sata device in the bios, at least thats how it worked on my old clevo. 32gb is rather small tho, u would need a larger one to install windows onto.

 

How much do you think it would be for the connector on the board to be fixed?


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that would be a question best aimed at Maxware, thats out of my field of knowledge and expertise lol

 

The guy is trying to fix my connector for $50 but you'll need to find the connector on eBay.

You should just be able to slide the mSata in and use a Windows 10 USB and it should install. That's what I did with a 512GB mSata

 

Ok, cool, so I have some options. I could just get a decent size mSATA, and use the DVD drive for one of my 500GB SSD’s.

Is it possible to clone my existing SSD onto the new mSATA?


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Yeah it should be possible but I've never cloned a drive, I always prefer to do fresh installations.

 

Is this the correct mSATA for my computer?


Kingston SUV500MS/480G SSD UV500 mSATA https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07C3YY66G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_f4QxFb4208DXK


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Looks to be right

 

Hi,

Just thought I'd let you know that the HDD caddy worked a treat. I bought a 480GB mSATA and put a 500GB SSD in the HDD caddy in the CD/DVD drive like you suggested.

So glad to have the computer back up and running. Now just trying to sort out the GPU (had to remove it because of POST issues), need to reinstall unlocked A11 BIOS and get a modded driver for the 980M.

Many thanks for your suggestion an help, I really appreciate it.

Many Thanks

Mustang

 

no problem, glad i could help

 

Hi,

I think you are lucky your PC is still alive. The burned pin looks like the 3.3V power rail was shorted to ground. (you can see the connector pinout on this picture https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VLFUS7KmGgeOEMFBtF4u1d_rud8cypv5/view?usp=sharing)
This could have destroyed the 3.3v chip on the motherboard (like it did on my motherboard).
For now your computer is working, but you don't know what caused it to malfunction (most likely the HDD cable was somehow damaged).
As the connector is now damaged, I could cause further damage to the board and most likely kill the 3.3v rail (not now but maybe in the future, no 3.3v = dead motherboard).
If you don't want to replace the connector (you can find new one here https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/3288...earchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_) I strongly recommand to at least remove the damaged connector, and clean the burned spot.

Also, if you want the full speed of your SSD, you may want to replace the original HDD1 an HDD2 slots, because other SATA slots (including mSATA and Optical Disk Drive (ODD)) are only running at SATA 2.0 speed. But this may not really impact performance depending on your use case.

Anyway, glad to see your PC alive again !

 

That's what I have done. My board was still functional using the mSata but I got my hands on a replacement HDD cable and board connector. The board is currently with a repair guy who has been trying to remove the old connector but during the process he has lifted a connector tab from the board so I'm not sure how he is going to fix that.

I am in the process of arranging an MXM to NVMe adapter with a few of the other guys on this forum which will supposedly give us full NVMe speeds so it may be time to give up on the plan to revive the 2.5" drives.

 

If the guy lifted a single black, red, or orange pin, that's no big deal, these pin are duplicated on the connector anyway. If the pins are ones of [0] or [1] datelines, he may be able to retrace the connexion to little components on top of the connector. But if the pin is on the [2] data line, that may be complicated because this line is routed directly to the PCH chip. But you will still be able to use at least 2 of the 3 slots. (I am referring to this picture for the connectors and data lanes names https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VLFUS7KmGgeOEMFBtF4u1d_rud8cypv5/view?usp=sharing)

That could be fun, but even if you get the adapter working, wouldn't the bios need modification ?

 

Thanks for that info. I'm waiting for him to send through a photo of the lifted tab so I'll post that if he ever sends it through.

Apparently the adapter has been proven to work and I don't think any BIOS mod is required. I guess I'll find out when it arrives.
@Baddemichl is the man so he should be able to confirm this.