Upgrading Mx18 780 SLI to Windows 10

Hello all,

I am the original owner of this Alienware mx18 R?? Below are the specs

Deployed Date 9-15-2013
It has dual GTX 780m GPU's
32 gigs of ram
Windows 7 Ultimate
C: Drive 256 Gig SSD
D: Drive 750 Gig
Intel i7 4800MQ 2.7Ghz
DirectX 11.0

I have never upgraded or had to repair this machine, except replace the battery. It is amazing!! It has performed flawlessly for almost 8 years. The hinges are rock solid and the finish is in excellent shape as you can see by the pictures.

As micro soft stopped supporting windows 7 I would like to upgrade to windows 10. Every time I start my computer it displays a big screen message inviting me to upgrade to windows 10. I want to by a full version of windows 10 and wipe my hard drives and do a clean install. I went to the Dell website and signed in and downloaded all the latest drivers and updates for my MX18. Dell has an article on my support page on how to upgrade my specific model but it is not very helpful and the links to their YouTube videos showing how to do the upgrade no longer work.

Is there a video or a "How to" showing the basic steps on how to do this?
Am I asking for trouble by upgrading?
Could someone here possibly give an outline on the steps needed to upgrade from windows 7 to 10 on the Mx18?

Thanks,

Mark

 

All Intel laptop CPU's since Sandybridge have the Windows activation key embedded into the motherboard, meaning you will be able to install Windows 10 for completley free. To do this, you will need to get a USB drive and put a Windows 10 ISO file onto it, you can then boot from the USB drive and install Windows 10 through it, and your new installation should be automatically registered.

If you have Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate, you should be able to get Windows 10 Pro, but if you have Windows 7 Home Premium, you can only get Windows 10 Home Premium.

Here is the link for the tool:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

 

No need to buy a new license, just use the Win7 key and install Win10, every fresh installation of Win10 that previously used 7 has activated for me without issue. If Microsoft didnt desire this then they wouldnt permit Win7 keys to activate Win10 installations.

 

Thanks for all your helpful replies. I need to clarify a couple things.

If I use the USB with the ISO file method for installation of windows 10, I assume this will install windows 10 without deleting any of my personal files, settings etc?

I already have all my personal files backed up.
What method would I use if I wanted to do a complete fresh install, as in format my hard drive and remove any residual components of my old operation system?

I also have my original Product Key for my Windows 7 Ultimate. I assume this is what I would need to activate windows 10 for free?

I do not have the best understanding about this subject matter so I really appreciate all your help.

 

I was partially wrong, I apologize about that! You don’t need to use a USB flash drive actually. All you need to do is to run the .exe file that I sent to you earlier, and it should give you the option to “Upgrade this PC now.” When selecting this option, you should be able to keep your files without having to worry about them being erased.

As Reciever and myself have said, you don’t need to do anything as the new installation of Windows 10 will automatically detect that you have a product key and will use that to become fully activated. A Windows 7 product key will work for Windows 10 when you are upgrading, which is what you are doing.

 

Got it. But what if I want to so a fresh install of windows 10 and remove windows 7 completely from my hard drive?

 

If you want to completely get rid of all of your files, you will have an option to do so after choosing to "Upgrade this PC now."

 

There are multiple ways to go about it, but Windows Media creation tool can do all the work and you can either select to run it on the system or on a flash drive, I typically do the latter.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Same link as above, I generally use a flash drive to install Windows out of habit.

 

I visited the link and have successfully downloaded the windows 10 install files to a usb stick. I opened the exe. file and can see the option to do a fresh install. But before I do this I subscribed to iDrive back up service. I am currently waiting for them to send me an external drive so I can back up all my files. Of course I always backup my files daily to a local external hard drive, but I figured it is about time I also have cloud back up as well.

Now I am thinking this might be a good time to upgrade my 256GB SSD to a 512GB SSD.

Can anyone tell me what 512GB SSD or even a 1TB SSD would be compatible with my MX 18?

Thanks

 

Well, if you are talking about a standard 2.5 inch SATA SSD, a 1TB SSD will work and will be easy to find. If you are talking about the mSATA drive, you can easily find 512GB drives, but finding a 1TB mSATA Drive is very difficult as they are so small that fitting 1TB is hard. Most 1TB mSATA drives seem like scams, but I do think Samsung managed to make one a while back, but I would assume finding it would be very hard.

 

You can use up to a 2TB mSATA if desired, 1TB 860 EVO's are fairly common in comparison though.

 

I didn't think any mSATA drive over 1TB existed. I probably shouldn't be helping this guy out if I seem to be wrong all the time lol.

 

No no, commercially you are correct. There is no OEM/Bare drive option you can purchase. There is only one of Samsung's external SSD drives, I think its the T5 or something cant remember.

Basically its a 2TB external drive to which you can extract it from the clam shell and use in a PC if wanted, for most its too much work.

 

Here are some pictures of my MX 18. Is this a 2.5" SSD or an "M" SSD?

Would Best Buy be a good place to looking for a 1TB SSD?

 

That is an mSATA SSD, a 2.5 inch SSD would look like the hard drive you have, but would weigh a bit less and wouldn't have exposed PCB.

As for finding a 1tb mSATA SSD, your best bet is probably Amazon or Newegg as mSATA SSD's aren't too common anymore as they are outclassed by newer faster types of small form factor storage devices. You could also always buy directly from the manufacturers website if you are comfortable doing that too.

Here's a link to a 1tb mSATA Samsung SSD:
https://www.samsung.com/us/computin...ate-drives/ssd-860-evo-msata-1tb-mz-m6e1t0bw/

 

If 1TB is a must then I also recommend the 860 EVO, I've been using mine since 2018 I think? Its still serving as my OS drive in my desktop now (with a 2.5" adapter)

Mine was also sourced from Amazon.

 

I looked at the link you posted for the 860 evo. None of those SSD's are available on Samsung's website anymore. However they do have this SSD available.....

https://www.samsung.com/us/computin.../ssd-860-pro-2-5--sata-iii-512gb-mz-76p512bw/

It appears to have some sort of cover on the circuit board, and mine is bare. Would the above SSD work with my MX18?

Also, is the SSD on Amazon below the same one that is on the Samsung website above?

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-512G...12GB&qid=1619231239&s=electronics&sr=1-1&th=1

 

It does not seem like the above Samsung option I listed above is the kind of SSD that will work in my MX18. These Samsung msata SSD are only available used on Ebay.

What about this Kingston SSD? Is this is a quality brand and model?

https://www.cdw.com/product/kingston-kc600-solid-state-drive-512-gb-sata-6gb-s/6465020?pfm=srh

 

That Kingston SSD should be good, I forgot that they made mSATA SSD's hahahaha.

 

I did a little research on the Samsung 860's and 850's with 3D V-Nand and the Kingston brand. The reviews on the Kingston were not good. The main issue is that they start slowing down after some use. You pay twice as much for the Samsung but they maintain their speed over time. The only place I could find the 860 Evo 500GB new was on newegg. They were charging $429.99. I was able to find the Samsung 850 V-Nand 500GB on Amazon for $169.00 new. I will get it on Thursday. I already backed up my files on the external hard drive that iDrive shipped me, and I shipped it back today.

Am I right in thinking that if I remove my original 256SSD and install my new Samsung 500GB and install windows 10, and then decided to put my original 256GB SSD back in my laptop, it would boot up normal with my original windows 7 and all my files like nothing happened?

 

Yes, if you stick the old SSD in, everything should work flawlessly.

 

That's pretty cool. I am surprised laptop manufactures don't make this a feature. They could make the SSD C: drive removable from outside the laptop. Kind of like plug and play. You could then stick different C: drives with different operating systems and different versions of software. Still my MX18 is so easy to work on. Three screws and my SSD is in and out in under 60 seconds.

 

Well, laptop manufacturers nowadays are dead-set on thinner laptops, as that's what so many consumers want, so integrating something like you listed isn't on the top of their charts sadly. Though, Panasonic's Toughbooks are quite modular and support hot-swappable batteries and hard drives IIRC.

All older non-BGA machines are a breeze to work on, my Ranger has accessibility to everything but the mSATA slot and 2 RAM slots by just unscrewing 2 screws. I enjoy being able to tinker and service things, and older non-BGA machines fulfill both of those purposes very well, and they have aged quite well too. My 7 year old Ranger trades blows with newer budget options which is very interesting to me.

 

Just got my new Samsung EVO 850 500GB mSSD from Amazon today. Hopefully this thing is new! When I install it on my MX18 and load windows 10 can someone tell me the best way to bench mark this msata SSD? I want to make sure it is running properly. I do have 3DMark.

Thanks

 

Most people use Crystal Diskmark to benchmark storage devices. I would recommend using that.

 

I downloaded the Crystal Disk Mark software. I have attached my results to this post. This test was on my original MX18 "Lite on" 256GB msata SSD. These numbers seem a bit low but I am not sure. Are these numbers about right for a 2013 Alienware MX18 with the original C: drive SSD?

 

I installed my new Samsung msata drive and windows 10 successfully! I installed all the windows 10 updates and drivers. Everything is working, except my secondary D: drive is not being recognized. It worked fine right before I installed my new C: msata drive and windows 10. During the Windows 10 installation, I got to that screen asking me what drive I wanted to install windows 10 on. Windows 10 did recognize both my D: and C: drive at that time.

Do I need to go into my BIOS and change a setting?

 

If the BIOS is set to RAID then you may have to switch it to AHCI to see other drive again. This can sometimes cause other issues though.
Originally, the mSATA slots were often used as a cache drive for a larger HDD and the system had to be set to RAID. On the 18 (your machine) they also had an option to get 4-way RAID0 by using the mSATA, both 2.5" bays and an SSD caddy in the optical drive bay.
You can also try typing Disk Management in the Windows search bar and select Create and Format partitions. Sometimes a missing drive can be seen here and you just need to enable it again.

 

I ended up going into a menu showing C: drive. I had to hit the populate button and then name volumes>>and then the drive was there but it was not named. I named it D: and saved my changes and everything worked.

 

Any special drivers for windows 10? I’m debating on removing my factory quad raid setup and just keeping it in original form and putting in my ssds and msata and turning off raid and putting windows 10 on it. Thx!