1TB SSD (Has to be M2 and PCI?) Dell XPS 9560

cormie

Hey folks,
I recently had the bad news of finding out not all SSD's are the same (physical) size. I ordered a new Dell XPS 9560 and chose the smaller capacity thinking I could throw the 1TB Samsung EVO 850 I had into it, but on watching a how to video, noticed the drive in the 9560 was much smaller.

This was the SSD used and recommended in the video: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01M7P06DY/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1

But it's crazy expensive and I don't game or do much video production so it's probably way overkill for me.

This was suggested as a budget one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01L3LPSHY/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=A3900SHPGK9BEI&psc=1

But after reading some reviews, the Intel one doesn't seem to be the most reliable in terms of endurance and it has barely any reviews on Amazon.

Really the only important things to me are that it's 1TB and that it is reliable. The difference in speed of SSD's I probably won't even notice. I'm hoping this laptop will last me at least 5 years like my current one has, so just don't want to run into any problems.

Komplett actually have a better price than Amazon after VAT (which I can claim back) and delivery are taken into account.

I've seen mention of a Crucial MX300 that it performs similarly to Evo 960 at half the price, but again, it's reliability I need, not speed.

Also, what kind of prices can I expect to get for a second hand Samsung EVO 850 SATA and the drive that came with the laptop I wonder?

If anyone has any advice, please share

Sheogorath

doesn't the 9560 come with an ssd and hdd? in which case you should be able to replace the hdd with the 850 evo, no?

minitrue

Service manual suggests it takes half-size and full size m.2 ssd's as well as 2.5" drives, but I guess if you have a half-length one (though your link to what is there doesn't suggest that) and want to put a full length one in you'll need to find a full length thermal pad. What EVO 850 do you have? And as Sheogorath says what is in the 2.5" hd bay?

FTR MX300s should be reliable enough but are you actually sure you need to buy any drive at all? Surely the intel and 960 you linked to are M.2 2280 and so is the EVO 850 you have now? Even if your 850 is a 2.5" should be room for it in the hd bay or is that the problem you have another drive you want to keep in the hd bay also?

cormie

Thanks a lot for the replies folks!

If you see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IsK2_8kcpA&t=90s

You will see that the 97WHR battery (what I have) takes the place of where another drive, or a bigger drive can go, so I believe my only option is for the M2 PCI?

EDIT: Is the one in the video a half size one or a full size M2? Can you tell whether it's PCI or M2 or SATA just by the size of it too?

Sheogorath

ah, I understand now. looks like a full length and the dell website says it's a PCIe, so either of the drives you linked should work.
Where did you see the bad reviews for the 6000p? The price on amazon is a lot less than any other I've seen and it comes with a five year warranty

minitrue

Ah ok sorry, service manual is stupid/wrong/misleading (telling you to remove the full length battery for example to get at the drive) and the large battery does seem to use the 2.5" drive bay space.

The M.2 in the video is full size, if you look at the service manual I linked it at least shows those clearly enough and you can see the half size one is pretty close to exactly that (42mm Vs 80mm long).

As for PCI-E or SATA everything I can see suggests it's fine for either in the M.2 slot but darned if I can find any official word that it has sata support and not going to tell just by looking.

cormie

This was the review for the 6000p: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-600p-series-ssd-review,4738-3.html

To be honest I'm not too up to speed on this kinda stuff, but just reading about the endurance rating in the comments and stuff put me off it.

The speed difference between these SSDs for what I need the laptop for, isn't worth €200 extra, but if it's going to save a failure down the line, maybe it is..

I see the rack for the half size SSD, even smaller again then my Evo 850

If I can sell the Evo 850 and the Liteon that was included in the laptop for close enough to what the 960 costs, I may go for it, but if I can get a similar endurance to the 960 for half the price for just sacrificing extra speed I'll never notice, this is definitely the better option for me!

Sheogorath

cormie wrote:

The speed difference between these SSDs for what I need the laptop for, isn't worth €200 extra, but if it's going to save a failure down the line, maybe it is..

A lot of those comments are from before intel changed the endurance rating. What will the laptop be used for? For general use I think the drive should last, plus even if it does fail in a few years the price of ssd's will hopefully have dropped (although no guarantee of course)
I'm actually in the market for a 500gb ssd if you want to pm me

EDIT: forgot you have a 1tb, still might be interested though

cormie

Oh that's my bad, I saw the length of the article so just kinda skipped to the conclusion and didn't notice this link in the first paragraph: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-600p-endurance-tbw-warranty,32798.html

So now it doesn't sound so bad at all, and if that's the case and it's a good value SSD in terms of size and endurance, then I might just go for it and save the money on speed I'll never use?

I will have a 1TB Samsung EVO 850 SATA which I got to replace what I thought was a failing HDD in the laptop I've been using the last 5 years) but now that I found out the SSD won't fit in the new one, I decided to test out the failing HDD properly and after a chkdsk f/r/p or whatever it was I was advised to do, it only had a a tiny amount of bad clusters, 4kb of bad sectors it said and I think Windows may disregard these as usable. Anyway, it's been working fine since and as that laptop is going to be kept as a backup laptop, I'll just keep the HDD in it and will sell the SSD.

I will also have the 500GB SSD that came with the new XPS 9560 for sale. It's the same one linked to in the OP, which I've used very very little as I don't want to install the OS and start using the laptop as my main one until I get my 1TB SSD

cormie

Aha, I was having trouble finding a seller for the 600p 1TB, but I think that's because I was searching for 6000p as that's what the Amazon seller has it as. It's on Komplett.ie for €389 including VAT, it's on the Amazon link for what will work out under €300 delivered, but on the same sellers website, they have it at £360

ED E

RE Old laptop:

Chkdsk is a basic tool, it looks at files, not sectors. You could have 5000 bad sectors in free space and it wouldnt check or acknowledge them.

If you check the SMART data (with say Speccy) then the Reallocated sector count will give you a hint. If the value is any more than you have fingers then the drive is aging out and does need replacement.


RE New Laptop:

If you sell the stock SSD, will dell honor any returns?


All the Dell pages list it as a PCIe SSD, not SATA even on the cheaper options, so safe to assume the NGFF slot is PCIE/NVME.

2 SoDIMMs
1 SD Card Reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC)
1 Kensington Lock Slot

Whats your workload? (Dont think you've said). A large SDXC card for low intensity storage (low write count) and a 500GB SSD might be a lot cheaper and just as performant.

cormie

Thanks for the input!

I'm going to just hope I don't run into any issues with the potentially failing HDD before my 1TB M2 PCI comes, once that comes, the laptop with the HDD will be gathering dust on the off chance something happens the 9560 and I need a backup, or to check installs or other stuff out.

I'm hoping swapping out the SSD won't affect the warranty at all, but I'll need to double check on this with them!


My workload is pretty low key to be honest. Just thunderbird, calendar, maps, chrome, open office and Winamp mostly and then the odd bit of video editing, but very odd. I'd much rather keep everything on the one drive, this is how I usually do it, delete all partitions and just have everything on the C drive

ED E

Im sure you know this, but remember the 3 2 1 rule. When HDDs fail they creak and then collapse (typically). When SSDs fail, they eat a shotgun.

cormie

I'm not too knowledgeable about it, but I know there's a spinning noise that if you start to hear you should get your **** backed up asap

I'm trying to see the difference between the SSDPEKKW010T7X1 for €389 on Komplett (best price I can see it for) and the SSDPEKKF010T7X1 on the Amazon link which is much cheaper. Maybe just a typo as a Google result for SSDPEKKF010T7X1 throws up very little.

cormie

So Intel Live chat responded with:

The SSDPEKKF010T7X1 refers to the Intel® SSD Pro 6000p Series (1.0TB, M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0 x4, 3D1, TLC)

The SSDPEKKW010T7X1 refers to the Intel® SSD 600p Series (1.0TB, M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0 x4, 3D1, TLC)

The difference between the 2 can be found in the following link
https://ark.intel.com/compare/94926,94932

So they both appear almost identical, but the last few rows show the 6000p to have a few more features.


Would there be any reason to not get the 6000p if they were both the same price I wonder?


EDIT: Kept chatting and got this info:

Me (4/19/2017, 9:34:51 AM): That's great, thanks very much for the quick response. So the 6000p is slightly better that it has a few more features?

Shashi Kiran (4/19/2017, 9:36:42 AM): Yes there are some features like End-to-End Data Protection, Intel® Remote Secure Erase which are available with the Intel® SSD Pro 6000p Series
Me (4/19/2017, 9:37:40 AM): So if both are the same price, I ay as well just get the 6000p?
Shashi Kiran (4/19/2017, 9:37:54 AM): You could do that
Me (4/19/2017, 9:38:05 AM): Is there ever any reason someone would get the 600p over the 6000?
Shashi Kiran (4/19/2017, 9:38:59 AM): Both have the exact same specifications, other than the 2 advanced technologies features
Me (4/19/2017, 9:41:23 AM): Ok great, so may as well get the 6000p, I've actually found it much cheaper than the 600p on Amazon so will get that one.

One last question, I understand that the endurance rating on release for these was 72TB but this has since been increased to over 500, are old stock models only 72, or are ALL models over 500, but they were just released with the wrong info?
Shashi Kiran (4/19/2017, 9:43:30 AM): The SSD's with the ordering codes SSDPEKKF010T7X1 and SSDPEKKW010T7X1 would have the said endurance rating as mentioned on the link
Me (4/19/2017, 9:46:04 AM): Great, so both 576. Thanks a lot for your help and have a great day
Shashi Kiran (4/19/2017, 9:46:08 AM): You are welcome
Shashi Kiran (4/19/2017, 9:46:09 AM): Is there anything else that I may assist you with?
Me (4/19/2017, 9:46:16 AM): No that's everything, take care
Shashi Kiran (4/19/2017, 9:46:18 AM): Thank you for being Intel’s valued customer. Thank you for using the Intel® Customer Support chat service. If you need anything else, feel free to contact us. Have a nice day!

cormie

I ended up returning the original XPS 9560 I ordered and rather than messing about with SSD installations etc, the replacement model I got was the one with a 1TB SSD, so I'm now selling my Samsung Evo 850 SSD:

http://www.adverts.ie/other-computers/samsung-850-evo-1-tb-2-5-inch-solid-state-drive-black/13087528