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Cp-Coder wrote: One of the first items I checked was the speed of the M.2 SSD. I was very disappointed. Dell had supplied the machine with a SSD that ran barely faster than clunky old SATA SSDs. In fact the sequential read speed was slightly slower than her old SATA SSD.
Somebody's spoiled. I'm happy with any SSD. I still have machines that boot off of spinning drives.
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Quote: Somebody's spoiled
True, I blush to disclose. But the first time you work with a quality NVMe SSD, you may quickly join the folds of us "spoilt" folks! 
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When a system already takes more time performing its POST routine from a cold boot (with no way around it) than getting to the login screen, I've already stopped caring.
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OK, but drive speed is not just about boot time. It matters whenever you are dealing with reading / writing large files.
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Purely for argument's sake (because I know exactly what you're saying and I'm in your camp already):
I read large files all the time: My largest files are typically movies, and even my oldest spinner is complete overkill and has no problem keeping up with playback.
OTOH: If you need to move terabytes around (which I've done), then we're talking minutes rather than hours, so yeah - great. But how often do you do that?
The greatest argument in favor of SSDs (and faster), IMO, is in bootup time, and application startup time. Typical users otherwise don't shuffle huge files around so frequently it matters much to them. If SSDs matched the price/capacity of spinners, that's all I'd be running (on the last Black Friday, I bought 10TB spinners for CAD$225 each). Awesome for my NAS and its offline/offsite backups. When are we going to see comparable SSDs in that price range/capacity? I'm patiently waiting.
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You can USB 3.0-to-NVMe boxes, and turn the M.2 drive into an external drive.
I've seen them advertised for ~USD 20 on Amazon; no idea about the quality.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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When I set up a home-built machine 2 years ago, it took me quite some time to get the Samsung (IIRC it was a 950 Pro) working correctly. The culprit was Windows which didn't have an appropriate driver, and therefore didn't set up it's modes correctly. Maybe your original Dell machine wasn't set up correctly either?
Not sure about Dell, but here at the office we've spent a lot of time to get our HP machines working properly, because HP failed to set up the machines (with NVME drives) correctly, and our IT failed to fix it because they relied on (incorrect) info from HP.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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Quote: Maybe your original Dell machine wasn't set up correctly either?
That is entirely possible! But I tried to update the driver on the SSD and was told the driver is up to date. When I replaced the SSD with a Samsung 970 PRO, the problem was resolved immediately.
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I recently bought an HP. Very well constructed. Same unit at dell would've been $400 more at least.
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Sounds like an entry level DRAMless model (some of these use system ram as a cache, which helps a little but is nowhere close to onboard ram). The good news is that they're the first m.2 drives to be as cheap as SATA ones; the bad as you've seen is that they perform at best marginally faster than sata models.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Very interesting! Thanks for posting this. 
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Did you try just reseating the Dell M.2? If it worked, fine, if not, it would only take 5 min. In the past, I would have wiped the disk and reloaded Win10 from scratch. Did you do that when you installed the new SSD or did you clone? Lots of variables there.
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Quote: Did you try just reseating the Dell M.2?
Yes. I even used an adapter to plug it into X4 connector of the PCIexpress bus. That killed the BIOS! The BIOS wouldn't start. This same adapter works just fine today in the same X4 slot, with a Samsung M.2 item mounted. There is definitely something very screwy with the M.2 unit supplied by Dell. (This second unit in the X4 slot is her data drive.)
I never clone drives. I always install a new, clean instance of Windows. Just between you and me: I rather enjoy doing a fresh Windows install. Yeah. Some people call me weird! 
modified 8-Jan-20 11:49am.
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You are wierd. All that work and then Windows does not really install itself very well.
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Quote: All that work and then Windows does not really install itself very well
What work? - it's an easy process.
And Windows installs very well as I do it. I love Windows!
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Hi Cp-Coder,
Excuse me. I thought you said clean install which entails reinstalling applications, settings, customising,etc.,as far as I know.
Please share your easy process if your are indeed doing a clean install. I'm curious. Have I been unawarely doing all this extra work for the last 30 years?
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I was obviously referring to the process of installing the operating system. Yes, you still have to do your apps subsequently.
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Well I guess, in all good will, what we said was not obvious to the other.
In my experience, W10 requires quite a bit of tuning, unless MS's defaults suit you.
Having said that, I find that W10 is the the best job Microsoft has done so far. The annoyances are generally to a minimum.
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Quote: W10 requires quite a bit of tuning, unless MS's defaults suit you
Yes indeed! I have a list of items that I fine tune after the install. Some are trivial, like adding a seconds output to the clock. Others are a little more involved, like moving the Windows Temp folders to another internal drive. My reason for doing this is to avoid temp files from bloating up Macrium images of the systems drive, etc. etc.
But my point was that I enjoy doing all this, and helping family members with their computers.
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Another reason to avoid Dell like the plague. Not that I needed one.
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Dell and all the major commodity PC vendors use the lowest spec components they can get away with. It is the nature of the beast. If you want the best performance, you will end up building your own PC and it wont be cheap.
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OK. But how do you determine the quality of major components, like the main board, that you buy in the retail market? 
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AnandTech is a good resource.
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Clear throat...Read the specs, research, etc before purchasing ANYTHING. Hell, even service manuals are available online.
What else can I say.
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