Ashton Crusher wrote:
My 2 week old Dell XPS developed some intermittent malady and even
with a new motherboard and power supply the Dell Tech was not able to
get it running again.

Background: (you can skip to Question if you want)

It was working perfectly, I had just finished all the major updating
and setting up of my programs. I had the new computer on the kitchen
table where it had been running and it turned it off, turned off my
old computer, and swapped the two, meaning I disconnected all the
wires from each, then moved the old computer out and put the new
computer in where the old one had been. Hooked up all the wires
(keyboard, mouse, power, speakers, Ethernet cable) and pushed the
power button. NOTHING. Computer would not power on. Pulled the
power cord out and used a different cord from a different outlet.
Still nothing. Disconnected everything, took the computer to the
table, pulled the side panel off, poked at the wires, put the side
panel back on, put it back in position, hooked all the wires back up
and pushed the button. Computer came on and worked perfectly. Shut
it down. Pushed the power button. NOTHING.

Called Dell and set up a tech to come and fix it. He arrived, pulled
the side panel, poked some wires, pushed the button and it fired up
and worked. Then turned it off and tried to restart.. nothing.

So he put in a new motherboard. Hooked all back up. Pushed the power
button.. Nothing. He put in a new power supply. Nothing.
Disconnected the HDD I had put in that was a Storage drive that had
been in the old computer. Pushed the button. It started. So he says
"maybe your drive is bad". He power cycles. Tries to start it and
NOTHING. So he disconnects ALL the drives. Still nothing. So he
gives up, too many other things and he doesn't have every possible
part.

Question:

So Dell is supposed to send me a brand new computer. Here's my
question. The first computer had a regular 2T Hard drive as a "D"
drive. It had a M.2 form factor SSD as the "C" drive.

Since I have already installed all my programs on the original new
computers C drive, and all my data on the original new computers D
drive I'm thinking I should just swap in the drives from the original
new computer that broke into the new one Dell is sending. The
computer is supposed to be identical.

I'm not worried about the D drive but If I do that will it somehow
cause a problem with the C drive since the "asset tag" numbers, which
the tech said get "put into the motherboard" are going to be
different? Also I presume my Win10 was validated on the original
computer and now it's going to be in a different computer. I hate to
reinstall all the software on the new C drive but I don't want to
create some other problem either.

Well, that's a bit of a mess.

The M.2 as C: should make this interesting.

Normally my answer would be:

"No problem. Image both drives using Macrium Reflect Free,
to an external hard drive. Then restore as desired."

So what's our first problem ? Your broken machine has the M.2,
and you don't have another machine to install the M.2 .

OK, you could shop for one of these.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...9SIA39V2UW6255

Fully compliant with PCI Express M.2 Specification Version 1.0

PWM Power IC / 1.4MHz 5.5V synchronous buck converter

M.2 SSD input voltage: 3.3V ±5%, input max. current: 3A

Translating from Chinese to English, that means it uses 5.0V
from two USB connectors, to make 3.3V at 3A to power the
solid state drive. Implying the M.2 runs off 3.3V.

That's a total of ten watts. When the USB3 connector might
handle 5V @ 0.9A each. 5V @ 1.8A total. Or around nine watts.
So it's in the right ballpark. The 3A current flow, only
flows if the device needs it, and a low-powered M.2 might
not be all that stressful.

You'd probably want to know a little bit about the M.2,
look it up, it probably doesn't draw 10W or anything close
to that. It would depend on the controller. If it had
a controller designed by staff from SandForce, it
might draw 7 watts, or if designed by other companies,
perhaps half that power.

So the purpose of owning an adapter cable like that, is
so you can do maintenance on your spiffy new (fast)
storage device. It gives you a Plan B, in case the
Macrium emergency (WinPE based) boot CD doesn't
have a driver for M.2 .

*******

You could certainly move the storage devices to the new machine,
image them using Reflect, then put the new drives back in,
and restore to the new drives. Then put the old hardware
(serial numbers and all) back into the old machine. So all the
internal hardware matches the original manifest and you
don't invoke the ire of the staff at Dell.

The other tricky bit, would be whether the Macrium Reflect Free
emergency boot CD, has a driver for an M.2 storage device. I
don't have the details as to what the driver stack looks like
for M.2 . You'd probably want the latest WinPE kit for Macrium
Reflect Free, to try to get support. There are four different versions
of WinPE or so, that you can select during download.

I think I could pull this off, but it would probably
involved a couple days cursing and swearing. Now, which
is easier. Installing all the programs again, or imaging ?
I have the spare drives here, to do something like that.

What I don't have, is an M.2 to USB3 for emergencies.

You can still move the assets around, between machines,
but take note of the serial numbers before doing that.
Yes, the staff at Dell are going to run a scanning wand
over the internals, so they will check. I'm sure an infinite
number of customers have tried to cheat them out of a
nickel or two, by swapping in non-Dell hardware in
the returned item.

1) New machine. Install Macrium Reflect Free.
Create Macrium Reflect emergency boot disk.
You need this to restore external_hard_drive MRIMG to
internal M.2 drive. If you happen to own a USB3 to M.2
adapter, you may be able to arrange restoration on your
technician machine. Even one with USB2 ports would do - as
long as the M.2 doesn't draw too much power...

2) Now, with emergency boot CD in hand, install
old_drive and old_M.2 into new computer. Image
both storage devices to your external_drive.

Optionally, you might want to consider doing a
"factory restore" when the old_drive and old_M.2
are still in the computer. In the hope this will
wipe C: of any personal items. You can augment this
with a zero-fill of white space (using dd on Linux
or Windows to get the job done).

3) Install new_drive and new_M.2 into the new computer.
Boot with the macrium emergency CD. Restore both storage
devices, using the MRIMG files created on the external_drive
in step (2).

There are many more details, such as trimming down what you
backup and restore. You want C: certainly. It has your
programs. The contents of the data drive D:, you could
almost handle those with a simple copy from D: to external_drive,
so really nothing fancy is needed there.

So my idea is to preserve serial numbers, keep the contents
of each box as Dell shipped it. And move the fiddly bits from
one machine to the other with Macrium. The "mystery item" is whether
there is anything special about accessing an M.2 from Macrium. If
there were, a USB3 to M.2 adapter may give you another mechanism
for dealing with it.

You could even own two USB3 to M.2 adapters, but if the M.2 adapters
were pigs, you might end up overloading the 5VSB rail of the power
supply. Modern USB power comes from 5VSB - a typical supply might
have 2.5A. So running a USB3 to M.2, assumes the M.2 is relatively
low power. If the thing is a vicious pig, running two of them
would be too much load for the 5VSB rail. This wasn't always an issue - on
older motherboards, there used to be jumper blocks so the user could
move some USB interfaces to run off the regular 5V rail. And that
rail has at least 20 amps on it, so there would not be any
anxiety regarding powering stuff like that. But they removed that
header scheme at least five years ago. And decided it would be
"more fun" to run it off the relatively weak 5VSB.

That USB3 to M.2, could really use its own external adapter...

There are other ways to get an M.2 into your technician
computer. For backup and restore. I don't know enough
about the various flavors of M.2 , to tell you what to watch
out for. Knowing the model number of the M.2 (which is likely
to use a popular brand), would probably help in your search
for potential (Plan B) tools to use with it. I like to have
Plan B materials on hand, before getting "wedged between
a rock and a hard place".

http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapte...er-card~PEX2M2

See, isn't technology fun ? Why do you think
Paul doesn't own an M.2 ? :-)

I certainly would not object to a standard 2.5" SSD drive,
because with those, just about every modern computer I have
here, could be used as the technician computer to
handle that. I've owned a 2.5" SSD here, for a grand total
of one day, before returning it because it was crap
(a problem with slow sequential access). I tried to use
it first, and ignored the temptation to benchmark it.
But immediately discovered it wasn't very good at all,
and I had to benchmark it anyway. Grrr.

So of the many options available, to some extent
the procedure you use, may be gated by the time
available to do the transfer. Does Dell like to
have two boxen on customer premises for long
periods of time, or do you immediately have
to ship back the defective one ? That's what
I'd need to understand. Some companies handle
things like this, with a CC charge for the second
machine, placed against your card.

Paul