Upgrading to First SSD, Questions

[Carbo]

I have a two week new Dell XPS13, (9360). Planning on upgrading the stock SSD, (128GB SanDisk), with a Samsung 960 Pro 512GB NVMe M.2

Never having done this before I want to be sure it is as straightforward as it seems. With this in mind, some questions:

1) this SSD is compatible with this laptop, yes?
2) can this model fit more than one hard drive internally?
3) assuming the answer to 1 is "Yes", is it simply a matter of removing the old drive and installing the new one, then booting off the thumb drive and installing Windows 10 and the requisite Dell drivers needed for my specific laptop? Or, do I need to do anything with the new drive, such as install a specific Samsung driver, format the new drive before using, etc?
4) I'm reading about over-provisioning for SSDs, and finding it thoroughly confusing. Is this something I need to be concerned with?

Appreciate the help. Thank you.

 

[UsandThem]

I have a two week new Dell XPS13, (9360). Planning on upgrading the stock SSD, (128GB SanDisk), with a Samsung 960 Pro 512GB NVMe M.2

Never having done this before I want to be sure it is as straightforward as it seems. With this in mind, some questions:

1) this SSD is compatible with this laptop, yes?
2) can this model fit more than one hard drive internally?
3) assuming the answer to 1 is "Yes", is it simply a matter of removing the old drive and installing the new one, then booting off the thumb drive and installing Windows 10 and the requisite Dell drivers needed for my specific laptop? Or, do I need to do anything with the new drive, such as install a specific Samsung driver, format the new drive before using, etc?
4) I'm reading about over-provisioning for SSDs, and finding it thoroughly confusing. Is this something I need to be concerned with?

1. Should be. The specs show it supports NVMe drives. http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/20003940
2. It doesn't look like it does to me (according to this link: http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/upgrade-dell-xps-13-ssd
3. Shows step-by-step in 2nd link. You can use the driver Windows installs, or install the Samsung driver. Just be aware that battery life will be worse if you use the Samsung driver, as it is tuned for performance.
4. Not really anymore. Modern controllers (starting around 2012) handle the free space and take care of the OP. Before that, you needed to manually set an OP for it to work.

Just be aware of the heat that high-performance NVMe drives put out. I have a Dell laptop as well, but I don't think I would use one with it because the heat, reduced battery life, and throttling concerns. My 960 EVO hits 58c in my desktop which has a ton of fans blowing across it. There's not that much air movement for the NVMe drive in a laptop. You might consider putting in a Crucial MX300 or 850 EVO, or something along those lines. Just my .02.

 

[Carbo]

Thank you for the info. The tutorial in #2 is very helpful.
By the way, do any settings in the BIOS need to be tweaked to install and use the new drive?

 

[UsandThem]

Thank you for the info. The tutorial in #2 is very helpful.
By the way, do any settings in the BIOS need to be tweaked to install and use the new drive?

It depends. Each board is different. When I installed my 960 EVO in my Gigabyte board, I didn't have to do anything outside of setting it to UEFI boot only, disabling CSM support. Just look at your BIOS configuration section in your manual to see if you need to change anything as each board is different.