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This is a very peculiar situation I am in. I am NOT trying to install Ubuntu or any OS on the SSD neither does my laptop come with an SSD. I just want to use the internal SSD as an extra storage space.

The situation

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 15 7560. It only came with a Hard Disk. However after watching some teardowns of models like 7567 and doing some search online like this I could see that there is an empty M.2 SATA slot. Now these same slots are occupied by SSD in costlier laptops by Dell.

So I thought if i get an M.2 SSD and insert it there I will have a lot of space. So I bought a Samsung SSD - Samsung 860 EVO Series 250GB M.2 SATA Internal Solid State Drive (MZ-N6E250BW). Without the SSD - enter image description here It even had an imprint saying M.2 SSD - enter image description here After inserting the SSD (I am not sure if there is a polarity or if I inserted it the wrong way) - enter image description here

But ofcourse it didn't work. So I searched online and I tried the following steps -

  1. SATA Operation set to AHCI in BIOS (it was AHCI by default)
  2. Added nvme_load=YES boot parameter to GRUB as mentioned here by following this

Additional Info

  • I have a dual boot system (all on HDD) and even Windows does NOT detect my SSD.

  • Running dmesg | grep -i samsung does show that my system has detected the Samsung Drive. But it doesn't show up in Other Locations i.e I can't open it and store files/folder on it.

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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
    – Mitch
    Oct 10, 2019 at 6:16
  • @PRATAP thanks a lot for your efforts. Got it working with Ubuntu atleast.
    – jar
    Oct 11, 2019 at 7:40

1 Answer 1

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Putting nvme_load=YES boot parameter to GRUB is irrelevant because your M.2 SSD is SATA-III, not NVMe. You don't need any drivers for a SATA M.2 drive, they're already in your kernel. You attached it into your system correctly, as per the photos.

Instead, use gparted to prepare the drive so it holds an ext4 partition, and then move your /home partition there.

Either GPT or MBR will work with Windows and Linux; Windows 10 uses GPT by default, whereas Windows 7 used MBR by default.

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I know you were not planning to do so, but you might consider instead reinstalling Ubuntu on that SSD, because it's significantly faster than your HDD. The reinstallation would work as the prior installation did, except when you get to 6. Allocate Disk Space, you choose Something Else, and tell it to install to the SSD. It will automate the gparted process so you can skip doing that first.

Once the installation is completed and you reboot, you can copy your data from your old /home/WHATEVERYOURUSERNAMEIS directory to the new drive.

You will like the speed of the SSD; I got spoiled by mine, and will not go back to HDDs.

Incidentally, here's a picture of gparted gparted example.

The yellow arrow pointing down into the orange box shows where you can pick the drive you are looking at with gparted. The green oval at center left shows this drive is MBR/ms-dos, because only those partitions have Extended partitions. GPT does not need Extended partitions to hold any partition greater than the third; there's no limit on the number of GPT partitions you can have on a drive.

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  • Good news, gparted detected the SSD, yaay. However I don't know what kind of Partition Table i should create before I go on to choose ext4 for the actual partition. Any idea on that. I am following the steps here.
    – jar
    Oct 9, 2019 at 21:58
  • I am thinking of going with gpt.
    – jar
    Oct 9, 2019 at 22:18
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    GPT absolutely works with Windows; I am using it now, and on dozens of machines I prep every week. Look at the revised answer which shows a little more about gparted.
    – K7AAY
    Oct 9, 2019 at 22:21
  • So I created a unallocated gpt partition table. Now do I make the whole thing as a single ext4 partition?
    – jar
    Oct 9, 2019 at 22:25
  • Made a single ext4 partition
    – jar
    Oct 9, 2019 at 22:36

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