M6600 Owners Thread

[M-Z]

I agree - it blinks much less when I disabled ODD drive. I still am not convinced it is something with hardware (or even if it should be considered as fault/malfunction).
There is so much software installed these days - most of which we don't know too much about what they do. If externally installed Linux resolves this issue we must assume it is software related, not hardware (I really doubt it is about faulty and misguided wiring). Although you made me wonder. I will try to install Ubuntu on my external USB3 drive and look if the problem prevails.

[CSHawkeye81]

Which hard drive slot should we put our SATA 3 ssd's in?? I know with the M17x only one slot really gives you sata 3 while the other is hit or miss.

[NotEnoughMinerals]

I think both are fine, but for good measure I put my SSD inteh primary and it runs flawless at SATA III.

[Alls]

Which hard drive slot should we put our SATA 3 ssd's in?? I know with the M17x only one slot really gives you sata 3 while the other is hit or miss.

For example:

Both 2.5" hard drives do support Sata III. The mSata is Sata II.

Best Regards, Alex.

[Aaron44126]

Hey all,
I've used search, but couldn't find anything on what caddy will work for the M6600. I want to add a third 2.5" hard drive and convert my DVD drive to an external. What have you guys used? Newmodeus has a caddy for $42, but some on eBay are going for low $20's.

Does Dell sell these at all? Specifically to convert the DVD drive to an external drive.

Thanks!

Note that you'll need a caddy designed to fit into a 9.5mm optical drive (the regular 12.5/12.7mm ones will be too tall). Otherwise, any caddy that fits in a standard optical drive bay should be fine.

Also note that the optical drive SATA port is only SATA-2 (while SATA-3 is available on the two internal hard drive ports).

[Edit] Realized that I mis-read your question. I was thinking you wanted to put a hard drive in the optical drive slot in the computer, but I didn't catch the part about making the DVD drive into an external drive.
In any case, the 9.5mm thing still applies. Get an external drive enclosure that accepts a standard 9.5mm ("ultra-slim") drive and you should be fine.

Which hard drive slot should we put our SATA 3 ssd's in?? I know with the M17x only one slot really gives you sata 3 while the other is hit or miss.

The two internal hard drive ports are SATA-3. The other ports (optical, eSATA, mSATA) are SATA-2.

So, may I PLEASE ask other forum users: given that: my hard drive LED light blinks constantly (literally nonstop), even during long periods of time when there is absolutely no process activity - even when there is literally zero disk I/O for extended periods of time - even in safe mode; AND, given that: ***Very curiously, (I have found that) disabling the DVD/CD-ROM drive in Device Manager stops the constant hard drive LED blinking; AND, given that: ***Also very curiously, enabling the DVD/CD-ROM drive in Device Manager causes the otherwise constant hard drive LED blinking to resume... ANY HYPOTHESES about what is going on? Corrupt CD-ROM driver? Bad wiring somewhere? If anyone has ANY ideas, please do report them in a comment here. Thanks.

I believe the light blinks to indicate any SATA activity so your optical drive will cause it to blink as well. It's a function of the SATA controller on the motherboard, it is not driven by the OS or device drivers loaded by the OS. I'm assuming that you do not have a disc in the optical drive when you are seeing this? Maybe there is some background app/service constantly trying to access the optical drive? Does it blink before the OS boots (i.e. while in BIOS setup screen)?

[Star Forge]

Which hard drive slot should we put our SATA 3 ssd's in?? I know with the M17x only one slot really gives you sata 3 while the other is hit or miss.

I think both are fine, but for good measure I put my SSD inteh primary and it runs flawless at SATA III.

Unlike the AlienWare M17X-R3, the M6600's HDD Slots both work fully on SATA III without issues. Therefore, any HDD slot will work.

[M-Z]

There isn't any HDD LED blinking on externally installed Linux. Which means it is purely software related issue.

[Academic6xxx]

There isn't any HDD LED blinking on externally installed Linux. Which means it is purely software related issue.

Thanks. This suggests that the problem might well be caused by corrupt optical drive firmware, corrupt optical drive driver, or certain corrupt Windows files. The question is which one and how to figure out which one. The fact that running Linux provides band-aid solution to the problem does not convince me that it cannot be hardware related. Linux and Windows 7 might make different use of hardware components while running various services.

The question is why do hard drive LED lights on several (but apparently not most) systems constantly blink on and off even when no processes are running and even when there is zero disk I/O and even when nothing is running in safe mode.

Any ideas, thoughts, suggestions? Two other big questions are why, on affected systems, does disabling the optical/CD-ROM drive in device manager cause the problem to stop (another band-aid solution) and why, on affected systems, does enabling the optical/CD-ROM drive cause the problem to come back?

[Illustrator76]

Thanks. This suggests that the problem might well be caused by corrupt optical drive firmware, corrupt optical drive driver, or certain corrupt Windows files. The question is which one and how to figure out which one. The fact that running Linux provides band-aid solution to the problem does not convince me that it cannot be hardware related. Linux and Windows 7 might make different use of hardware components while running various services.

The question is why do hard drive LED lights on several (but apparently not most) systems constantly blink on and off even when no processes are running and even when there is zero disk I/O and even when nothing is running in safe mode.

Any ideas, thoughts, suggestions? Two other big questions are why, on affected systems, does disabling the optical/CD-ROM drive in device manager cause the problem to stop (another band-aid solution) and why, on affected systems, does enabling the optical/CD-ROM drive cause the problem to come back?

Why are you spamming the same question over and over? Someone has already found an answer for you. Also, why is something so minor and relatively harmless such a big deal? It's not hurting anything. On pretty much every system I have ever had, the HDD light would do this most of the time. I don't understand why this is such a huge deal.

[danenick1212]

I ended up picking up a caddy from NewmodeUS. It fits, but I need to file about 1mm off the faceplate to make it fit perfectly. I put my 750gb hard drive in the caddy, with Intel 510 120gb in one drive bay and a 160gb Intel 320 in the other. Now I just need a cable to connect my slot-load DVD to use externally, or I could just buy an external slim Blu-ray drive. Not sure what i want to do yet.