List of compatible NVME drives for Dell 7490 (i7)

[samsunder]

Hi Guys

I am a bit stumped and would appreciate some info from the guys in the know.
I have a Dell 7940 that came with a 256Gb Toshiba NVME. I would like to upgrade this to at least a 500Gb NVME or better still, a 1Tb or even 2Tb NVME. There is no space for a standard SSD and it only takes NVME drives. We tried to install 2 different Samsung 512 Gb M.2 NVME's (one was a PM981, not sure what the other one was) but it kept on crashing intermittendly (Blue screen). This was just with Windows 10 Pro installed and no additional software.
Dell support's answer was that the drive was not compatible with the laptop but they could not give me a list of compatible NVME's. The laptop works perfectly with the old drive and the new drive tests normal, with no problems (on another PC).
I have seen lots of Dell 7490's advertised here with 512Gb NVME's.
Can somebody please advise what make and model number NVME is in these laptops or if somebody has successfully installed a larger NVME in one of these laptops.

Thanks

 

[P1000]

That is really strange. It seems that it has to do with the low power mode it operates in, which makes the lanes run at half the bandwidth.

If you are getting desperate, perhaps try a sata M.2 drive, like a Samsung 860?

 

[Petester]

I've put various NVMe drives in Dell 7490's and had no issues whatsoever including the Samsung PM981.
Is a strange one but definitely not a compatibility issue

 

[samsunder]

Thanks @P1000 and @Petester

 

[samsunder]

Perhaps, I should say that the Samsung P/N was MZVLB512HAJQ-000L2 & Model: MZ-VLB5120
Google says that the above P/N was a PM981 but it did not say PM981 anywhere on the label.

 

[P1000]

I have issues with NVME drives where the connector/PCB was slightly out of spec. You could move the drive to one side just enough that it would not make proper contact and not work correctly. Pressing it to the other side when installing fixed the issue. I don't think that is what is happening here, but might be worth a try...

 

[samsunder]

So, I installed a different brand 1TB M.2 and installed Windows 10 and the Dell 7490 promptly crashed again after doing the Windows updates. Eventually figured out that the Graphics driver was causing the crash. I force installed a lower version of the graphics driver. This is the stable version: Intel HD Graphics Driver | Driver Details | Dell South Africa (Version: 24.20.100.6170)

Windows was automatically downloading the later version: 26.20.100.7262 and this was what was causing Windows 10 to intermittendly crash. What is strange is that after downloading and force installing version 24.20.100.6170, I allowed Windows to update to the newer version 26.20.100.7262 and Windows 10 has not crashed since.