XPS 8900 Specs

The M.2 slot is #16 on the motherboard, below and to right of blue SATA 0 connector.  The M.2 slot supports an NVME SSD. Crucial, among other OEMs, sells NVME SSDs compatible with the XPS 8900, all the way up to 4T storage capacity.  (The other M.2 slot, near the blue PCI-e x16 slot is only for a WiFi card.)

Same motherboard pic shows four SATA3 ports, all marked 6 Gbps.  You could install several 2.5" SATA 3 SSDs, but you'll need trays to adapt 2.5" SSDs for the 3.5" drive bay.  The inside view of the PC shows where two SATA SSDs can be installed, and you could probably fit a 3rd one in the bay marked for the optical, if your PC doesn't have one, or possibly in another spot.

You'd be better off making an NVME SSD the boot drive because it will be much faster than booting from a SATA SSD.  And use all your SATA SSDs for storage.

Many of your questions can be answered, just looking at the Service Manual, and there are quite a few threads about updating the XPS 8900 on this forum, so have a look.

Thanks Ron. Very helpful. Yeah I've asked this after reading the service manual. It's getting the details in sentence form that helps me understand what I'm seeing so much appreciated.

You're welcome. 

Post back and let us know how the upgrade goes...

Hi Ron, I went with an 8910, and I'm in the bumpy stage of trying to make things work.

It created errors when cloning the Win10Pro ssd somehow. I'm pretty knowledgeable about the basics of UEFI/BIOS, Raid, AHCI etc., so I don't know how or why the issue occurred.

Wondering if something Dell proprietary makes it impossible to get a bootable clone, or if somehow it requires a specific manufacturer or model.

It is 32GB ram, 1050ti gpu. I have not progressed beyond seeking a way to restore the OS.

I also have an older Win7 pro 64-bit I'm trying to clone to SSD from HDD and running into unique but similar clone and boot issues. The software is diskgenius, which has worked well for me with other computers. I'm willing to use a trial of macrium or other. I don't like that they're moving towards subscription models and the prices are higher than what I think they should be, but if diskgenius is actually causing an error here, I may resort to a purchase, but not yet convinced the issue is the cloning software.

Thanks for your input, Ron! Much appreciated!

Don't know about diskgenius, but there are threads about EaseUS and other imaging software having problems creating usable images on Dell PCs.

I agree, it's too bad Macrium went to paid only.  You could use their paid version for free for 30 days, which should give you enough time to image the new SSD and make sure it works.

I see you got some help in your other thread, but let me ask how is BIOS set, RAID or AHCI?  If it's set to RAID, did you disconnect the HDD you cloned onto the SSD before trying to boot from the new SSD? 

Did you possibly change BIOS to AHCI but didn't configure the OS for AHCI at same time, before you attempted to clone the HDD? Or did you clone a RAID HDD and then change to AHCI?

Also keep in mind that Samsung SSDs don't work well when BIOS is set to RAID, even if the OS is properly configured for RAID.

@RoHe​ Hi Ron,

Before the problem occurred, I was trying pretty much every variation just troubleshooting. For the Win10 I started in UEFI/RAID, and tried it keeping UEFI changing to AHCI. Whenever making a change, I rebooted, changed back to UEFO/RAID before doing anything different, and by different I mean swapping drives, changing initial sata order etc. It's just very strange that the thing that created an error on the drive it was READING sectors from in addition to a corrupt clone, happened during what should have been the most secure method loading into WinPE.
Regardless, I have now worked my way around all of the diagnostic mess surrounding Win7 Pro 64-bit and have multiple fresh-install clones. So, I'm proceeding to install my legacy setup, starting with the graphics.

In case anyone else finds the journey interesting, This Dell 8910 w/now a working Win7 OS does not want to allow NVIdia series 10 driver exe to unpack. It creates the temp folder to extract files, finishes extracting them, and then immediately deletes the whole thing.

I found a fix from a Reddit user who found in their case it was a signed certificate issue (lol oh yeah, I remember those days!). I did the certificate routine, it worked fine but did not solve the problem.

Solution: DL's a different version of nvidia drivers still directly from NVidia (dif version just in case there was a specific conflict with newest security update...don't care a ton...this machine is living offline if I get it working).

On my other machine where I dl'd it, I unpackaged it, copy/pasted the folder of extracted setup, then cancelled install (didn't wish to install over my current setup on the other machine).

Loaded the unpacked folder to the Dell and super fast install works perfect.
Now, if succeeding, I have literally 2 weeks of installing my studio production setup. VST plugins, VST instruments, directories for sample libraries (most of which I produced not just 3rd-party), 4 DAWs bc I prefer to use them for different functions, midi, and then driver for NVME and audio interface.

Hundreds of reactivations...yep there's a reason I want to clone and never do this again! YOLO!

@theucusa - Sounds like progress...

Good luck with the rest of your installations. And when it's all done, make a new image with everything set up the way you want it to be...

Definitely and thank you