Cannot find disk on a new Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1 using FOG
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I am trying to capture an image from a Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1 but when I select option 4 - check fog compatibility, it does not find the disk but finds the network dongle. I am able to capture and deploy images to other older Dell laptops like the Latitude E7400 and Latitude E6430 without any problems.
Is there a new kernel update that will work with these new NVMe Drives - PC601 NVMe SK hynix 256GB using UEFI
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@george1421 Go into the firmware and change the disk mode from raid-on to ahci mode. You can change it back after imaging is complete or just run it in ahci mode. Since you only have one drive raid-on mode adds no value
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First of all I have to give you my condolences for having a 7400 2in1. They are great systems once you get the OS loaded, they stink for the poor IT tech that has to load the OS.
What version of FOG are you using?
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I am using the latest FOG version 1.5.7.
I am trying get this working so that my dept can prepare over 1000 Latitude 7400 laptops that will be arriving soon.
I was hoping to show how great FOG is to my Manager. lol -
@David-Raymond Pick different hardware <jk>
I can duplicate it with FOG 1.5.6, give me a minute to try something.
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@george1421 Go into the firmware and change the disk mode from raid-on to ahci mode. You can change it back after imaging is complete or just run it in ahci mode. Since you only have one drive raid-on mode adds no value
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@george1421 FOG compatibility is showing the drive now. I will sysprep my image and then try to upload and then deploy the image again. I will update you as soon as possible.
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@george1421 WOW! I am finally able to upload an image from my Dell latitude 7400 2-in-1 after changing the settings from RAID to AHCI. I also tested deploying the image and it worked without a hitch. Thank you so much for your assistance.
I have one other question for you: When the over 1000 laptops arrive, should i use unicast or multicast to image them?
What is your recommendation, I have never used the multicast option. -
@David-Raymond said in Cannot find disk on a new Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1 using FOG:
I have one other question for you: When the over 1000 laptops arrive, should i use unicast or multicast to image them?
What is your recommendation, I have never used the multicast option.Well if I saw 1000 7400s on our dock, I think I would quit.
Unicast vs multicast, it really depends on what rate you need to deploy them. Your image push to the 7400s should be in the 4 minute area (at ~6.1GB/m) and on a 1GbE network you can send out about 3 simultaneous unicast images before that 1 GbE uplink will be saturated. Just running the numbers if you did them serially with 2 imaging tracks you can push an image to 24 in one hour, but that’s moving. The slowest part of imaging will be windows 10 doing the WinSetup/OOBE part.
For multicasting, if the target computers are on the same subnet then multicasting is not a bad choice. With multicasting you can probably do 30 systems per image push. That should give you about 60 per hour. It will take you more time to rack and stack the 30 systems than it will to push the image out to them. If you are multicasting across subnets, then it gets a bit more complicated because you need to have your network infrastructure setup correctly for multicast traffic.
I’m giving the 7400s a hard time just because I’ve spent way to much time working through their quirks. I will give you one hint working with them (will ok two). They have 2 different reboot modes. I would equate the boot modes to a full boot of win10 and a fast boot of win10. When you power on the device watch the dell logo. That log will be displayed at 100% brightness, when the log changes brightness, lets say to 70% only then will it take either the F12 or F2 key presses. If you press keys too early it will cause the firmware to panic if you press the keys to late, you are booting into the OS. Now if you go into the F12 menu and pick reboot from there or ctrl-alt-del to reboot the system will reboot but only to the 70% brightness logo. In this state it will not accept any function keys since its booting right into the OS.
Tip #2 the power button is more of a decoration than a functioning power button especially if you want to hard stop the computer via holding down the power button. Sometimes it works, sometimes it takes 2 cycles to power off, and other times it don’t care.
As I said once the OS is loaded and the user’s have it, its a great laptop. Oh one other commend the side and lid is magnetized. I dropped a paperclip near one and it jumped to the side of the 7400.
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@george1421 Thank you very much for your input. I truly appreciate it. I just completed a test deploy on 2 of the laptops that I have for testing using the dock that came with them. I had to turn on pxe boot on boot the thunderbolt and USB options in the BIOS to allow them to boot over the network from a standalone gigabit switch that I use for testing.
My Test FOG server is running on an old Latitude E6430 in an Oracle virtualbox VM. Total memory is only 10GB but both laptops imaged and shutdown in just over 4 minutes.
Once I connected the laptops to our live network for testing, all the scripts in the image ran perfectly without any hitches.
My Dept was planning on imaging the laptops with USB images, but hopefully when I Demo the process of imaging with FOG it will win over the USB option.
Unfortunately I only have 2 laptops at this time. I will have to wait for more laptops to arrive to test the Multicast deploy scenario.
Thank you again for your great suggestions and information on the quirks of using the Latitude 7400 2-in-1 laptops.
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@David-Raymond said in Cannot find disk on a new Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1 using FOG:
I have for testing using the dock that came with them.
Just an additional comment. The WD19 docks that come with the 7400 give marginal support for PXE booting. Sometimes they show up and sometimes (most) of the times pxe booting isn’t an option. The older WD15s and the usb-c dongles work 100% of the time.
You may be limited in running FOG inside virtualbox on the 6430. FOG running on bare metal on the 6430 would be just fine for a deployment only system. I would swap out those 6430 delivered hard drives (which are slug speed slow) with an SSD drive. That SSD under windows will make the 6430 fell like a new computer (even at twice the weight of a 7280). Good luck with your deployment. FOG should perform well for you.
