installing ssd on a vostro 400 as boot drive

[nypc]

Decided to extend the life of my vostro 400 with a vortex 2 SSD after reading other people doing it by setting the bios to RAID to enable AHCI mode .

However, when I selects the drive to install Win 7, it tells me the drive is not compatible. I was able to see and format the drive in win xp prior to attempting to do a fresh install of win 7, but now my xp installed on another hdd won't even boot.

The drive has the latest firmware and I have also updated to the latest bios.

 

[Dr_JRE]

Not sure what you are asking to accomplish.

For Win7 it's likely that RAID settings is the problem. RAID = Redundant Array of Independent Disks. One single hard drive does not make an array of independent disks.

If you want XP running again, boot the computer with the XP install disk, tell windows install you want the recovery console:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&docname=bph07996

 

[nypc]

Not sure what you are asking to accomplish.

I'm trying to install a clean copy of windows 7 on to a SSD for this computer. I'm hoping someone who have done this on a Dell vostro 400 can give me some tips.

 

[ctbrowncoat]

Dr_JRE - did you ever get an SSD working on your Vostro 400? I'm trying to do this now on my Vostro 400 and I'm not having any luck. I just chatted with a Dell support rep and was told that the Vostro 400 does not support/is not compatible with SSD hard drives. Could that really be true? If so, bummer!

Anyone out there had any luck using an SSD in a Dell Vostro 400?

 

[nypc]

Dr_JRE - did you ever get an SSD working on your Vostro 400? I'm trying to do this now on my Vostro 400 and I'm not having any luck. I just chatted with a Dell support rep and was told that the Vostro 400 does not support/is not compatible with SSD hard drives. Could that really be true? If so, bummer!

Anyone out there had any luck using an SSD in a Dell Vostro 400?

I was able to get it to the point where in order to boot to SSD, I had to hit the restart computer command once or twice. Once booted, everything works fine; restarts are fine, but if I shut down the computer, it takes a few restarts before the system will boot into the OS. This constant restart thing at boot up got really annoying, so now I'm back on regular hhd.

 

[ctbrowncoat]

UPDATE!

Believe it or not, I actually got my SSD working this weekend. Before following this link, know that I had to modify the process a bit. So read the whole article and this entire post before attempting. Anyway, here's what inspired me to attempt this SSD upgrade:
http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to-migrate-to-a-solid-state-drive-without-reinstalling-windows

Now, that lifehacker guide is not one size fits all. I could not boot up when I followed it to the letter. The major wrinkle is the Vostro 400's BIOS setting entitled "SATA Mode." By default, it was set at "IDE" and to use an SSD, it needs to be set to "RAID." However, like everything in life, nothing is ever simple.

First off, don't let the "RAID" name throw you. You don't need to create a RAID array here. For our purposes, the RAID setting purely enables AHCI, which is necessary for SSD to work properly. (I think!) So if, like me, you want to run an SSD as your Windows drive, and a regular HDD as your data drive, you'll end up with two hard drives where neither one is actually a RAID array member. But the RAID setting will allow AHCI to do its thing.

Now then, the not simple part... I should preface this by clearly stating: I only know enough to be dangerous and some of this may make zero sense to someone who knows this stuff inside and out. So, while my rationale and explanation may be completely off-base, the end result/To-Do item should be accurate. I think.

Apparently Windows (I'm running Win 8.1) is somehow aware of and/or configured in response to that SATA Mode BIOS setting. So, the first thing to do, BEFORE cloning your existing Windows drive, is to change the BIOS setting to "RAID" and boot Windows as you always have. For me, this triggered Windows Automatic Repair and after a few minutes, Windows 8.1 restarted and loaded as normal. Restarting the PC, I noticed some new stuff on the BIOS splash screen, where it lists the RAID disks, but both of my drives had "non-member" or something like that written in green. With the BIOS setting now successfully changed to RAID, and Windows having done its Automatic Repair thing... the Windows drive is NOW ready to be cloned.

Also, Dell created two partitions on the factory-installed Windows hard disk. The C partition and a "System Reserved" partition. As you'll see brief mention of in that LifeHacker guide, you don't necessarily want to clone the entire disk. I ended up cloning just the C partition and skipping the Reserved partion. This means that when you finally shut down, and swap that Drive 0 for your new SSD and then restart, you're going to again need to run that Windows Automatic Repair to repair the boot loader. I don't recall if the CD was required here or if it ran off the hard drive. I think my CD may have been needed.

After a final restart, I'm happy to report that my SSD is now successfully running as my bootable Windows drive. Windows boots and shuts down much quicker and programs are definitely loading faster as well. It's not as lightning fast as I'd hoped, but it's definitely faster. I think my 2.2GHz Duo processor and 4GB of RAM may be the bottleneck at times, but again- it's a big improvement and I'm happy I made the upgrade.

Next up: I'm installing a USB 3.0 card in my PCI-E slot so I can spend less time loading photos from my digital camera into Picasa...