OCZ Vertex 4 SSD on ASUS P9x79

[kitca]

I am trying to configure an OCZ Vertex 4 SSD as a boot drive on an ASUS P9X79 Deluxe motherboard, so far without success. Neither the UEFI BIOS nor Windows 7 installer recognizes the SSD.

The SSD is connected to the SATA6G_1 (Gray-Intel) port on the board. Yes, the power cable is connected.

A Western Digital 2 TB HDD (WDC WD2002FAEX) connected to the same port works fine.

When the system is booted to Windows 7 from the WD 2TB drive (but now attached to the SATA3G_3 (BLUE-Intel) port) and with the OCZ SSD connected to the SATA6G_1 port, neither Device Manager nor Disk Management list the OCZ SSD, even as an unformatted device.

The board is configured in AHCI mode and works fine with the WD HDD. I am simply trying to replace the HDD with a SSD. Not trying to set up RAID of any kind.

System: ASUS P9X79 Deluxe, Intel i7 3960X, 32 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600, ASUS GTX590 graphics.

 

[Dereck47]

Connect the Vertex 4 to the remaining ports on your motherboard and see if BIOS recognizes the drive on any of the SATA ports.

If that works then boot to Win7 from your HDD, update the firmware of the SSD to its latest version, and then Secure Erase the drive.
Then connect the drive to port SATA6G_1 (without your HDD connected) and see if you can install Windows on the SSD.

 

[Dereck47]

Also, if your motherboard's BIOS is not version 3305 then update to that and then see if the BIOS recognizes the Vertex 4.

 

[kitca]

Thank you Dereck47 for your reply. I have now tried the SSD on all the other Intel SATA ports, both 6G and 3G, using a different power and data cable on each port. Western Digital and Seagate HDDs work perfectly fine on these ports using the same power and data cables. To be clear, each SATA port has its own data cable and each drive slot has its own power cable; the same cables were used to connect both the SSD and the HDD. So, there is little chance that any of the the cables or ports are bad.

By the way, I'm having exactly the same problem with a Vertex 3. Both the Vertex 4 and Vertex 3 were sent back to OCZ for a checkout with a clean bill of health for both and an update of firmware for the Vertex 3.

Which brings us to the question of the BIOS. Presently I have version 0906 (according to the BIOS setup screen). The chipset driver version is 2.10.1208. I am really reluctant to try a BIOS update because of all the horror stories I've heard from the many people who run into problems attempting this. How can I obtain detailed step-by-step instructions on how to do this? (I've found ASUS tech support to be quite unhelpful in the past.) Is there a way to revert to the present setup in case of trouble?

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Hmmm.......

Your motherboard isn't exactly the latest and greatest from ASUS. It has had more than its fair share of problems and issues.

YouTube has quite a few video clips showing and explaining how to update ASUS motherboard system BIOS:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=asus+flash+bios&oq=ASUS+flash+&gs_l=youtube-reduced.1.0.0.166929.175265.0.177394.18.14.3.1.1.0.136.1181.12j2.14.0...0.0...1ac.1.mV_Bs7YjHIY

You can also use Google to search for "how to" articles. There are quite a few of them.

EDIT - I forgot something. Check the ASUS forums. A lot of good technical information is posted in the forums.