Reinstalling 7 on my new Intel SSD

[jedimasterben]

... and I forgot to pull the power to my 3 other hard drives while installing, so the bootmgr got f'd up and I'm, again, reinstalling.

I had this problem a few months ago, and I can't believe I forgot about it!! However, in the ~8 minutes before I restarted for the first time... OH. MY. GOD. I can't believe the speed difference in coming from my WD's in RAID 0! I was completely blown away, and I can't wait to play around with it more!

Hopefully someone sees this and won't make my same mistake!!

 

[evongugg]

Yeah, that's something I don't like about Windows, putting the boot partition elsewhere.
Some other operating systems do that too.

 

[jedimasterben]

Ok, now the drive is having the dreaded lockup problems. It keeps locking up at random intervals and making me hard reset the computer to get it back up.

But this time, it locked up during bootup, and now I think it lost the bootmgr again. I'm on the phone with Intel currently to try and set up an RMA.

 

[cjl]

Are you sure it's the drive?

 

[jedimasterben]

Well, the CPU, RAM, mobo, and other drives all worked fine pre-SSD intall, I remember running Furmark and Prime two days ago and all passing.

It seems as though it is a widespread problem. The drives will just up and stop anywhere between 5 minutes and 45 minutes, and it has done this for the day that I've had it. :`(

 

[jedimasterben]

Intel made something thats buggy?? NOOOOO! It cant be.

Psh, that's totally not possible for Intel to do something wrong!!

Are you sure it's the drive?

Well, now, not so much, actually. I (finally) got the email from Digital River about the student discount for 7 Pro, and bought it and tried installing on a different hard drive, which didn't work. I really needed the data off of my old hard drives that I had in RAID 0, and since I couldn't put them in another computer, and couldn't get it to install on two other hard drives, I figured I'd give it one more shot, that maybe it wouldn't crash in the hour or so that it would take me to copy that data from the other drives to another computer.

It has worked perfectly ever since. Not one crash, save for a couple pre-install woes that were partly my fault.

The best part about it is that my new drive from Intel is going to be here in a few minutes (I love having connections in UPS), and since they did a cross-ship, they put a hold on my credit card for $192, which is almost exactly what I paid for the other one, so I'm thinking of keeping it and just eating the charge.

I'll be able to either a) put these drives in RAID, not so much for performance, but for capacity; 80GB (75 formatted) isn't really enough to install all of my games on (I went on a buying spree when Steam had its latest big sale), or b) just install all my Steam stuff to the second drive, and leave the first one for everything else. I've still got the other two 320's to store all my music, pictures, and videos on, and to do backups of these drives.

What say ye?

 

[jedimasterben]

Update:

So I got the new drive, and it's one of the G1 drives, so it's the same as what I have now, except for the fact that it's microSATA.

The converters for microSATA to SATA are like $12, which isn't bad, but now I have to wait til late next week.

 

[ncc74656]

i ran into this issue as well, i didnt notice till i put a controller card it and reset the boot ordder in the bios... and no boot. kinda confusing, anyway i located the boot files and used achronis to copy the MBR from the random 2nd drive to my primary and its all fixed. took all of 30 seconds to change how i wanted...

 

[jedimasterben]

i ran into this issue as well, i didnt notice till i put a controller card it and reset the boot ordder in the bios... and no boot. kinda confusing, anyway i located the boot files and used achronis to copy the MBR from the random 2nd drive to my primary and its all fixed. took all of 30 seconds to change how i wanted...

Wow, I wish I would have thought of that!

UPDATE to the SSD fiasco:
The last few days I have been doing a LOT of reading up on these drives; apparently I'm not the only one that's had issues on an nVidia chipset. Somewhere, something in the firmware doesn't like when the nVidia chip is set to AHCI; in IDE mode it works fine, but is slow. Apparently, only the new G2 drives work properly with it.

I finally got the microSATA adapter in today, and after putting the drive in and booting, it suffers from the same issues as the other one; Why did I choose an nVidia chipset?? Oy vey!

After talking to an Intel rep, they won't replace a G1 drive with a G2 drive unless the G1 drives are out of stock. Currently, they have NO drives at all, and won't til the 18th or so. He also said that they are not supposed to get any more G1 drives in, which is a good thing, however, if between now and then they somehow find another G1 drive, that's the one I'm gonna get. So I'm crossing my fingers.

Anyways, all the stuff I read only mentions the G1 drives and the nVidia chipsets being in either AHCI or IDE mode.... and not RAID.... so, I'm thinking that while I have two of these puppies, why not try them in RAID 0 and see if they can pull it together. It's worth a shot.

 

[spoofedpacket]

I think I lost a few IQ reading this thread.

I worked at UPS a whole year before I knew about the 'hookup' where you use it to make the trucks magically drive faster.

 

[jedimasterben]

I think I lost a few IQ reading this thread.

I worked at UPS a whole year before I knew about the 'hookup' where you use it to make the trucks magically drive faster.

Don't be a dick.

 

[jedimasterben]

So, after playing around with the two drives for a couple of days, I decided to put them in RAID 0, just for kicks. To my surprise, there was no stuttering. So, I ran HDTune across them, and the system did not lock up once. I think I may have stumbled on the way to get a G1 drive to function properly, and at full speed, on an Nvidia chipset. This is out of most peoples' range, however, as it requires two of the drives.