Samsung SSD - MSI mobo - Will not recognize or get speed > 100 MB

[madglee]

I feel so tired and frustrated. I had been looking into upgrades without breaking the bank and upgraded my old rig with 4gb more RAM, a 840 EVO 500GB, and a Core 2 Extreme chip.

My old rig:
MSI P6N SLI Platinum
4GB DDR2 Crucial Ballistix
Core 2 Duo E6420 OC to 3Ghz
Nvidia Geforce 480 GTX
Seagate 500 GB HDD
Win 7 Ultimate 32 bit

The SSD and RAM came today. I was up at 8AM and installed a fresh copy of Win 7 ultimate 64 bits on the new SSD and slotted in the RAM. Everything booted fine and was a bit faster.

I then installed all my old stuff again, spent hours migrating data, etc.

Finally, I open Magician and find out that it cannot see my drive. I google for an answer and have spent countless hours trying to figure out what is going on.

It seems to be that this particular piece of crap that was considered a great one at the time does not support AHCI. I had never heard of AHCI before now, and thought that because the board supported SATA II I would be fine. I keep finding things on setting it to RAID or downloading strange drivers and other stuff, and I am just unsure what to do.

Is there anything I can do to get reasonable speeds and make sure my SSD doesn't get ruined? I can't really even use Samsung Magician at all, other than to find out the my Sequential Read and Write performance is 100 MB/s.

I seriously feel crazy at this point - 13 hours later. Please help me. Pleeeeeeeaaaaaase. There must be something to do besides have to go find another 775 board and reinstall everything.

Is there some other software I can use to speed up the drive? Is there a particular driver my board will support to give me SATAII performance instead of SATAI even in the absence of AHCI? Without the software, will bad things be happening to this SSD that I don't know about? So frustrated.

P.S. Again, I realize there are all sorts of problem threads regarding SSDs, but I just cannot figure out what to do even after hours of searching and reading all over the web.

 

[Dereck47]

Sorry, but your options are limited on what you can do.
Your motherboard was released in 2007. There were no updates to the original system drivers, and the last BIOS update was in 2008.

If your SATA cable is from 2007 then it's possible that it might be of poor quality. Buy a new cable and see if that helps. Here's a quality cable that is inexpensive. http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10226&cs_id=1022602&p_id=8778&seq=1&format=2

It sucks that you bought a CPU and memory in addition to your SSD because you need to change Sockets, not just a motherboard in order to get better performance from your SSD; and of course if you change Sockets then you have to buy new CPU and memory as well.

The majority of Socket 775 motherboards do not support AHCI mode. The very few boards that do support AHCI mode are sold out and hard to find.

Here's a 2011 thread from a user looking for a Socket 775 board with AHCI mode support.
Post #4 of the thread has a list of some boards that you can search for. Just double-check before buying that the board supports AHCI mode.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/300422-30-motherboards-requirements

Personally, I wouldn't spend any more money on that system. Save up to buy a current generation Socket/Chipset board.

Benchmark your drive with ATTO and see what your results are.

 

[madglee]

Thanks Dereck47.

You're right, looking back I was foolish to not further research SSD's. I was thinking that I didn't want to go through the trouble of purchasing a new case, new mobo, new chip, and new RAM, so thought I could just sneak in some extra RAM for cheap, get a CPU that's the best 775 possible (all for cheap) and then slap in a fairly nice SSD which would run at SATA 2 speeds. Had absolutely no idea about the AHCI crap.

I saw a Gigabit one that has it for about 70 bucks. I think you're right, though. At this point I may just re-sell the CPU and start saving to buy a case/mobo combo. It's really the putting the mobo in and connecting the power to the mobo that is the worst.

What mobo/cpu/RAM would you suggest that will support the NEXT sata speeds, possibly?

 

[Dereck47]

What mobo/cpu/RAM would you suggest that will support the NEXT sata speeds, possibly?

The latest Intel chipset is the Z87, which works with Socket 1150 motherboards. Current generation SSDs get their advertised Read/Write speeds when connected to native 6Gb/s ports. All Z87 motherboards have native 6Gb/s ports.

Here's the least expensive Z87 chipset motherboard.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157370

Here's the least expensive CPU that's compatible with the board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116950

Here's the least expensive memory (8GB) that's compatible with the board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820178333


If you want to use an AMD CPU then the Socket AM3+ with a 990FX chipset will allow current generation SSDs to get their advertised Read/Write speeds.

Here's the least expensive AM3+ 990FX chipset motherboard.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135345

Here's the least expensive CPU that's compatible with the board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113291

The same memory I listed above is compatible with the AM3+ board.

 

[madglee]

Thanks so much for taking the time to lay that out. I really appreciate your help. The real pity is that with my current GPU, most any game I play can be played in the highest resolution - I'm 39 now and don't get into a lot of the newer multiplayers, so it doesn't matter so much.

Are the SSD's much more reliable now? I mean, if I just leave my current build until I can upgrade, will I be doing any damage to the SSD or will it just be getting slower speeds? I disabled defrag, obviously, and managed to set High Performance in Magician.

That Intel chip looks to be slower than my Core 2 Extreme QX6850 per the hierarchy chart on this site. Perhaps the increased speed of the SSD will make a huge difference, though, and moving away from DDR 2 RAM will help, too.

I wish I could at least update the drive's firmware, but can't seem to.

Maybe it would behoove me to wait a bit longer until the next generation boards come out; I was reading on here about a new AMD chip coming at some point.

What mobo/cpu/RAM would you suggest that will support the NEXT sata speeds, possibly?

The latest Intel chipset is the Z87, which works with Socket 1150 motherboards. Current generation SSDs get their advertised Read/Write speeds when connected to native 6Gb/s ports. All Z87 motherboards have native 6Gb/s ports.

Here's the least expensive Z87 chipset motherboard.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157370

Here's the least expensive CPU that's compatible with the board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116950

Here's the least expensive memory (8GB) that's compatible with the board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820178333


If you want to use an AMD CPU then the Socket AM3+ with a 990FX chipset will allow current generation SSDs to get their advertised Read/Write speeds.

Here's the least expensive AM3+ 990FX chipset motherboard.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135345

Here's the least expensive CPU that's compatible with the board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113291

The same memory I listed above is compatible with the AM3+ board.

 

[Dereck47]

Are the SSD's much more reliable now? I mean, if I just leave my current build until I can upgrade, will I be doing any damage to the SSD or will it just be getting slower speeds? I disabled defrag, obviously, and managed to set High Performance in Magician.

Yes, SSDs are much more reliable now. You won't be doing any damage to your SSD, you will just be getting slower speeds. You will also be reducing drive longevity since your drive will be in IDE mode and you won't have TRIM, but don't lose too much sleep over it. If you bought a Z87 motherboard today then your drive would last 12 years; if you buy the motherboard 2 years from now then your drive will last 11 years, 11 months.
My numbers are 100% accurate, but I hope you get the overall point I'm trying to make.

I bought the Samsung 840 EVO 120GB last week for $88.99. I should have gotten it this past Friday, but due to a snowstorm here in New York I won't get the drive until Monday or Tuesday.

I wish I could at least update the drive's firmware, but can't seem to.

You don't need Samsung Magician to update your drive's firmware. You can download the firmware as a .iso file, burn the .iso file to a USB thumb drive or CD/DVD drive, reboot to the USB or CD/DVD drive, and it should update the firmware on your drive.
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/samsungssd/downloads.html

If you are using the Samsung Magician software that came with your drive then uninstall it, and download and install the latest version 4.3. That version might allow you to upgrade the firmware on your drive. You can get the latest version from the same link I just provided to you.


Also FYI, SSDs use idle Garbage Collection in addition to TRIM in order to maintain drive performance. Since you won't have TRIM then just reboot your system and let it idle at the login screen overnight while you sleep to allow GC to do its thing. You probably only need to do this once or twice a month. In Windows Control Panel, under Power Settings, make sure that your drive is set to "Never shut down", so that power is being supplied continuously to your drive while your system idles.