new install, HUGE probs.

[Trypt]

Ok, I have the Dell XPS 15 (L502X), with everything top of the line (540M with 2GB vid, 8gig ram, i7 quadcore cpu, jbl audio etc.) except the HDD, which is 750GB 7200RPM (not bad, but at the time of purchase, the 250SSD alternative, which was probably crap anyway, was 500 more), and Win Home Premium that came with it.

So, today my new Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 240GB arrived, and I was thrilled. So, I figured I'll get whatever I need from my drive later, and just put it in (a hard job indeed). I did not format the drive, did not do any bios updates to the laptop or drive since both are fairly new.

Now, nothing will work, not even Bart's PE boot disc, which has NEVER failed me in the past! I couldn't boot ANYTHING from the cd-rom, it starts, then gives error saying something is missing.

My new Win 7 64 Ultimate disc will not install, it gets to the install screen then says there is drivers missing and the computer is missing vital components (most likely the original HDD). I got this far by using the Repair option, the install option won't get anywhere, the repair actually came up with the "Install Windows" screen, but failed afterwards.

So, after lots of misses, I went to BIOS, and changed the AHCI to ATA, just a wild stab after so much frustration, and now my disc is installing Windows, it's at 90%, I got to the HDD screen, and chose the SSD, made a new partition, and it's going now.

What is this about? What is ATA compared to AHCI? Why would this happen?

I'm not in the clear yet, it's at 100% extracting, but now it's stuck on the Installing Updates.. but not crashed, I'm sure it's going through, but I wonder whats up here. Do I have anything to worry about?

I wanted an answer to the above, I will of course update this after the installation, whether it's successful or not.

 

[Knufire]

If ATA = IDE mode (which it probably does, because IDE = PATA), it disables legacy support for IDE drives and enables all the features SATA has to offer, such as hotswapping. AFAIK, you ALWAYS want to install a SSD in ACHI mode to enable TRIM, be able to flash firmware, etc.

Why it fixed booting off a CD-ROM, I have no clue.

 

[Trypt]

Well, everything works fine, but in IDE (ATA) mode, not ACHI for some reason. And my score in Windows is 7.5, and it should be 7.9, the max, I know that because I installed a OCZ Agility 3 which is not quite on par with the Mushkin Chronos Deluxe that I have in a friends computer and he gets 7.9 on SATA 2!! And I have SATA 3! So whats up with that?

I'm going to try to switch to ACHI now, after the install, but it will probably give errors.

 

[Trypt]

I haven't installed much yet, so maybe I'll try again now that the drive is actually formatted, maybe that was the problem. And the laptop BIOS really has no options, the few it has are easy to understand, and I'm an overclocker, a BIOS guy to begin with, although very little experience with laptops. Should I flash the BIOS on my laptop?

 

[Knufire]

You can try flashing the BIOS.

Switching to AHCI after installing Windows will prevent you from booting, there's a registry edit you need to do before you change it. Should come up on google pretty easily.

Don't worry about WEI score. Not consistent at all, it's just a terrible benchmark.

 

[Trypt]

What's a good HDD performance proggy? I want to know how close I'm to getting top speeds with my Chronos Deluxe. I don't care about 500MB/s, I know that is almost impossible, but I'm sure wanting half that, which is about 8x faster then my old HDD. BTW, there is a definite improvement in load time etc., but I was expecting a much bigger difference, since when I changed my HDD from the WD 10000RPM raptor to the first generation Intel 80GB SSD, there was a HUGE difference, what gives?

 

[Knufire]

The main difference that makes SSDs feel fast is the access time, not raw speed. Access time across SSDs is only marginally different.

To benchmark Sandforce drives like the Chronos, use ATTO Disk Benchmark.

 

[Pvt.Dancer]

Sounds like Knufire has got you set! but to reinforce what he says... the WEI is crap its all over the place and isn't detailed enough to give you a good Idea of whats going on. ATTO is a good program too.

 

[Trypt]

I didn't bother with the benchmark, but I did the registry trick and changed to AHCI in BIOS, and it worked, and it FLIES!! It's awesome now. Just to give you an idea, it used to take 2 minutes to load up everything, and even then the HDD light would go on, now, its like 15 seconds and I'm ready to rock, and I have everything installed just like before, except it's Win Ultimate rather then Home Premium now. I'm impressed, but then again I was expecting this since I already experienced the huge improvement on my main rig (sig) when going to the 80GB intel for my OS drive.

Now, could someone please tell me how do I take an EXACT image of an HDD, and clone it onto another drive, without losing the original (Acronis deletes the original and there is no option not to, idiots).

I want to go back to the 10000RPM raptor on my main rig, so I want to make an image of my 80GB Intel SSD, and put it onto the Raptor, then run the puter like nothing changed.

Then I want to put the Intel into my second laptop, Dell Studio 17, a great laptop as well, but about a year older then the one I put the Mushkin in. The Studio has two HDD slots, so I want the Intel to be the OS drive, and now I have a 750GB drive sitting around that I will throw into the second slot and have a great 17 inch laptop as well!

 

[grumperfish]

Acronis Disk Director will keep the cloned drive. Just don't try to clone over firewire.
...Really dumb move on my part.

 

[Trypt]

Ok I will try that proggy, just installed it, and will get back to you on how it went. I need to do two things, first clone my 80GB and put it onto my 150GB raptor, then clone the 250GB OS drive in the Studio 17 onto the 80GB Intel so that I can use that in the laptop. I have to trim the 250GB first to fit onto the 80GB, but it's only at 100GB now so 20gb of software is nothing to get rid of. I will keep you updated

 

[Trypt]

Ok, Acronis Disk Director almost fried my whole computer. I did what it wanted, and it said it needed to restart, then it just crashed, and the computer would not load. I had to go to safe mode and restore an earlier restore point. My destination drive is an USB drive, could that be a problem? Since it has to restart, perhaps it has trouble locating the drive on USB, especially since the letter hasnt' been assigned yet before windows boots.. argh. I really want to get this done damn it.

 

[grumperfish]

It's possible that running it to a USB drive could do that. Most of my systems have Intel-based controllers for USB so it's not a problem, but it may not work as well with an alternate controller. Maybe try clonezilla livecd instead? It should load the controller/drive before cloning so you should be able to avoid any issues that way.

e: However moving the install to a different platform might not work at all to be honest (from desktop to laptop, etc). At best you'd have to reactivate, and at worst it might not boot when you try to switch the drive over. Might be easier just to reinstall on the alternate system(s).

 

[Trypt]

I'm not moving from laptop to desktop or vice-versa, I only want to make an image of my OS 80GB Intel SSD which is my OS drive for the desktop, and clone the image onto my Raptor 150GB, so the computer should be perfectly fine, except to change the drivers for the main HDD at first boot up. However, I cannot seem to do it, no matter what I try. I can't even make an image of the OS drive and put it onto another drive in my computer, that would do, since then I could just connect my Raptor and copy that image rather then doing it on-the-go. This is very frustrating.

 

[grumperfish]

Instead of using USB isn't using another SATA cable from the board an option? Even if you had to use the DVD connector it would only be a temporary swap.