But if you have the drive formatted using the old method, the first cluster is off center of the anticipated data build, so every read or write is involving two sectors. And I know from reading that this can and does cause all manner of crazy nonsense to happen. Even things that make no sense at all like reads actually failing. The data is there, but for whatever reason it does not always find it when queried. (It is the Sandforce controller in my never humble opinion. The only company with a good record using Sandforce controllers on SSDs is Intel. Why is a mystery to me. But the results are there to be seen.)
Wee bit of a problem: Updating the firmware from the toolbox is not supported when Windows is running off the drive you are trying to update. -Toolbox will not update a primary system drive (e.g. drive letter "C:"). You must run Windows from another drive and then update your SSD using Toolbox. Though I suppose I could remove my old HDD from its external drive cover, unplug my DVD drive, and run XP from that... (yeah only two sata ports on my mobo :S, hence the external shell for my old HDD). I messing about inside the box more than absolutely necessary... Note: This was a clean install on a fresh SSD, so no I didn't upgrade it from XP. EDIT: Blargh... system has somehow gone off AHCI despite being set to it in bios. No AHCI controler. HALP! I don't know how to fix this... can't find drivers on my win 7 disc... I've managed to turn off indexing though.
Ouch. How could the BIOS set IDE (I.E. Screw-Up mode) again? (Or are you saying Windows cannot operate in AHCI despite having no support of IDE mode and requiring AHCI? Not a joke, I have heard of Windows doing such idiotic things before.) As for flashing the firmware, do you have any Linux distro on hand? If not, do you have a USB flash drive or a CD/DVD you could burn one to? The bottom of the page the link above leads you to is the download link for the ISO image of the CD/DVD you can use with any of those methods to flash the firmware safely. There is also a PDF document detailing how to do everything. And you always have us to help out any way we can.
Presumably you already did all this, but the latest BIOS is F14 and the drivers for pretty much everything have potential updates on the Gigabyte site. http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2457 And I notice from the Newegg reviews that this board uses DDR2, so the speed and timings I posted previously mean nothing here. According to Wikipedia, DDR2 should be stable at 800 Mhz, 6-6-6-15 timings. You can probably manage 800 Mhz, 5-5-5-12.5 if you try, but for the moment you are better off with 6-6-6-15 to be certain it will work. (The board itself cannot exceed 800 Mhz for RAM speeds, so do not even attempt the expensive 1066 speed RAM.) You can use CPUZ in Windows to see what BIOS version you have. Or you can reboot and check the BIOS itself. Additional links follow: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/264926-30-965p http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=13-128-017
This is likely not what you want to hear but windows will often have an issue with SSDs if you dont install the driver before installing the OS, much like some raid drivers. Unfortunatly the only fix I know of for that is to reinstall windows (though some drivers will happily update after install, it usualy requires the motherboard take control of the SSD/HDD variances). Not seeing the drive as AHCI can be an indicator of that issue. There is an option when installing windows for adding additional drivers before you get to the formating/installing options. If you did install the drivers for the SSD control prior to the windows install it sounds more like the network having problems assigning an IP (though the IPCONFIG log looks fine to me, so it is eventually getting a connection) Also with windows 7 I have had issues with it being very slow to boot if a DVD/CD is in the optical drive, though I have never found a reason for it doing so.
Update: The SSD has died, after 4 months... I've finally bit the bullet and ordered parts for a whole new computer(except graphics card, I'll use my GF660GTX, keyboard, and OS). About $1550 worth. Getting an intel i7-3770K, an ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mobo to mount it on, CM Storm Scout II Gaming case to put it in, an ARCTIC Freezer l30 Intel CPU fan to keep it cool, an XFX ProSeries Core Edition 750W PSU to keep it supplied with power, 16GB(2x8GB) of Crucial DDR3 Ballistix 1600mhz RAM with 8-8-8-24 timings, a Corsair SSD Force Series GS 240GB, a G500 gaming mouse and finally, a 24" BenQ LED GL2450HM 16:9(widescreen) monitor that runs in 1920x1080(1080p).
My problem was less with Win 7 and more with the SSD... though of course Win 7 not properly identifying it as an SSD didn't help.
Keep in mind OCZ are notorious for making some of the worst SSDs of all time and everybody is always yelled at to avoid them, so that it died is not too surprising.
Late post, but I was unavailable when this was being posted. My Brother and I bought our first SSDs within a few days of each other. I bought an Intel X-25M 80GB SSD and he tried to save fifteen bucks buying a similar OCZ brand SSD. We both patched the firmware first, then installed Windows 7 immediately. We ran every SSD benchmark we could find, as well as trying the more reliable test of how long it takes to copy files over from the one drive we had in common. The results always favored the Intel side. And his SSD actually hard locked several times for no apparent reason while we tested it. Most of the time no data was lost, but only one of us is still using their first SSD. People call me a fanboy when I tell stories like this, but it is true and is not embellished in any way. In my "fanboy" opinion, OCZ makes pure garbage. And I am not an Intel fanboy. I do not have any Intel parts in my system besides the SSD. I run an AMD rig... With an Intel SSD.
My new computer has a 240GB Corsair SSD, which has worked flawlessly since day 1, and I didn't have to prep it at all, just install win 7 and go. I've managed to get the old OCZ SSD back into action with a firmware update, and a reformat with manually set sector size(4096 bytes, ie: 4k, which is what it should be set to, I think my old problems was because it defaulted to 512). But no I'm not buying OCZ anymore, I'll stick to tried and true brands I know are good, like Corsair, Crucial, Kingston and Intel.
Definitely. I managed to buy a Crucial 256GB SSD when it was 60% off on amazon (black friday sale I think?) hasn't let me down yet.
So do I; I can't conceive of a reason why anyone would ever want to use the built-in interface. Unfortunately, even Classic Shell doesn't fix the search interface in Windows Explorer.
Because sometimes your computer has the necessary resources to run even that, and you just got used to it so you don't mind it. Then again, it's easy to achieve that if you don't really use the interface itself for anything other than the most basic stuff.
The default settings never slowed my computer down*. They're just badly designed; they're not user friendly at all and they're kind of ugly. *(not the processing speed at any rate, the new start menu takes a lot longer because it's only a single column so you constantly have to scroll down to access programs)
