Any R3 owners have Vertex 3 stories to share?

Hey folks,

I received my OCZ Vertex 3 yesterday. I started the process of performing a clean build following some advice in the forums here but I am having issues.

I can see the drive in the BIOS, I can see the drive in the Windows 7 install config, I choose the drive to install to and Windows 7 install takes off for 15 minutes or so performs the install.

The problem is on the first reboot, the load bails and throws various errors related to failures in reading files, can't find kernel, etc.

I have tried installing with drive mode in BIOS set to RAID, AHCI and have the same result for both.

Does anyone have some advice for me? I would appreciate all input.

Thanks

 

Couple of things to try - compatibility mode (ide instead of ahci/raid) and make sure you have the latest firmware installed in the ssd, which will require you have a working system from which you can perform the firmware installation.

 

Thanks Nezter, I saw the IDE "ATA" drive option. Do I risk loosing performance when in this mode?

I'll also double check the ROM version and see if there is any update. Sadly the OCZ site is a mess and not easy to find anything .... :-/

I would love to find a detailed explanation of these settings.

I can't try this until tonight as I am at work.

Any other thoughts from any one?

 

Typically, switching to "ATA" mode now is used for troubleshooting purposes using pxe/boot disks.

Installing using this mode should allow you get to the OS installed. After completion of setup, switch back to ahci. You'll probably have to do a slight registry modification or the os will bsod (either blue or black) during driver load while booting.

Follow the instructions here:

Error message when you start a Windows 7 or Windows Vista-based computer after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive: "STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE"

 

OK, I had similar problems. I got my Vertex 3 and Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (x64) working fine with the following steps:

1. Make sure your Vertex is installed in Port 1 otherwise you're not going to get 6Gbps.
2. Enter BIOS and switch to AHCI and make sure you set the correct boot order (due to step 1).
3. Begin Windows installation. Then during the first reboot, enter BIOS again, and switch back to RAID.
4. Let Windows finish installation.
5. Install M17xR3 specific drivers.

Not sure if you have to follow the next step. After I got Windows 7 installed with all the drivers, I was getting random hangs from 30 sec to 1 minute about 3-4 times a day. HDD LED would stay lit solid during the hang. After the hang the M17xR3 would start working again. Did this with either RST 10.1 installed or not. Problem described on this thread Technical Discussion Vertex 3 240G Stall Problem on the OCZ forums.

(?)6.(?) To fix this issue, I followed advice from post #6 from the above thread, which basically sends you here Solution: C300 Disk Freeze-ups in Windows 7 solved... - Crucial Community on the crucial forums and I made the recommeded registry changes. The hangs have been gone ever since (for the last two days at least). By the way I did this step with RST 10.1.0.1008 installed.

Note: Starting the Windows 7 install on ATA or RAID, my R3 would hang during the install. Trying to continue after the first reboot in ATA or AHCI my M17xR3 would BSOD.

Let me know if you get things working properly.

Now my only problem is getting the Roxio Creator Starter and PowerDVD 9.6 applications and Integrated Web Cam Driver/App from Dell.

 

Awesome information guys! Thanks a ton, I'll try all steps tonight and report back.

I can't thank you enough.

 

One other thought ruderthanyou, when you say SSD attached to port 1 I want to clarify your statement.

I got my machine with a single drive, I removed that drive and placed the SSD in that position, is that port 0?

I placed my Seagate Momentus XT in the drive space that is more centered in the PC which I assumed would be the port 1, is this the location you are suggesting?

If so, I need to crack it open again and move the drives to the other ports.

I did notice when installing W7 that if in RAID mode, the SSD was on Port 0, if in AHCI mode, the SSD showed as being on Port 1 (or vice-versa). I thought this was kind of odd.

Thanks for any clarification you can provide!

 

Yup that is port 0...closet to the edge (if you lift out the drive, there should be a big black sticker that indicates it port 0.) When I first got the OS to finally install, my drive was only at 3Gbps. Posted my problem on the Owner's Lounge and kunekaden gave me the port 1 advice and referenced the thread he read it on http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/564395-ssd-issues.html.

Yes that's port 1 and where you should put your ssd.

That sound right.

For additional clarification, I have my SSD in port 1 (near the center of the computer - where the empty drive bay was), and my WD 750 Black where my original Dell 320GB was installed. And I have the BIOS set to boot off the Second Hard Drive. And finally, you should have a big sticker under each of the drive bays that indicate port #.

Keep in mind, I've only had this all working since about 11:00pm on the 20th...but its been problem free since then, even with RST 10.1.0.1088 installed.

EDIT: One more thing, if your computer does hang during the driver install (with the HDD LED lit solid), don't reboot; leave it alone. The notebook should come back to life after the hang in about 30-60 seconds. The mouse should still move around during the hang. Make sure you do step 6 above to hopefully fix it.

 

I confirm that with my intel 510. Just swap the drives and fix boot order at bios.

 

Well guys, I am rockin and rollin! I just spent the past 4 hours installing everything to get this baby up and running and it is smokin fast ...

I could not have done it with out your help.

I still have a couple of minor issues to work out, nothing major however.

I have also not performed the registry tweaks mentioned by ruderthanyou, although I'll look into doing that tomorrow.

For any one looking for a solution to installing a Vertex 3 drive in the R3, look no further! + rep guys, thanks a ton.

 

So Azureal, giving a green light to buy the vertex 3 for m17x r3's? And do you think it matters that much in the real world between 120 gig and 240 gig performance gaps?

 

Once you have the OS and drivers installed did you do a windows updated? I have the same disk drives Vertex 3 and WD 750 Black and everything is fine in AHCI or RAID. As soon as I do a reboot after the first Windows Update I get BSOD everytime.

 

Login to "My Account" on dell.com and click on the link that says "Download Factory Installed Software (My Dell Downloads)" to get Roxio and Webcam software.

 

Let me know if you experience the hangs. I don't know if with all the messing around I did to get this to work initially I did something to created the hanging problem. But I'm running pretty good and yeah, its fast. By the way, are you running RST? Just wondering if that could have created my problem in the first place.

Thanks jywang. I'll try that.

 

What I'm wondering is why there's so many issues with getting the SSD to work on this laptop. I threw in a gskull falcon into my asus g73 and it just worked. Maybe a future ssd firmware will fix it?

 

Because it is an OCZ

 

The only thing really unique here for the Vertex 3 is the switching of the sata modes. Thats a 30 second fix. The hang problem I experienced I learned to fix from a post on the Cruical forums because their C300 drive did the same thing. And that's also 30 second fix. The 6 Gbps port 0 vs 1 thing appears to be a problem with any 6 Gpbs SSD on the M17xR3.

 

Just like you, I began experiencing the annoying hangs late last night. At one point I actually had to just shut it down and reboot as it never "came back" I suspect you know what I mean.

I applied the registry tweaks you found this morning and for the past half hour have not had any noticeable issues. It was happening pretty frequently last night, so I am hopeful that this will fix the issues.


A couple of issues I have:

1) I never got to install the Intel integrated Graphics drivers, only the ATI driver and CCC package. When attempting to install the Intel IGP driver package (when on IGP, I think) I get a message that this driver is not certified for this computer and it bails.

2) The default Windows 7 themes are LAME, where can I find the Alienware themes which were originally on my machine? I am in the process of trying to find them on the Dell site now, no luck yet, for some reason Dell's support site does not recognize my Service Tag as valid so I cannot add my new machine to my growing list of Dell machines ...

3) When opening a command prompt to run powercfg to disable hibernation, I am told that I do not have permissions to modify power configuration settings, seems odd, I am an admin on the machine. I'll look into making this change using the power settings gui. If anyone has seen this same odd issue, let me know how you worked around it. There is no 'sudo' concept in windows ...

Other than that, things seem to be working out great.

ruderthanyou, I did install RST version 10.0.0.1046, this was right from the Dell support site for the M17x-R3. I am not really sure what benefit this offers but I do recall checking it out on the original AW build.

Also, I am not certain how to confirm the firmware version in my Vertex 3, any advice on that front? I'll poke around in the device manager. Is there a windows based app available from OCZ to check and perform the update to the drive? When updating the firmware, I hope it leaves all data intact ... (it friggin better!).

 

A little additional documentation from OCZ would have been nice, but all in all, the process has been pretty painless, especially with the support of some awesome folks around here. As far as I can tell, there is nothing inherently "wrong" with the drive which warrants a firmware upgrade at this point, not for me at least.

I agree, after performing the operations in the proper order with a few settings mods, I am having no issues at all. The OCZ drive is functioning perfectly so far.

 

I had the same problem. I installed the IGP drivers before the ATI and that seemed to work for me. I did have a problem with the ATI drivers spamming my system log with a amdkmdag message. I used this work around to get rid of the spam amdkmdag Event Viewer spam? - Rage3D Discussion Area specificially post 5. Seems to be a problem with the ATI drivers. And yes, its an amusing post to read.

See this thread, nice step by step http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ook-feel-after-clean-install-windows-7-a.html My system now looks just like the system Dell delivered.

Did you open the command prompt window in admin mode? In the start menu search field, type cmd. Then above, right click cmd.exe and select run as administrator.

Same reason I installed it. It does provide some nice info to verify the drive is in 6Gbps. I hear the later versions work with the OCZ toolbox so you can easily update the firmware. Check the OCZ forums for which one, I haven't verified my version yet.

Use the Intel Rapid Storage Technology tool. Just click the drive in the right hand pane and you'll see what you need. Or you can always look at the drive under device manager. Right mouse click the drive, select properties, then Details tab, and select Hardware Ids. You'll see the firmware revision there; in my case its 2.02.

I've updated my Vertex 1 and 2 drives in the past and never had any data loss. But always do a backup first just in case.

 

I seem to everything stable now except the nvidia drivers won't install. Tried the new set and old set and it keeps saying I have no compatable graphics hardware so I can only get the Intel drivers to work. Any ideas? I have the non 3d 460 card.

 

We will see how good Vertex 3 will be after a few months. Vertex 2 was a complete disaster with over 30% of the drives with problems. Disk failures etc started showing after a few weeks to several months. Right now Vertex 3 have 11% giving it 1/5 on newegg. Who knows, maybe OCZ have straighten their problems.

I wouldn`t touch any SSDs from OCZ even with a stick

 

I definitely respect your opinion. OCZ has earned their bad rep; not disagreeing with you there. They had a lot of fall out on the 25nm/34nm NAND issue. I think they are trying hard to fix their past trangressions though. I just havent had any annoying issues with any of my Vertex's. Maybe I've been lucky, but if that's it, then I hope it doesn't run out yet considering I bought two Vertex 3 240gb...one for M17xR3 and a i7-2600K build I'm doing.

 

Thanks. OCZ come out with new firmwares for their SSDs every now and then so they are atleast working on the ongoing problems. So they are showing commitment towards their customers. Yes that 25nm NAND scam was the last drop. Even today a lot of people are not aware that they are using one of them. That along with exaggerated specifications that is a bit off according to reviews. But Vertex 3 is one hell of a fast drive. Hopefully you will be happy with your purchase.

You sure have a lot of money to toss around. That`s for shure

 

Awesome again ruderthanyou!

I have completed all except checking event log for ATI driver spam. I'll check that out later this evening.

The post to restore to AW look and feel is awesome, it looks just like it did before my rebuild.

Also running OCZ Vertex 3 F/W 2.02, so don't plan to mess with that for now. Glad to hear that re-flashing drive firmware does not wipe data, I thought I had read somewhere that it was an issue with some brand of earlier gen drives.

I applied the Drive controller or RST registry changes and I have been running all day without a single hang, I think that is the fix. I'll keep an eye on it. It was so frequent last night before the tweaks that it is very obvious the changes made a difference.

I would suggest that the Vertex 3 is ready for prime time on the R3.

I resolved the issue with disabling hibernation by running cmd.exe as administrator.

I also had this page bookmarked from research before I got the drive, it may be of help to someone: The SSD Optimization Guide | The SSD Review There are a lot of good tips on tweaks to make and confirm for general SSD usage on Windows 7.

 

Well I finally got the Nvidia driver installed. When I booted back to BIOS for some reason it wasn't detecting my card so I took out the Vertex 3 and WD 750 HDD and reinstalled the original HDD and it detected it. Booted back into windows and everything look good. So I deinstalled the original HDD and reinstalled the other 2 drives and this time BIOS detected the video card. Booted back into windows and reinstalled the intel and nvidia drivers and it is working now.

 

Waiting for my vertec 3 to arrive.

I hope my one goes perfectly given it would me first time doing a clean install and stuff.

 

Did anyone (after using the LPM reg fix) have any stall issues the last couple of days? I could imagine that if the LPM fix wouldn't be the holy grail that it would occur again after a few hours/days. I would like to know because I have a Vertex 3 on it's way.

 

I performed those registry modifications on Saturday morning and then proceeded to use the machine all weekend, installing software, gaming and general playing around.

I have had ZERO hang situations since applying the modifications. I am quite pleased with the results.

 

I bought my unit and vertex 3 with this topic, I'm getting a little worried when, without a sure guide to use my VTX3.
Many problems? someone to make a topic related to that?

thanks

 

I also have not had a single issue and its been about 6 days for me since applying the LPM fix. When I was having the hangs, it was 3-4 times a day.

My machine was almost in constant use this weekend too.

Try my guide on the first page of this thread. Azureal didn't seem to have much of an issue with it.

 

Azureal and ruderthanyou thank you for the info. I'll use your info once the SSD arrives.

 

Use ruderthanyou's guide on the first page of this thread, it worked like a charm for me and I have had no problems at all since getting things all set up.

It's a smokin' combination I tell you!

 

ruderthanyou deserves all the props for this! I was just one of his QA testers ...

 

Can someone reconfirm 100%? I was under the impression the ONLY 1.5Gbit port on the board was the one the ODD was connected to.

I planned on getting 2x 240GB in RAID-0 and running manual cleanup every few months to bypass the TRIM issue as I do in my desktop. If this ends up TRULY being the case, good news for me because I only need 1 for my laptop and 2 for my desktop

 

You deserve some credit too as it was you who started this thread.

Just a quick question to you all:
To get things working you need to enable RAID in the BIOS before rebooting during installation. Does Trim still work after enabling this setting, because I heard that Trim is disabled in a RAID config. I would think Trim is still working because it's actually JBOD instead of a real RAID config, but I just want to check it.

 

cool thread man, I love the new Vertex3 series.

 

That was my same impression, but there are numerious posts of people with single 6 Gbps SSDs only getting only 3 Gbps on port 0. This isn't a Vertex issue, its been confirmed with Intel 510 too. Not sure about dual 6 Gbps drives though.

You change the BIOS from AHCI to RAID during the first reboot. That is, when Windows 7 installer reboots your computer, go into the BIOS and change to RAID. Then let the computer just finish the installation. Its really just that simple. Also, if you get the hangs (which I think you will) just do the reg hack that disables LPM from the Crucial forums. Also, there a good writeup about LPM in that forum post, so you're not totally in the dark about what the hack does.

Since RST 9.6, the TRIM command is supported on non-member disks in RAID mode. So yeah, its working.

 

no problem at all - installed V3 on port 0 and it works perfectly fine.

 

Ing

Are you getting 6Gbps? Whats your bios version and ssd firmware revision? Mine would work, just wouldnt get 6Gbps in port 0.

 

my vtx 3 in port 0 or 1 to 6GB / s. ..?
and has no problem leaving it in RAID using a secondary HD?

 

My understanding was port 0 is simply not a sata 3 port but a sata 2 port and therefore incapable of using its full potential in that drive slot. so I would think that you are running at 3gbps and not 6.

 

I am talking about SATA 6GB/s, not SATA 3GB/s.
Port 0 and 1 are both SATA III.

Check this out. If thats SATA II you cannot get that sequential read speed, lol.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/568707-m17x-r3-ssd-4k-random-low-throttle-issue-ssd-like-r2.html

 

I found it!
F6 drivers on clean Win-7 install
Choose the driver in accordance with your Win7 version, either 32-bit or 64-bit.
64-bit driver, http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...ivers&lang=eng
32-bit driver, http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...ivers&lang=eng

 

I had terrible freezing after installing the newest intel rapid storage drivers on my R3 with a vertex LE and this thread helped me cure it. Great info here.

 

I just installed my Vertex 3 without a hitch thanks to ruderthanyou's guide. Thumbs up. My system really flies now.

 

Since you get BSOD if you try to change the drive back to ACHI wont we lose performance leaving it at RAID instead of AHCI?
Specially for those who plan to use SSD+HD leaving it at Raid might cause issues no? Because all guides i read suggested to leave the SSD at AHCI not RAID.

In general RAID/AHCI are pretty much the same with a single drive but i fear we might get issues using SSD+HD Combo.

Plus boot up time is higher with raid over AHCI.
i did read at newegg that "enable" hot swap at bios would remove all kind of freezes without playing with registry

 

I have my vertex 3 and currently installing w7. No problems so far.

 

Based on the read/write performance and my intention to have this be my primary OS drive, I think that I am going to buy the Vertex 3 240 GB drive. Just to confirm for those who have installed one of these drives, the M17x R3 does support the SATA 3 interface for the highest 6 Gb/s performance of this drive?

 

Yes it does, although according to ruderthanyou and his process for configuration, you must install the Vertex 3 SATA III drive in the HDD Port 1 location in order to get the 6GBps SATA III speeds.

I can confirm that my Vertex 3 is running in 6GBps mode as reported by Intel Rapid Storage Technology (latest Dell version 10.0.0.1046)