M17x R2 killing SSD's...

Hi guys,

recently I bought a used Alienware M17x R2. Love this machine

i7 920 cpu
8gb ram
Ati 5870 crossfire
1 x 500gb hd (7200rpm)

So I decided to get a new SSD drive for it to speed it up a bit. I bought a Kingston SSDNOW V200 (128gb), put it in (at this stage I just replaced the 500gb with the intention of using the 500gb drive later as the second hdd) and installed Windows 7. Everything went great, Windows was booting up faster than ever... happy customer. Installed a few other things (notebook was on for a good 4 hours plus, rebooting a number of times) and then turned off the notebook for the night.

Next day I go to turn on the notebook and it hangs on the first boot screen (Alien head) where it says press F2 for ios, F12 for boot menu... neither work.

Anyway, finally figured out the SSD had busted, so I put back the 500gb HD and all was good again. I figured I had a faulty drive so I returned it and got a new one after they checked it (the SSD wasn't even registering in bios).

So I installed the new one and installed Windows again, then I had to head out. At this stage all i had installed was windows, no Alienware drivers.

I just went to turn it on and same thing as before, it's stuck on the boot screen (Alien head) and looks like the SSD is fried again...

Now the strange thing is the 500gb HD is fine when I put it in and use it, but the SSD is completely stuffed now... again.

Any ideas?


tl;dr - bought new SSD, installed it, installed win 7, all good... then next day SSD is fried. Swapped it for new one thinking it was faulty but exactly the same thing happened... regular HDD works without trouble. Why is my M17x R2 killing SSD's?

 

Maybe its not your computer and the drive.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...v200-having-serious-performance-problems.html

 

I agree with takasniper. SSD with Sandforce controllers have had a lot of issues. When they don't, they're totally great. When they do have issues, they're really lousy.

Get a drive with a different controller, such as an Intel, Crucial or Samsung SSD.

If memory serves me correctly, the R2 does not support SATA-III speeds, so you can possibly get a better deal on a SATA-II SSD.

 

I thought the Kingston V200 had the JMicron controller, not the Sandforce?

Anyway, I managed to get into bios and this time the drive was recognised. I installed win 7 again, plus the drivers. came back this morning and again it's stuffed. Now I can't even get into bios like with the first drive... It just hangs on the Alien head bootscreen again.

I can understand 1 drive being faulty but not 2 in a row giving me the exact same issues... is there any chance it is not the drives but something the M17x is doing?

 

So the shop replaced the 2nd drive with a new one (my 3rd unit so far).

I put this drive in my desktop and installed Windows 7 plus a few apps for good measure, turned it off for the night then back on this morning and all was good. This SSD is functioning at the moment

But Im hesitant to put it in the M17x R2 (the shop didn't want to swap the SSD with another brand one so Im stuck with the Kingston V200 for now).

Im thinking of putting it in hdd1 instead of hdd0 (I had it in hdd0 the previous 2 times)... any reason I shouldn't have the OS/boot drive (the SSD) in hdd1?

Other option is to just buy another brand of SSD... problem is Im limited with what brand/model of SSD I can buy here at the moment: intel 320, Corsair, Kingston or Patriot.

 

Definitely my R2 is killing these drives

I decided to just put it in again, this time into the secondary hdd bay (which is hdd1). I have been testing this drive (the 3rd drive Ive tried so far) for the last 2 days (I had it in my desktop for a day and it was working fine, then I put it in a usb enclosure where it's been working fine too). As soon as I put it into the R2, the notebook acted a bit funny (stalled on alien head boot screen but eventually went through and started copying files for windows 7 installation but then froze)... I took out the drive after it had only been in my notebook for literally 2 minutes, put it in the usb enclosure, and now it's saying the disk needs to be formatted but won't let me format (comes up with an error)... drive is basically screwed again.

So what could possibly be happening in my R2 that kills these ssd's but lets regular hdd's work fine?

 

Update:

I looked into the LPM setting in the bios, after someone on another forum mentioned that this could be causing issues with the ssd's, and although the regular bios didn't have any option to disable this, I did find the modded A10 bios for the M17x R2 which opened up a whole bunch of options, one of which was ALPM (Aggressive Link Power Management).

Anyway by the time I had found the modded bios (I left it for a few days and was just using the hdd instead of the ssd), my gf had bought me a new Crucial M4 ...so after updating to the modded bios and making sure ALPM was disabled, I installed the new Crucial ssd in the R2, installed Windows 7, and so far it's all good

So not sure if it was just that my R2 didn't like the Kingston V200 ssd's (killed 3 of them in as many days, I managed to save the last one though by formatting it in Ubuntu as it wasn't letting me format it in Windows after it got toasted in the R2) or whether it had something to do with the LPM setting in bios, but the Crucial M4 ssd seems to be running happily in the R2 for a few days now (big relief).

 

Be sure your M4 has the 0009 firmware; avoids some stutter/hanging issues and provides a nice performance boost. Crucial.com Product Downloads - Firmware Updates.