Problems installing SSD

I just received my m17xr3 and made sure it booted the first time. Then I swapped out the original HDD and installed a Intel 510 120gb in it's place and placing the 320gb in the 2nd slot.

BIOS shows both drives no problem. I set it to AHCI instead of RAID.

I put in the Windows 7 disk and deleted all partitions on the old drive, created a new partition on the SSD and began installing.

Here's where it gets interesting... the "expanding windows files" took roughly 30 minutes to complete. This seems awfully slow. Even after it installed everything, it tried to boot into Windows to finish the setup and immediately received an error saying it couldn't load "winload.exe".

Anyone have any ideas? I'm performing the install again just to see if I can get it working... is it normal the expanding files should take this long on a brand new ssd?

Any help or advice is appreciated.

 

Generally we set it back to raid after first reboot to avoid bsod or other issues. Theres a bunch of threads regarding ssd stuff but I can't link you since I'm on my iPad.

 

I've searched and searched and searched and don't see anyone with this particular problem. Could this be a faulty SSD? It's a brand new boxed Intel 510 120GB.

Next step is to switch it to HDD1 bay and try to install OS on there. If that fails, I'll install to the 320GB and see what happens to the SSD within Windows.. sigh!

 

Well, installing win7 with the SSD in HDD1 slot seemed to do the trick. I'm now booted into Windows and will install drivers and see how everything performs. I've never owned an SSD before so how should I go about testing the performance?

 

The setting back to RAID is a Vertex 3 thing. Intel's should be fine in AHCI all the way thru the install, at least that what I've seen.

Exactly what I would be doing. Could be a faulty ssd, your troubleshooting steps should ID that if its the case.

 

There is something up with Port 0 on these M17xR3.

Test using AS SSD, CrystalDiskMark or ATTO. My preference is AS SSD.

 

Yea been running all day after swapping the SSD to the HDD1 slot. The interesting thing is that the Windows setup still showed it as drive 0. Not sure what that is about.

Regardless, performance seems great - haven't done any benchmarks yet but the Windows score shows 7.5 for the drive whereas the bundled HDD showed a 5.4. It definitely feels incredibly faster than a normal drive - I'm happy!

First day with the new laptop and I couldn't be happier right now. I wish I would have waited for the sibeam wireless but I'm not sure I would ever even use it heh.. thanks for all the help!

 

Well congrats...enjoy your new toy.

I'm getting a new M17xR3 built to replace my current one, and I'm hoping it has the internal sibeam antenna. I want really want to add that option to it.