M18x R2 Drive Configuration & Troubleshooting - Ask your questions here

Oh, I did. I spent at least 12 hours fooling around with this system yesterday. I've been at this since last week.

I'm pretty sure I've done all I can. Either this second batch of SSD's are faulty, or the cable is.

 

Yeah, that's the bad part....Because if this cable doesn't do it and another test ssd's don't do it...Your board is messed up....So I of course. Wish you well on this!

 

Sounds so so familiar I went trough two M18X R2s and all were acting the exactly the same on my two Vertex4 256GB SSDs, now these exact drives are back in my MSI GT683R set up again as RAID0 for last 3-4 months hassle-free error-free, where my aliens would have had exactly same problems. I did suspected SSDs to be faulty but it wasnt the case.

My sympthoms were as follows:

I installed SSDs alone both on SATA3 ports
I boot to IRST OROM menu with CTRL+I
I create RAID0 strip drive
Then I continue to setup windows7 etc
First time during OS installation laptop reboots itself as a sequence of the OS setup steps and I get the EXACTLY SAME ERROR in IRST OROM "ErrorOccured0" on one of the drives!

I thought I band swap drives around, so following the SN of the drive, exact same drive would have "ErrorOccured0"

Then I had to delete RAID0 array and recreate it, Error goes away, and after the same procedure again after first restart another drive now since I swapped them in places would get the ErrorOccured0, so nothing helps, it seems like laptop makes the dive to get the error. Tried any cobo, any ports dual Vetex4 in RAID0 did not work for me in two brand new M18X R2, now Im getting another one tuesday wednesday and I am nearly certain it wont work again

will let yo know

 

Please do! I want to know what the problem is. It would be weird to find out the 840 Pro's aren't compatible with something inside the Alienware...

 

That's too strange, UltraGSM. Your dilemma seems to be unusual.

There has to be something out of the ordinary because there are too many M18x R2 owners with SSD RAID0 working fine. For a few exampes... MonnieRock has Vertex 4 SSD RAID0 that works perfectly (after replacing a defective SATA interposer cable) and so does Johnksss (without having to replace a defective SATA interposer). I have Agility 3 SSD RAID0 and Seagate Momentux XT Hybrid RAID0 running simultaneously in the same machine (one of the Momentus HDD is in the optical bay caddy. Plus, there are a number of other M18x R2 owners with SSD RAID0 that are having no problems.

 

And don't forget, just two weeks ago I had two Samsung 830's in RAID, haha.

 

Don't know if this helps or not, but my 840 pros raided with no problems out of the box and have been working great in my Clevo.

 

i must ad, i've seen this a lot of time on PC , SATA cable that would work for single disk, would faild RAID . on amd and intel .....

i vote for the interpose cable thing

 

I hope its just that cable thing but how come I got two brand new (not refurbished) M18X R2s and both showed absolutely identical faults setting up RAID0 with my vertex's? I did thought my SSDs are somewhat bad/faulty or incompatible to each other via RAID but that cant be right, as I used these two SSDS in RAID0 absolutely flawlessly in my old MSI GX660R, then I tried moving them to M18X R2 (failed), tested on number of desktop systems without any problems, all tests passed full speed and ZERO ERRORS , at the end I returned first M18X R2 due to many other imperfections thinking my SSDs were incompatible, but then I got another M18X R2 this time with different GPUs (Nvidia) if that would make ant sense and difference as someone may think but not that I think it could, and exactly same stuff continued to happen, returned that second M18X R2 due to wanting to up the system and after return changed my mind to wait another bit... so for mean time got another MSI laptop GT683R, and since Ive raided my same Vertex4 ssds in to that Ive been running that setup for months, benchmarked speeds did hit approx 1TB/s so its all supersio fine with SSDs, super snappy and smooth, absolutely zero fails since, now my third bargain M18X R2 is on the doorstep tuesday and I will try once more, I doubt DELL deliberately would supply every brand new M18X R2 with faulty sata cable??? Or Would they???? Its been 4 months since my last M18X R2 so if it will happen same again next week, I dunno what Im'a gonna do think or say ...

 

That is weird. My vertex 4 256's in raid 0 just worked out of the box, but where i did have a problem was with the R1 board where no matter what i did, port 0 would drop in speed then drop off the face of the map completely. And I would have to hope it might boot up the next 30 times. I was told at least 5 times it was my ssds, but yet they worked fine and dandy on the first R1 board I had. Could be something to do with the controller, but that is a very big speculation. But what i do get now is....No trim under windows 8.

So let me know. I may just wipe mine at that point and go through it with you, just for the heck of it.

 

Alright man, I will!

Yea later I just set up as individual drives on my vertex and sometimes IRST utility in windows would report 3GBs speed even tho they were installed in SATA 6GBs ports and sometimes did reported properly both at 6GBs speeds but if I run benchmarks it would perfom as poor as would SATA2 port would... no explanation... I however tried only with stock bios I had with stock IRST OROM, I dont know if that can have any impact if I up the ROM. Im planing on jumping the gun with blind flash from A08/A09 whatever it comes with down to A03 with newest IRST OROM and go from there if it fails same way on stock BIOS... getting it not to work after everything it gets me feel I keep buying faulty M18X R2s I hope thats not going to happen!

 

I wouldn't be surprised if they took parts from returns and used them, after testing them, but I don't think they'd deliberately give you faulty hardware.

Now, whether or not that hardware is durable and lasts, that's another question. The problem I'm experiencing could be as simple as the cable, or as bad as the motherboard. If it is the motherboard, I'm going to be pissed. Not because I'd have to get it replaced, but just the fact that I spent a ton of money on this computer and the components inside are failing after a couple weeks is ridiculous. Given, I could have bent the SATA cable or something, but I was extremely careful - extremely - when removing the drives. I can honestly say it's unlikely I did this. I've worked with computers before and never had this issue.

But since this has happened to a dozen other members, it seems quite common. I'm praying and hoping it's only this damn cable.

 

^^ exactly my boat, I just one expensive son of a gun that works, that money is being paid towards it with an impression of one of a kind powerhouse to be worth it, but if it is going to be the exact same issue I may reconsider it otherwise

 

I bet you didn't try to raid 0 two regular drives?

 

You mean HDD's? No, I don't own two HDD's.

 

Your in the USA. Easy enough for you to grab a used drive for dirt cheap. Or even borrow one. Just so you know for yourself. You can even go buy from the store, and watch it fail, then go take it back. This is just so you can have a clear mind going into this new cable or machine.

 

That's true, I could go to the store and pick one up for about $75 - $100, but it isn't worth it for a test - I'm probably never going to use the HDD if I did buy one. I've asked for a replacement laptop altogether. I'm experiencing more issues than this now. I think my machine is crapping out on me. I've already got dead pixels on the screen, and this is my third week of owning it. And I'm also experiencing random freezes/shutdowns, and weird noises when the fans turn on as if something is loose. It's still within the return period, so I'm going to ask for a replacement. I don't want a refund, I come to love the M18x (in general). But not the one I have now, unfortunately.

I did order a SATA Interposer Cable though, so I'll have a spare if they replace my system.

Edit: I appreciate everyone's help, really, thank you.

 

I havent tried two HDDs in RAID0 but Im going to do that, have few of 500GB HDDs here... but if it will fail on my SSDs it will most likely fail on HDDs too

 

Hey! we are the try it now group and speculate later (When at all possible):thumbsup:
wWe try to find fixes for the next person crossing this bridge...If there is one.

 

Let's find out. If it works, it might be a mind changer. If it doesn't it will confirm what you suspect. But, the really cool thing is that you will know for sure. Being right about an assumption is not all that special, but knowing by doing is downright awesome.

Amen to that one! Why speculate about something when you have the ability... just do it.

 

Alright, my M18X is o the way for delivery today, so test results will be up soon today after I get it in. Stay tuned!

 

Turns out they don't offer this unless your system has had several repairs first... shame.

@Ultra, hope to hear some feedback from your tests soon.

 

just return it as of lts take youre not happy with the product and have changed your mind, they have to buy that.

Im running tests on it right now, first time got error during installation in windows setup at the last step where completing the installation, after I thought it was because poor quality 32bit media I had, retried with freshly burnt 64x win 7 media and the same happened, took few screenshots... here is one, other exact same LOL

http://i48.tinypic.com/2qn7hg2.jpg

however RAID volume did not fail in IRST OROM bios menu as I can see every time restarting machine its still normal status and yada yada

BIOS stock A08 with all stock settings, and IRST OROM is stock 11.xx.xx.xx for A08 Bios

2 x 500GB 5k RPM HDDs Port0 and Port1


no joy, 3 attempts 3 failures with same error you see attached in screen using HDDs, HDDs are perfectly fine I did trough tests on them before and low level formatted with zero bads so unless they failed now cant think otherwise. I will remove one drive will see if windows will complete installation at all from the same media

 

The problem is that he cannot order another system with 680M SLI right now in the US. So, unless he wants to downgrade to 7970M CF or do without, repair is the better option.

Did you use the legacy boot options, or still have that cotton-picking UEFI and Safe Boot crap enabled? Looking at the error message in the screen shot, I would say that your BIOS configuration may be the impediment if you are not using the legacy options. Many have tried and failed to set up RAID0 with UEFI and Safe Boot enabled.

 

I see his problem, 680m SLI is globally unavailable for weeks from Alienware, hence I got CFX and it was a bargain for 1yearAccidentlDamage/3630qm/6gb/7970cfx/750GB 7krpm/intelWlan/2100euros delivered

I have checked everything before I poped the back panel, Legacy Boot / SecureBoot Disabled , these were the settings I had and kept there prior putting two HDDs in, weird thing is I took out 1 HDD and tried installation from single drive, it would ask me to load HDD drives as no HDD were detected! BIOS sees the drive, IRST OROM sees the drive, Windows setup doesnt see the drive, this test drive was working perfectly in other 5 test machines, only this time it behaves weird. Weird because I put back the drive that I have removed, and took out the dive that couldnt be seen trought windows setup wizard, no more HDD driver to be asked, windows sees the drive. Installation is half way there and will see if it will pass on single drive all same settings from the first time... maybe it was becuse of my weird HDD it failed like that?


UPDATE:

it sucsessfully finished installation with all same BIOS settings on the other HDD where it would have failed in RAID before, so I take its my second HDD is not RAID friendly, there different brand but same speeds and buffer and capacity... totally weird

SSD RAID time tonight

 

I've decided to return the system. By the time my refund comes, the 680M's will hopefully be available again. I'm planning on ordering a system with SSD's or HDD's already installed in RAID to avoid these issues. The dead pixels though, they're quite annoying... Hope for the best on round 2!

Edit: Oh, and hopefully the "RAID" & "SLI" issues will be resolved by then too. No idea what the deal is with that. They wouldn't let us order RAID SSD's and 680M's at the time I was ordering, so I got the stock HDD. It's just weird.

 

RAID SSDs will cost you a leg and arm if you should know, and by the time you get around buying fresh M18X it will probably come with 680MX so thats all even better, im backing up my SSD RAID volume and going to jump the gun with M18X R2 plus SSDs RAID0 will see how it goes.

I have had to remove and replace HDD flex cable from the motherboard socket while replacing HDDs in my todays earlier tests so I have noticed the ribbon is somewhat different from ones I had before in my earlier M18X R2's , I hope for the best result!

And I wish you all the best of luck with your quest man.

 

Good idea J.Dre...I never thought about reordering it with there SSD's but I would have to save up a few months to be able to add another $1000 to a system that already breaking my bank, I'm trying to save up for a $60k car for middle of year too...I want to test out some electrics but man they cost a lot

 

Yeah, I realize they are pricey, I may just get RAID HDD's and an mSata Caching SSD instead. But the SSD's offered by Dell are $250 each, like the 840 Pro's I have now from Amazon. If I'm able to sell mine to someone, it will make up the cost (minus the final value fee on eBay). Thank you for the luck, I need it.

I'll still be here awaiting to see your results!

Good luck with that. I'd much rather have a nice car than this laptop, but hey - you have to work with what you got. You may qualify for Dell Preferred Account as I did. I paid off about 75% of the system up front, and financed the rest at a low monthly cost ($30~). It'll help boost credit, it's interest free for 12 months, and it'll give you some leniency when purchasing a laptop of this value - short term. You can pay it off whenever you want as well.

 

idk if im just retarded but ive been trying to install my 2 new vertex 4 512GB ssd into my m18xr2 with A9 bios. i set the drives to raid 0 and am currently having trouble installing windows 7. sometimes it installs and works fine but then upon removing install CD and restarting the computer disk 0 reads as "error occured" and its unable to boot up...and upon trying to reformat and start over, the system now hangs at either the "installing updates" or "completing installation" part of the windows 7 installation process. i made sure to create a partition from the "unallocated space" and i got 2 partitions, one "system" 100mb and the other "primary" 953GB. upon trying to install win 7 on "primary" it will either complete but upon restart have the first problem or just flat out fail to install and hang "installing updates" or "completing installation" as mentioned above...im totally out of ideas as of right now please help! ive spent literally all day trying to figure this out! ive checked both sata3 connections and nothing seems to be wrong...maybe just got a defective drive?


EDIT: ok so i was able to get windows with the help of Mr. Fox's "HOW TO: SATA III-SSD-RAID0-Windows Installation: Questions, Troubleshooting Thread". didn't see it before and fixed all of the above EXCEPT i still have disk 0 showing "error occured" during startup on the RAID screen...but windows seems to boot up fine.

 

Well if thats only how much it costs then its definitely worth it, but raiding 3xSSDs is rather waste of money and performance, because, only two SSDs will be in SATA3 ports and other one will be in SATA2 port thus commanding other two SSDs perform at half speed so its like 75% performance having 3 SSDs RAID'ed vs. 2 x SSDs RAIDED where you get up to 1 TB/s bandwidth. otherwise with 3 SSDs you will only gain tiny bit of extra storage for alot of money and speed would max out tops at ~750MB/s ... if you get me what Im saying.

Surprisingly my Vertex4 in RAID0 works flawlesly from first shot, ran some benchmarks and topped out ~ 960MB/s very satisfied with the results

Installed 32GB RAM from crucial and something weird began to happen...

Installed 2 x 8GB 1600Mhz dims under the keyboard, posted to BIOS fine, identified RAM all ok

Installed 2 x 8GB 1600MHz dims at the bottom of the laptop, after pressing power on button, system would light up for 3 seconds ,screens stays dark black without any background backlighit and then system powers down itself

Removed these last two dimms, system power up just fine.

Installed one dim at the bottom, same power off after 3 seconds

swapped that one bottom dimm with another, system lit up, and after some time no screen output but 5 beeps, then 5 beeps again, and again , and again and so on untill I powered it off. Removed the bottom dims, and reinstalled both dims once again in the bottom, system powered up fine, BIOS identified RAM and shows total 32GB ok.

Booted to system, and then ATI driver crashed several times in the row, wasnt crashing before so soon prior upgrading RAM... weird. Powered on today and hasnt crashed yet still with all 32GB ram... Driver version 12.11 beta7

However I dont know if this is normal, but not doing any activity just web browsing and so on minor things, I pop the back panel and see the SSD temperature by hand its pretty hot. Not giving any trouble or error but its getting hot. I can feel the heat trough the top of the palmrest hence I decided to check under the back panel... Any ideas on this??

 

Did you "create" a partition to install to during the initial setup? - normally, when the Windows installer is asking where to install to, you would see any partitions on the drive listed. On a clean install, it's advisable to simply delete all existing partitions that you might see untill you have just one large unallocated space. Simply install to that space without creating any partitions and Windows setup will do the rest and create the required partitions for system and OS.

So, you could try reinstalling via disc, delete all partitions you see and install to the unallocated space without doing anything else. If that fails, the other thing to try might be to try installing the OS to just one SSD without a raid array and once that is done, you can create a new raid 0 association between the two drives and extend the volume to include the free space on the second drive.

 

Sweet! I knew you could do it. It seems the original equipment SATA interposer has a tendency of not working as well as the replacements they send out under warranty. I'm not sure why that is, unless they are mishandled by the people assembling them, or they have a bin of bad ones on the shelf at the factory in China. I guess we will never really know the answer to that question.

On the systems you returned, you never replaced the SATA interposer, just simply returned the machine? Is that correct?

It seems that the SO-DIMM slots can sometimes be persnickety about memory. I think they might be touchy and if you don't hold your mouth in just the right position may not be properly seated.

My SSD drives get pretty warm, too. Doesn't seem to be an issue, so I stopped thinking about it. I have a 9.5mm Momentus XT sandwiched between the two OCZ SSD, so I suspect that is contributing to that warm feeling. They have that touchy feeling thing going on.

 

Thanx Mr.Fox


Yea there is some mystery we may never find out about it...

I have also tried sandwiching 3 x 9.5mm drives and its tight fit and its little harder to slide over the bottom panel but its doable alright... only thing is that its truly tight fit and the HDD in between the SSD's (my SSDs are standard size and not 7mm) has very little space between the breather hole and SSD case, well I have measured with feeler gauge and its just under 1mm gap but it may be sufficient for the HDD to operate perfectly fine in there...

I was on stock A08 bios and had my RAID0 volume created while on 11.00.xxxxx IRST OROM, right after massive help of SVL7 flashing bios to unlocked A03 with latest 11.6.XXX IRST I got ErrorOccured(0) on one of the SSDs, and I thought "NOT AGAIN"... after laptop crashed when I attempted run of AS SSD benchmark!!! But system would continue to boot every time after reboot but would not be able to benchmark with AS SSD tool etc and performance would be very poor. so I thought I will up to A09 unlocked bios, and so I did and even tho ERROR still shown up in pre-boot screen benchmarks were running perfectly high speeds on SSD RAID and there was no problem whatsoever since! (3 x knock on the wood) So I decided to re-create RAID array from scratch and reinstall whole OS, and since its all flawlessly running!
And I ran tests on RAM today with zero fails... got to be one of these times when no mater how well you install RAM sticks its still wrongly installed ...

Yea previous M18Xs went home because of many other reasons, but this time my new M18X R2 appear to be a very high quality build! No gaps anywhere in the casing where plastic mets metal frame, no wavy screen reflections as before, no problem with SSD RAID0 especially and it also came with Windows8 keyboard (new type start menu button) I will pull the pic later. Also previous units had this low frequency flickering in both screens left top corners to half way the middle of the screen, and it is absent in this one. that means my m18X was built by engineer which knew what he was doing.

 

Your SSD's are fine, its the HDD/SSD storage flex cable problem

I have been explaining how I got around it (this was my third M18X R2 and the first one not to fail on this matter)

read the full thread here

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/702650-raid-failure.html

 

I'm glad you were able to solve the problem, Ultra. It seems this is a very common issue for the m18x r2, at least lately.

 

tried to find the storage thread for the M18x, couldn't find it so just posting here:

I ordered a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB, but instead I got a regular 840 with 250GB. Now I know there are some important differences, especially when it comes to sequential write speeds, but I mainly use my M18x for gaming, microsoft office, and internet browsing. Postage costs here are high and it would cost me around 15 euro to send it back for a refund, apart from the waiting times and so on. Should I just go ahead and install this one, while obtaining a partial refund on the price difference? Am a bit annoyed, have been waiting for this SSD for a week or so

 

interesting...your problem seems similar to mine except I have yet to see my raid volume marked as "failed" all im experiencing is a drive 0 "error occured" on 1 specific drive and when i swapped the 2 ssd around the same drive that was once drive 0 and is now drive 1 still gives me same thing, drive 1 "error occured". my other ssd works fine. my HDDs work fine in raid 0 with same cable so i dont think its a cable problem...idk i sent in the ssd i thought to be defective back to newegg hopefully replacement works out for me. when i got the errors i was still able to boot into windows for about 3 or 4 times then the system would just not boot anymore. currently working fine with just 1 vertex 4 512. will continue to update as new problems / solutions arise. thanks for all the replies!

UPDATE: ok so idk anymore maybe it is a bad connector i just dont know anymore apparently the single ssd that was working is now showing same werid boot thing. sometimes it will boot normally but sometimes upon restarting, instead of showing the "starting windows" animation it shows the "loading files" screen as if installing windows from the CD. (the cd isnt in the cmoputer) and then it would bring me to an error screen saying that windows was unable to start and promptly begins "checking for errors" which goes on indefinately. upon disconnecting the SSD from connector 0 and placing on connector 1 it boots normally again but once again begins to act funky when restarting computer and eventually shows same "loading files" and then error screen. im beginning to question whether the "faulty" ssd was really faulty or was it something else. currently moved "working" ssd back to connector 0 and i have connected the ssd i thought was "faulty" to connector 1 and am attempting to create raid 0 array using RST. so far its migrating data and will probably take a really long time judging on how slow its going right now. will continue to update as problems arise lol

[SOLVED] +1 UltraGSM so turns out you were right, it was the flex cable that was making the drives fail. strange how they work fine with regualr HDDs but dont like the Vertex 4s. got a replacement cable from dell and updated to bios A09 Unlocked from svl7 and everything seems to be running fine thus far. Thanks for all the help everyone!

 

I would return it. The 840 Pro is a lot faster.

 

Use Google with the right prefix and it's easy to find anything on our forums using specific key words. This was on page 9 with the last post on Dec 9.

If you want to see only search results for posts found in the M18x subforum use site:forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x

To search all of NBR Forums use site:forum.notebookreview.com

 

thanks Mr. Fox - I was aware of that feature and I did use it, using "Alienware M18x drive" but the thread I was looking for didn't show up... anyway:

the seller claimed he had advertised it as a regular 840, but it was listed as having 256gb capacity, albeit not having the wording "pro", so I automatically assumed it was a Pro drive since the regular one has 250gb capacity. he's unwilling to give out a refund, and he also told me the pricing was that of a regular one not a Pro - so that was a bit of negligence on my part. seems like the Pro costs around 40-50 euro more, so I'm thinking of just installing this one and setting aside those 50 euro for a headset. this is my first SSD and it's slightly better than its predecessor (830) - so might as well go for this one. listed it for sale on a national website with a slight upmark to the price just in case, if I get lucky then I'll get the Pro.

wish I'd bought your pair of 830's J.Dre! by any chance - do you still have one of the 840 Pro's for sale? if so, message me. thanks

 

Glad you got around the problem man!

Ive encountered the SSD RAID failure problem when downgraded from stock A08 to svl7 A03 bios right after second reboot SSD ARRAY ErrorOccured(0) message popped up in IRST OROM screen, thus my RAID0 SSD array worked on A08 stock bios perfectly fine for over 48h not a single failure and etc but just after flashing the unlocked A03 bios. I have straght away upped to A09 svl7 bios, and recreated SSD RAID array and problems were gone! There are two things for Vertex4 or any other sophisticated SSD RAID to work perfect, its FLEX CABLE CONNECTOR + A09 BIOS is a must! MY hard 3 x M18X R2 experience

 

We have seen this quite a few times, now. Apparently, it is either mishandling during assembly or a bad batch of SATA interposer cables they are using at the Compal factory. I don't know of any other explanation. It seems the replacement part fixes it right up every time. Glad you got it fixed, bro. That's what J.Dre needed for his M18x also.

 

Before I return my 840, I wanted to test one final thing - would you guys recommend that I try installing the OS onto my SSD from my AW M11x R1? Basically the problem on my M18x was that I couldn't get it to install Win7 on my SSD, with a whole load of problems, so I thought of trying this alternative route. I should just copy the files from my recovery disk onto a bootable USB stick and business as usual, right?

 

Hey Everyone,
I have an Alienware m18x r1,intel i7 2820,16gb ram,dual nvidia 460m graphics

During Power Up, I get this message,

"Atheros pcie ethernet controller v2.0.2.6(09/28/2010)
check cable connection!
PXE-MOF:exiting intel pxe rom.
no bootable device-insert boot disk and press any key."

I also notice that both Sata Hard Drives 1 and 2 are randomly labeled [Not Detected].

Things I've Tried--

1. I switched there spots in the caddy and only the top showed while bottom remained [Not Detected]. <---Vice versa

2. I used over 5 different hard drives to make sure that my current ones weren't going bad, the same issue applied to all.

3. I Made sure that all of the cables were connected

4. I updated firmware and the bios.

5. I tried switching it from raid to the other Sata operation choices and nothing happened.

Any kind,form,idea, or sort of help would be much appreciated! :hi2: :thumbsup:

 

@lilayto - welcome to the Community. I moved your post into the thread relating to your problem.

Probably the SATA interposer cable needs to be replaced. Call 1-800-ALIENWARE and have tech support send a replacement to you.

 

Thanks for the advice, I just called and it will be here soon. It's funny how this problem decides to pop up when I get ready to choose my classes online It must be a sign!

 

It's just one of those things we cannot explain, but the solution is simple. It is just a shame that the factory seems to have a batch of defective SATA interposer cables. That inexpensive little part really sours the new M18x experience for a fair number of customers, even though it is a simple fix. Be careful handling the clamp that attaches it to the motherboard. See below...

 

Ok so after a few days without errors my system showed that drive 0 failed again even with the new interposer cable and bios v A09 unlocked. I initially was still able to boot into windows and simply marked the drive as normal with RST but just now it won't boot anymore and only flashes a bsod for about a split second and restarts...windows repair can't fix the problem either and I really don't want to reformat AGAIN for the 34th time in 6 days idk wats going on anymore I'm pretty desperate and out of ideas at this point any help would be appreciated

Update: did system restore was able to boot up and everything seems normal again for now anyways...not sure how long this is going to last, will update if/when system crashes again. Seems whenever I get relaxed and everything settles down my computer trools me out of nowhere.

Update: got another weird boot up error, this time It didn't show any "error occured" on any of the drives but once again windows wasn't able to boot up. Stuck at the windows icon "starting windows" screen and had to restart computer. Upon reboot it took me straight to the windows repair screen and It couldn't find any solutions. Rebooted again and chose start windows normally and it booted up fine. Problem seems to be sporadic and completely random. Sometimes the system boots up fine and sometimes it won't or will go directly to "loading windows files" and then to windows repair. Idk if anyone else is experiencing this phenomenon but this is really weird

 

Just to make sure I am understanding correctly ... Are you saying that I can install three 1TB drives in my M18X ? (I currently have two drives.) ... If so, where does the third drive go? Thanks.