Asus K50ID: SSD installation problem

I have a problem with installing SSD Sandisk Extreme 120GB in my Asus K50ID notebook. I replaced the (working) hard disk drive with the SSD. The SSD is recognized in BIOS (I have the latest version 217 of the BIOS).

When I run Windows 7 64bit installation from the DVD, the setup program cannot find the SSD. I can load the chipset driver (V5.1.2600.171), the SSD is found, but Windows still refuses to install on it with the message "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."

When I boot with Ubuntu 12.04 Linux DVD, it can't recognize the SSD at all (GParted, Disk Utility). System log reports this error every 10-20 seconds:

Code:

Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.828017] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.848994] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.848997] ata1: EH complete
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.849499] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x1990000 action 0xe frozen
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.849501] ata1: irq_stat 0x00400000, PHY RDY changed
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.849505] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg 10B8B Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns }
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.849509] ata1: hard resetting link

This is all with AHCI ("Advanced") mode set up in BIOS. When I set the "Compatible" mode, the story is the same with Linux, and the drive is not found by Windows installer at all.

I should also mention that both the Windows and Linux install programs behave somewhat weird, in sense that the notebook sometimes slows down for no obvious reason (mouse pointer freezes for a while or is "slow").

The SSD works fine in another computer.
The notebook works fine with a hard disk inside (it has Win7 installed, Ubuntu boot DVD recognizes the HDD and its partitions).

Thanks for your help!

 

Reminds me of the stuff that used to happen with the first raid-controllers. What happened then was that the extra controller board occupied one master-slave channel on the mainboard. And that worked fine in theory, until the resources used for the raid-controller interfered with other devices. Then the device itself scheduled interrupt requests for dma. And then any device connected to the dma-controller would have integrity faults. At random.

Best guess: the controller detects the ssd as an external device, and configures it for udma/pata. The disk's controller isn't backwards-compatible, so it's suddenly not accessible. So it's not an error with the kernel, it just responds to the initialisation routine the controller on the mainboard is launching.

Next best guess is that this isn't actually a bios setting, but a firmware quirk with the extra compatibility controller for udma/ata. And that asus is going to be amazingly unhelpful when it comes to solving it. Honestly, I don't know if this could be possible to fix. I'd look into a hard-drive controller driver specifically for that chipset before giving up, though. May be that something like that is available, that will rescue a win-boot at least.

But in a perfect world, Asus would have been able to create a firmware update that would put the ssd on the sata-controller right away, obviously..

 

What is the exact model number of your Sandisk SSD? Have you looked for firmware updates (and BIOS updates)?

It looks like a controller incompatibility; these things are not undheard of, unfortunately.

Based on this, the controller can never do the handshake to fully initialize:

Would you post the rest of the log file, say another 20 lines or so, or can you say if the link just keeps going up and down and saying DRDY and if there is a failed command listed?

 

Thanks for your replies!

Here are a few more chunks of the log file that I have saved (the laptop is not near me right now, I can post the entire file later when I get home):

Code:

Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    4.340022] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    4.350870] ata1.00: ATA-8: SanDisk SDSSDX120GG25, R112, max UDMA/133
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    4.350873] ata1.00: 234441648 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32)
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    4.361184] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    4.361346] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      SanDisk SDSSDX12 R112 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    4.361497] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 234441648 512-byte logical blocks: (120 GB/111 GiB)
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    4.361517] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x1990000 action 0xe frozen
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    4.361520] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    4.361523] ata1: irq_stat 0x00400000, PHY RDY changed
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    4.361527] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg 10B8B Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns }
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    4.361532] ata1: hard resetting link

Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.105068] ata1: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.105072] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x1990000 action 0xe frozen
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.105074] ata1: irq_stat 0x00400000, PHY RDY changed
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.105078] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg 10B8B Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns }
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.105081] ata1: hard resetting link

Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.828017] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.848994] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.848997] ata1: EH complete
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.849499] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x1990000 action 0xe frozen
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.849501] ata1: irq_stat 0x00400000, PHY RDY changed
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.849505] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg 10B8B Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns }
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.849509] ata1: hard resetting link
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    5.849527]  sda: sda1
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    6.572102] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    6.593441] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    6.593444] ata1: EH complete

Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.304040] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 10 SControl 310)
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.304048] ata1.00: link offline, clearing class 1 to NONE
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.425210] ata1: hard resetting link
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.744043] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.765190] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.765193] ata1: EH complete
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.765367] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x1810000 action 0xe frozen
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.765369] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x00400000, PHY RDY changed
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.765372] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg LinkSeq TrStaTrns }
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.765375] ata1.00: failed command: IDENTIFY DEVICE
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.765380] ata1.00: cmd ec/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 tag 0 pio 512 in
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.765382]          res 50/00:00:af:4b:f9/00:00:0d:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.765384] ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
Jul 29 00:38:55 ubuntu kernel: [    8.765387] ata1: hard resetting link

You can see the exact model name of the SSD up there: SanDisk Extreme 120GB SDSSDX120GG25.
There is a newer firmware version for it, I will try it as well, though they do not mention fixing such issues in the release notes.

 

I did a firmware upgrade for the SSD, but it is pretty much the same. Actually, it is worse because now Ubuntu takes much longer to boot from the DVD.

An interesting thing happened when I tried to boot the laptop from the SSD, on which I have previously installed Windows (using another computer). It did recognize the Windows Boot Manager on the SSD, and it failed to start. The boot manager reported this error: "An error occurred while attempting to read boot config data".
(Note: the Windows was installed with drive in IDE mode, as the other computer is pretty old and doesn't support AHCI. The laptop reports this error only when set in AHCI mode; it hangs when set in IDE).

I attached the entire Ubuntu log file.
It is sad that the I can use the SSD in a 7 year old computer, and not in my 2 year old laptop

 

Did anyone ever solve this one?
I have the exact same problem with the exact same laptop and exact same ssd

 

Instaling w7 64 bits now on a ssd intel 120Gb. Same problem at first.
Did a usb bootable stick, put in compatible mode in bios adn disabled cd drive.
Give it a try.
Installing process seems a little slow but i 'll see