SSD Compatibility Issue

To those with Intel 510 Series SSDs:

My SSD and HDD conflict with each other. When the HDD is installed it slows the SSD boot time from 10-12s to about 25-30s and the HDD makes a clicking sound during boot up even though it shouldn't be doing anything. Intel RST shows the SSD working at 6GB/s until after a reboot when it shows it working at 3GB/s.

When the SSD is installed by itself, boot times are very fast (10-12s) and the drive stays operating at 6GB/s, even after rebooting. It's quite annoying.

My HDD is a 750GB WD Scorpio Black 7200rpm.

Does anyone have an Intel 510 Series SSD and a regular HDD that work together without any problems with speeds or boot times?

If so, what model is your HDD?

Thanks for any help.

 

Not the HDD's fault.

Switch the HDD and SSD (in the physical bays).

Or, double check your BIOS settings.

Good luck.

 

Already tried switching bays. Set ACHI mode in BIOS before installing Windows on the SSD. what else should I look at in the BIOS?
Thanks.

 

Seems your BIOS/chipset refuses to run SATA III if a SATA II HDD is also connected to an internal port.
Are you on the latest BIOS?

 

Yeh, I'm on A03 from the Dell site. It's the latest BIOS.

 

I'm not sure if this is the problem:

Intel® 6 Series Chipset
Chipset circuit design issue identified

"On January 31, 2011, Intel disclosed a design issue with a support chip, Intel® 6 Series Express Chipset, indicating that under normal operation the chipset could experience an issue with integrated SATA ports 2–5 that may result in these SATA ports experiencing a functional issue over time. Systems with only integrated SATA ports 0 and 1 enabled are not susceptible to this issue."

.
.
.
"If you have an Intel® 6 Series Express Chipset based system and you are experiencing an issue with SATA devices, such as hard disk drives, solid-state drives, DVD players, or Blue-ray* players, on ports 2–5, please contact your point of purchase to determine next steps."
.

"To determine if you have one of the impacted Intel® 6 Series chipsets in your system, follow these steps."

Intel® 6 Series Chipset — Chipset circuit design issue identified

Cheers
3Fees

 

Dell hadn't released any notebooks to the market yet with the bad chipset, they were about to when the recall occurred. And both HDD bays on the M18x (I'm assuming this is in the OP's sig system that the problem is occurring) are 6Gbps. So I don't think that is the problem.

This is however an odd issue. The only thing that comes to mind is if there is something on the HDD that is trying to run on boot-up that is causing the slow-down. Perhaps user profiles or a program?

 

I'd check it anyway to be sure,,,another idea is chipset software.

"************************************************************
* 9F. INSTALLING THE Windows 7* INF FILES AFTER
* OS INSTALLATION
************************************************************
Some Intel(R) chipset platforms already are supported by
Windows 7* so it may not be necessary to use the INF
files provided by this software to update Windows 7*.

The following steps describe the installation process of
the Windows 7* INF files. You may need to repeat these
steps to update all Intel(R) chipset devices not supported
by Windows 7*."

Latest Chipset software from Intel :

File name:infinst_autol.exe
Version:9.2.0.1030
Date:04/21/2011
Status:Latest
Size:2.75 MB
Language:Multi language


http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?ProductID=816&DwnldID=20019&lang=eng&iid=dc_rss

You can check the version of the inf file here to see if the latest is installed:

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect


Cheers
3Fees

"Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth." ,
Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes - Wikiquote

 

Another Idea:

Try a different SATA II HDD(Seagate,Toshiba ,ect) and see if problem is gone, get a loaner from a friend or a Computer Shop near you ...

Cheers
3Fees


"Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth." ,
Sherlock Holmes

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes

Another Idea:

Is the SSD firmware the latest ????