Problem with SSD and Cooldrive IDE-Sata Adapter

After reading how Liam had success with Cooldrive IDE-Sata adapter, I went ahead and purchased one along with a 32 GB OCZ Onyx SSD for my CF-29 MK3. It was a tight fit in the caddy, but I managed to get it in and boot into Windows with amazing speed. Then the problems started - the hard drive froze up (green light stayed on) followed by a BSD. Reboot indicated a "disk read error." So I pulled out the SSD, cloned it again, and booted into safe mode. Again the SSD was recognized (even in device manager), but when I rebooted I got a a black screen with unable to boot due to Hal.dll error. So I did a clean install with XP, but before I could load the OS I got another BSD, this time with ntdll.dll error. I also tried restoring windows from a hidden partition but got BSD'd as well. This is not good - any ideas of how to fix it?

I know Liam had success with the cooldrive adapter (search the FAQ thread) and a CF-29 MK3, but he was using a regular disk not a SSD.

 

Try removing the jumper

 

Did that already

 

You are NOT going to be able to Ghost or restore to this setup, as the actual HDD is SATA and your existing version of Windoze does NOT have SATA support installed. You have to do a new install of Windoze from either an XP SP2 CDROM with the SATA Driver Pack slipstreamed into it or an XP SP3 CDROM (Or Vista/Win7, as they have native support for SATA).

If your SSD or SATA adapter came with a driver CDROM you may be able to install them at the "Press F6 to install a third party SCSI or RAID Driver" prompt in the XP Install process; Futureproof Tim has a good primer on the process HERE:

Future proof Tim’s F6 driver guide

Pay careful attention to his VERY BRIEF section on SlipStreaming; he gives links to a good primer and good source for the Driver packs.

Don't forget to eMail Tim and thank him for his help; and if you can, try to spare a few shekels to help him keep the site up for others.

mnem
*History-Proof*

 

Sorry, only skimmed your post, clean install is the way to go.

 

Well I borrowed a friend copy of Windows 7, formatted my HDD, and installed it just fine. Then I pulled out the HDD, put in the SSD, and got the following error message: Windows could not format a partition on disk 0. The error occurred while preparing the partition selected for installation. Error Code 0x80070057.

My only conclusion is that there is a hardware problem preventing the Cooldrives SATA adapter from being used with OCZ Onyx drives on the CF-29 Mk3. Does anyone else have any experience with using SATA drives with the Cooldrives adapter on Toughbooks?

 

This was actually the first error code: 0x80300002 (unfortunately I did not write down the words which went with it.) The error code 80070057 came after rebooting. At this point, the SSD is visible in BIOS but not to Windows 7 - thus installation is not possible.

 

I had the same problem as you when I did this mod and the problem was too much pressure on the Cooldrive IDE-Sata adapter. How I found this out was I installed the harddrive without the heater/foam insert....yes the drive was installed loose in the caddy and it booted up with no problems at all. Since I did not want to cut up my 29 caddy foam I used one from another (m34) to put in mine. It runs great now but it did take me 2 days to figure it out.

 

Tried installing without the plastic wrapper, heater, foam, etc and that did not work either. Barring a bad drive (not likely, since it works fine on my desktop with a genuine SATA connection,) I think there is some sort of hardware incompatibility between the OCZ Onyx SATA SSD, the Cooldrive Adapter, and/or the CF-29 MK3.

The question now is does this incompatibility apply to all SATA SSD's, or just this particular model from OCZ. In the meantime, unless I can get a SATA SSD to work with the Cooldrive Adapter, my only choice is a PATA SSD at a much higher cost!

 

If you are running Windows XP, believe XP needs the special driver to use a SATA drive (of any kind) as the Windows host media. I've tried SATA adapters with other TB models as the host drive and had that problem. Windows 7 and likely also Vista usually have SATA drivers built-in, but not XP.

 

When I installed my cooldrive I installed XP from the restore disk (MK5) and do not remember installing any extra drivers but I did not use SSD but the Samsung Spinpoint SATA drive.

 

What version of XP was on the Mk5 restore disks?

Maybe if it was SP2 or SP3, the right SATA driver is in the Service Pack. Then we can figure out which one.

 

I just checked my recovery disk MK5 and the one for the MK3 and they are both XP2
Model Number CF-29 MK3-XP2M-TSW
Model Number CF-29 MK5-XP2M-TSW
I would check with cooldrives to see if you can use a SSD with this.

 

I am having the same problem using a 80gb intel x-25-m with a sata to ide adapter. Xp loaded fine on it then the next day I get the blue screen. After that it would only load into safe mode. I tried to update to win7, and once it is finished loading then I get the blue screen again. I take the drive out of the toughbook, load the ssd into the my other compter a dell xps 1645 and the drive works fine. I think it may be an sata ide adaptor problem adaptor.
has anyone solved this problem yet?

 

did you read this post ?

 

Holy crap, I think I could read the CF-29 FAQ faster than reading these 2 pages....at least I would understand what they are talking about....I got lost reading the first 20 lines in that one :confused2:

 

For some reason I missed the SSD thread
Thanks for the link denrosten it was a very good read as the captain made mincemeat out of Les

I gave captinkid a rep for his contributions
I do understand what he is talking about and myself have (3) slc type ssd drives in use in my Toughbooks


Alex

 

Could also be another issue as well... we have converted a number of cf-29 hard drive from IDE to SATA and NOT ALL BOARDS work well even if they look almost exactly the same !

We have only found 1 reliable supplier for IDE SATA and the only difference between his and other suppliers , is one of the chips on the board is from a different manufacturer. But otherwise several suppliers sell what looks to be exactly the same adapter.

They may even work for couple of days fine, then decide to cause said issues, not sure why, even when we put the "bad" adapter in our HD cloning machine it's a much slower data transfer rate, then the "good" adapter.

My point is if cool drives has changed suppliers or if their supplier has changed the chips on their adapter, this could also be causing blue screen, freezing, etc...

 

Techtough could be on to something with his post. I have bought boards from 2 different ebay suppliers. I have a 32gb sandisk ssd in a cf29 using winxp that woirks great, no problems. I also have a 1tb sata drive in a cf29 that works fine. But then I have the one with the intel ssd drive that doesn't work(blue screen). And I also have a 120sata drive in a cf29 that is starting down the same crash path as the intel ssd machine. So who sells reliable board? Who has one that works and where did you buy the board?

 

I say swap the drives and adapters around. Maybe the one chip doesn't support certain drives. Since you already have several to mix and match. That way you may be able to narrow down the problem. Possibly post pics or chip / board numbers of the results.

Just a question. Is it possible the edge of the adapter is shorting out on the metal caddy?

 

Its not in a caddy. I honestly could not get it to safely fit in a caddy. I will try to swap around to see if anyhting changes.

 

JM20330 are the bad adaptors. Looks like the Tivo community was having problems with this issue as well List of SATA to PATA (IDE) adapters, please add yours - Page 3 - TiVo Community They have a list of controllers that work and those that don't.

 

and you have to install to the ssd not swap them out

 

Sorry for not being clear, yes I reinstall windows every time I swap the drive. But I was refering to swapping the adaptor.

 

I was having the same problem with my Samsung spinpoint 160GB SATA drive but I took all the foam out and I am using this now Silicone Case Cover for 2.5" SATA HDD Hard Disk Drive - eBay (item 250522730672 end time Oct-25-10 22:05:46 PDT) , problem solved

 

I just installed a Kingston SATA 128 GB SS HDD in my cf-29. I bought a 2nd caddy to use. I also used the CoolDrives SATA to IDE adapter. I used Ghost to copy the current HDD to the new drive. I have the drive set up with 2 partitions. One for the OS and one for data. I had to modify the caddy to in order to fit the HDD and the adapter (removed the master/slave jumper ofter the ghost). Boot time is much faster and the unit that normally ran for about 2 hours has now been on for 3 hours and the power meter says it still has 51% or 4.5 hours of battery left.

 

Check this out The SSD Review SSD Optimization Guide . They have a great guide that can cut your startup time even more . My CF-30 is between 27 - 33 seconds..

 

found this on amazon
Amazon.com: 2.5 inch SATA SSD or HDD Drive to IDE 44 Pin IDE Adapter: Electronics

i think this is the cheapest price yet

 

so your not using any foam just the caddy and the silicone cover, is it still shock proof and still tough?

 

Before I used the silicone cover all it took was a bump and I would get the hdd error. Never had a problem after I put the silicone cover in BUT since then I have put everything back to the way it was before because it runs just as good with the newer Samsung 160GB drives , 160GB is more than enough space for me.

 

so your not using the sata drive any more just the sammy pata?

 

That's right and it runs great