Series 9 Owners: Third party mSATA upgrades

I have a situation that may be kinda unique:

After restoring the image of mSATA (win 8) to my new SSD, everything is working fine... Only one problem:

When booting, if I try using a pin to boot, the computer almost freezes for a full minute while checking the pin, but works perfectly fine when I enter the password.

I found one post on some other forum where someone had a similar issue, but no solution to it.

One thing I really really had about Windows 8 is that it's really hard to search for something about it. 9/10 pages are how to fix X annoyance with windows 8. ._.

 

Clonezilla worked pretty well (and fast). I want to double check one thing.

Is it ok to delete the recovery partitions? I see three for some reason (500MB, 1 GB, and 21 GB)

I would do backups to an external drive., and I have the original msata drive now.

Thanks everyone for this thread

 

Excellent. Good job being so persistent!

And you're right, if you save the original mSATA away, there is no reason you cannot delete the Recovery partitions from the new SSD. But only delete SAMSUNG_REC (1GB) and SAMSUNG_REC2 (21GB) -- I wouldn't delete Windows RE tools (500MB).

Personally I would wait a few days, though, unless you need the space right away. If something gets messed up, you can still restore Windows to factory state in a few mins. F4 probably doesn't work (please confirm) but there is a trick here you can use to add it to your Windows boot menu. As long as those partitions are still there, of course.

Again good job there!

 

hahah - like I had a choice

The (new) usb stick I had may have been the issue. I'm not sure. I ended up bricking it today by accident. and used a new one for the clonezilla method.

Seriously, thanks for the help. Here goes wiping out those partitions.

 

I cloned and installed my new 256GB Crucial drive today thanks to the help in this thread. I have one follow up question, the answer must be in here, but I've missed it.

I now have 4 partitions on my new drive.

System - 100MB
Local Volume C: - 91.73GB
Local Volume - 4.283GB
Samsung_Rec - 23.12GB

and the left over unallocated space 119.2GB

Which partitions do I need and which can I grow with the additional space?

 

I assume that you have 4GB RAM, in which case the 4.283GB is the hibernation partition.

If you are putting the original mSATA SSD into safe storage then you won't need the recovery partition. I therefore suggest that you delete that partition and create a new partition of about 123GB. Then Windows and programs go on C: and all user files on D: I think this is the easiest option. Otherwise you also need to delete the hibernation partition so you can expand C: and then reinstall Intel Rapid Start so it will create a new hibernation partition.

John

 

You shouldn't have to reinstall Rapid Start (though it can be finicky). In easy settings turn off rapid start, then delete the partition in diskpart with override, repartition in computer management then reboot and turn rapid start back on in easy settings. It should rebuild the hibernation partition on its own at that point.

 

Intel Rpaid Start V2 is better behaved.

Anyway, thanks for pointing out that the hibernation partition creation is handled by Easy Settings.

John

 

I couldn't get easy settings (X3B, win 8) to create the hibernation partition or even show the rapid start option, and had to do it myself as per Intel's instructions.

 

This is only needed if running Window 7. If running Windows 8, I would recommend using the built-in hibernation features instead.

 

Have been out of the loop for a week or so, not quite sure some of the above is correct regarding "hibernation". Never seen a hibernation partition on a 9 series SSD or rapid start, this is all for little capacity SSD used as cache drives.

Re, what partitions are required, you don't actually need any if you put the boot files in the windows partition but a data/backup partition separate to windows is always the best approach.

 

For W7 machines, IRST is a worthwhile installation. It creates a RAM-sized partition that is used to reload the system very quickly from deep sleep. It is not necessary/recommended for W8 which has its own hibernation features built in (much improved from W7). The hibernation "partition" in windows is actually a ram-sized hidden file on c:\ (hiberfil.sys) which is worth disabling to reclaim space if you will use IRST, can't remember if it does that by default.

On your OEM SSD you should keep the F4 partition at least and make a backup of the restore if you are going to delete it.

 

TBH, unless you keep the same partitions and mbr the F4 (recovery partitions ) will not work anyway. "powercfg -h off" will disable and delete hiberfil/hibernation in Win 7/8 , personally I would never use it with a SSD as it's always going to waste as much space as the ram capacity that gets dumped to it.

 

For me, that loss of space on the SSD is an acceptable cost for the benefit of being able to get back to wherever I was when I shut the lid within a few seconds. Windows may boot relatively quickly from an SSD but starting programs and opening files takes time.

John

 

I would give S3 Sleep a try, Ram is about 20 times faster than a fast SSD and Hibernation is going to cause lots of wear on the SSD.

 

Sleep drains the battery. About 1% per hour, IIRC, details are in this thread. As for wear, writing 8GB / day (eg hibernating overnight and assuming that the whole file / partition is rewritten) = about 3TB / year.

The info for my Crucial m4 says the 256GB version can handle 72TB of writes so the drive will be replaced by something bigger (I'm watching closely for the arrival of the 480GB m500) long before the wear is likely to reach 20%.

John

 

Once a day is not going to have any significant impact, but many people close the lids 10-20 times a day, like wise in your case an extra few seconds start up time once a day

The only real use of S4 I can see is as a low battery catch net, there again depends how you set the power management options...personally I can put 8gb of HD to better use but each to their own.

 

That's where one can set IRST's timer to delay the transition from sleep to hibernation to avoid too many hibernations. I should also add that IRST updates the hibernation partition as needed to reflect the changes in the RAM contents so, unless a lot of programs have been closed / opened, the amount of disk writing is likely to be a lot less than the RAM size.

Anyway, each to their own. I am only stating what works for me.

John

 

Sure, the likes of us have our own favoured ways and are very unlikely to change

Side note, Win 8 has the most excellent task manager I have seen and I did uninstall some intel stuff as i could not see any use for it, some was IRST ...Intel have gone mad with the bloated software for the last couple of chipsets ,example, what's ME all about for end users !

 

I would note, for the benefit of others, that there are two IRSTs: (i) Intel Rapid Storage Technology (which provides management facilities for storage devices); and (ii) Intel Rapid Start Technology (which provides an improved sleep / hibernation / resume performance in notebooks with compatible hardware).

Some people have had high CPU utilisation caused by the presence / absence of the storage IRST.

John

 

Good point John

Although personally I have not seen "Rapid Start" installed to anything other than a PC with mechanical HDD with SSD Cache drive.

A variation of it obviously exists on earlier SSD Laptops as you talked about it, Still not convinced it should have been there in the first place, my understanding
is it just tries to emulate a quick access SSD !

No surprise really the way new PC's are loaded with all sorts of rubbish nowadays.

 

I think you are confusing IRST with ExpressCache: On previous Series 7 and some Series 5 models, a small on-board SSD (so-called iSSD, 8-24GB depending on model) is used along with ExpressCache software to cache the HDD -- similar to a Seagate Momentus hybrid drive, but software implemented. Although not as fast as a real SSD, it really does speed up general HDD use quite significantly.

What may have contributed to the confusion, is the fact that some of these models (but not all) also support Intel Rapid Start (the hibernation feature) and use that same iSSD to hold its hibernation partition. As John explained, IRST cannot be compared directly to classic Win7 hibernation as it's a different implementation. It was designed specifically to be used with SSDs, not with HDDs.

The post linked below attempts to define and clarify the various Fast This and Rapid That features included with samsung laptops.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/716489-fast-start-technology-how-works.html#post9171229

But generally I agree that too much bloat is included with new PCs.

 

Yes you are correct, It does seem to be specifically for SSD's not just Cache SSD's. Well over the years I've tried most of ram drive caches and tweaks etc and personally don't run any of them, Just a tight lean system with quick SSD/SSD's, no hibernation,swapfiles,prefetch,indexing etc etc and my systems are always lightning fast.
Personally I've not found apps and services grinding away in the background compliment anything else I want to do with the pc

Re your last comment, I had to find an old win98 laptop for a friend and I had forgotten how compact 98/winME was and people thought it bloated with it's system restore Well ...just the winsxs folder from later os's alone would not have fitted on the entire harddrive

 

@Jmarly: That's true. People always think of Windows as a succession going back to 1.0 or 2.0 or (if nothing else) 3.11a. But Win98 and Win98SE really were huge turning points because Microsoft finally made it look great, and work pretty well too -- despite the DOS underpinnings.

You'll sometimes see me rant about how 90% of modern software is bureaucracy: Layers upon layers upon layers, all in order to encapsulate the few lines of code that actually do useful work and isolate them from potential future changes. So we pay the price of having millions of lines of code wrapping this little function in dozens of levels of abstraction layers, so we won't have to change it in case we want to reuse it some day in some unforeseen environment. Edsger Dijkstra (and others) would roll over in their graves if they saw the extremes that their fundamentally good design principles have been taken to.

Anyways, that's how come we need 50GB disk space for an OS that could be squeezed into a few MB, if it were re-written without all that bureaucracy. (And no, of course I am not suggesting to re-write Windows in a pile of unstructured assembly language. I understand the reasons )

</rant>

 

Good post, I totally agree

 

Had a chance to test this out. I can confirm my clonezilla disk image retained F4 functionality on my X3B for SRS5 on W7. Your W8/SRS6 mileage may vary, UEFI/secure boot may be an issue.

 

WOW, that's the first time I've heard that!

Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing: You restored a Clonezilla image of your Recovery partition, and after restoring that Recovery partition, and with the disk to which you restored installed in the laptop, you were still able to boot Recovery with F4. Is that correctly understood?

Did you restore to a new disk or the original disk? If the original, was it wiped in between? Also, which version of Clonezilla?

Thanks a lot for sharing that information

Oh, and I have SRS5 as well. SRS6 began sometime fall 2012, maybe (probably) coinciding with Win8. I suppose the F4 link could be different between the two (maybe including a pointer to the Recovery Data partition, which is separate from the Recovery Software partition in SRS6).

 

I made a disk => image backup (with the July 2012 version of clonezilla) when my S9 arrived before it even booted into windows. I saved the files in a rar archive and moved them to my desktop for safekeeping. I then proceeded to perform my own custom W7 install wherein I wiped all the partitions. Recently I had to RMA for battery issues, so restored the clonezilla factory (actually MS signature) image to the same drive beforehand. When it got back from the service center (un-repaired) I tested out F4 and did a reimage. Just to make sure the service center hadn't fixed it, I reimaged with clonezilla (current version) and tried again, successfully. I highly recommend this piece of freeware. If someone has SRS6 and a spare SSD they should give it a shot.

 

Thanks again for that update. That is very interesting. And quite puzzling to me: July 2012 was ALSO when I received my NP700Z3A (SRS5 as well) and I did a lot of testing with Recoveries and how to back them up and re-create them. One of the things I tested was to make a Clonezilla image of the entire disk, just like you did. Imaging went smoothly with full verification. But restoring that image failed, Clonezilla claiming the image was invalid. Fortunately I had images made with other imaging tools, so it wasn't a disaster; but that was still enough for me to write off Clozezilla as too flaky for important backups.

I'll have to test it again sometime. Of course now my laptop is fully loaded and used for work, so I am more reluctant to make dramatic tests like I used to. I always say there is never a better time to test things than when a PC is new, before you commit significant work and data to it

Thank you once more for sharing this. Again it's the first time I heard of anybody restoring a Recovery partition and being able to boot it (without using tricks like I describe here).

 

Has anyone tried installing the Crucial M500 480Gb yet and if so what sort of experience have you had ???

 

I don't even think it's for sale yet.

 

hi, I'm new in the forum.

I'm about to upgrade my NP900X4D and I'm trying to decide between Crucial m4 256gb or MyDigitalSSD BP4 240GB

Any opinion or suggestion???

Thanks

 

Firmware update for crucial M4 is easier IIRC. The last get BP3 had a slightly involved and convoluted update procedure. Not sure if it's still the case. I have a 256GB Plextor M5M, and it's pretty decent.

 

My vote is also for the Crucial m4 / M500 for the same reason. I failed in my last attempt to update my BP3 because I needed to have it connected to a computer in IDE mode. Every week or so the SSD throws errors which, I believe, would be fixed by the update.

John

 

Hi, i just updated my ssd from 128gb to 256gb (Crucial M4) using clonezilla.

The issue I found is that now I have some unallocated space in my new SSD that can not be merged cause it's not adjacent to C: partition, did this happened to anyone else??? any idea or solution??

regards.

 

Partition Magic or something similar. Gparted, Partition master etc.

 

I recently used the free Minitool Partition Wizard to fix a similar problem.

John

 

Provided you're keeping the 128GB (or at least saving its image for warranty purposes), you could just delete the offending partitions in diskpart.

 

Partition Wizard worked great for setting aside some spare space for Over Provisioning on my desktop SSD. Thanks.

 

Has anyone upgraded their series 9's & M4s to the latest BIOS/Firmware releases?
I heard that there's large issues with that combination, true?

 

Where is the source of your information?

My old X4C which has the Crucial m4 is on BIOS P06AAC and there's been no BIOS update for several months. My new X4C has a different BIOS family for which the latest (P08ABK) was released about a week ago. It seems the BIOS family changed with the introduction of Windows 8 so we need to be more specific about what versions of the Series 9 are under discussion.

John

 

Source was a few threads on this forum ages ago.
Model is the older non-W8 one.

Ive held off upgrading to P06AAC and the M4 firmware to the latest due to these issues, if they are non-existant though, then i'll go ahead and update.

 

I've had no issues with P06AAC + m4 in over 4 months of hard usage. However, make sure that your m4 firmware is also up-to-date (while I have always made a backup as per Crucial recommendations, the firmware upgrades I have done didn't zap the drive's contents).

John

 

Updated both, no issues.
Re-enabled the battery saver, and otherwise it seems fine.
If anything, it seems a tiny bit quicker, and boot is a good 1-2 seconds quicker too.

Has anyone confirmed if the S3 enable in the BIOS fixes the laptop from waking when opening the screen?

##EDIT##
Only issue ive noticed is AS SSD complaining about a timing issue with the CPU, which didnt happen pre-firmware update.
Not really an issue though tbh.

 

Thanks John, I finally was able to merge the partitions.

Now I have another problem, the original 128gb SSD that came with my computer is not booting it's says something about missing winload.efi file
Any ideas???

Thanks again.

 

My best guess is you need to check the Boot Priority in BIOS after swapping the original SSD back in, to make sure it's at the top of the list. Also, make sure OS Mode Selection=UEFI OS (though it sounds like it already is).

 

The efi in the name has me wondering if it is something to do with UEFI. Did you change any setting in the BIOS?

If not, then see if this advice will help.

John

 

Seems rather tangential at this point, but might be worth having in mind for some:
Samsung&rsquo;s &ldquo;3D Vertical&rdquo; NAND crams a terabit on a single chip | Ars Technica
Samsung Starts Mass Producing Industry

 

Ah yes, you're right on both counts. Perhaps it's a micron production issue then. I'm not sure how many OEMs are actually shipping SSDs with the newer NAND. But the aftermarket msata upgrade market is probably not that big right now.

 

For you guys in the US, the Plextor M5M 256GB is $171 at Newegg. Just ordered mine and can't wait to replace this Series 9 piece of junk Sandisk 128GB SSD.



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