OCZ vertex 3 Troubles

[ArchieChoke]

Cut a long story short, my main harddrive is failing, im getting alot of smart errors on it, funny enough this is my Games drive/Windows drive so it was probily the reason why my windows froze up at times and even restarted my pc when i was in games.

So I finally got my self a 2x OCZ Vertex 3 SSD drive(One drive is for friend).I honestly could not update firmware due to half the machines I have at work and at home has IDE configurations, soon as I switch to ACHI mode in the BIOS windows just wont go in(BSOD).

Clarify this if possile - You are able to go into safe mode and switch windows to use AHCI mode instead of IDE through editing some reg keys?If so where the?

Ok so now to the real problem, so about 10 pm last night I just had enough and pulled all drives out except the SSD's, windows started it thirteen year journey of trying to install, it starts up fine and everything, extracts the files to the drive, but as soon as it hits Excuting applications. bam i get an error, I have tried it about twice last night.

After doing some research while trying to get some sleep, I stumble upon my motherboards driver downloads and see under the SATA section that there is a driver for ACHI (However I always thought this was for RAID systems which im not wanting to run).
So now im going to download that tonight and hopefully get windows to use this driver before installing..
(I hope this works)..Any advice would be appreciated.


Hardware specs:-

CPU:- i7 D920 - 2.6Ghz
Mobo:- Asus P6T Delux V2 1366
RAM:- 6 GB - 1033 Mhz
PSU:- 1000W Corsair Modular
GPU:- 1X GTX 590 (another on the way)

Edit:

Yeah I did update BIOS to the latest version 1202 but the update only fixes known logitech problems.
Yip it looks like Driver for SATA is "Intel(R) AHCI/RAID Driver Disk for Windows 32/64bit XP & Windows 32/64bit Vista & 32/64bit Windows 7"

Thing is i dont want to Raid them, But i know when XP was out and the new SATA technology came out you had to have Drivers, so i thoght the above should help just like XP days.

Also take note that I also tried installing on the Spare SSD with same result.

[encrypted]

I got a Vertex 3 last week, for some reason the windows install randomly popped up MSOOBE.EXE errors, it was a little "faulty" on first boot, I hit windows update, done about 1gig of downloads and it's all good.

If I recall correctly there was a point where I could not execute any applications. It was just persistence to get to Windows Update.

I'm on a Sandy Bridge Core i5 Laptop.

Oh, and it's fast!

[ArchieChoke]

Thanks for your info, though im not even getting past the installation of windows 7 , it does the whole Copy to drive, then it extracts it, then the last part where it supposed to excute the files, thats when it crashes.I read up on the net and it sounds like a driver problem that windows has.Hence the driver download.

Cant do any updates since i cant even get the machine to get the first initial stages of Installing windows then restarting phase.

[dudewotevr]

My V3 was a bit funky at first too. I also was unable to update firmware.

[TheRidDlerX]

When i bought my Vertex 4 about a month ago i didnt have nearly the issues you are speaking of now - but on the other hand i did add it onto my pc config whilst still running another Windows instance from a seperate SATA drive. At first i was also running IDE, but had a read on ACHI then found a link to a quick little windows-fix that installs and makes your current setup ACHI 'compatible'? if thats what it did. Connected the SSD as a test and looked fine, then started the whole new Windows installation on it from a DVD. Didnt have any issues at all (is your installfiles still intact mayb?) When doing clean install from the disc i didnt have to enable any kind of drivers (the F8 or whatnot you have to press at the start)

[ArchieChoke]

Yeah this really has me , anyways thanks ill see if i can find it in google.
OK so it can be done Via http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=444831
So ill give this a try so i can update firmware on the SSD's then run windows with the AHCI drivers loaded.

Will keep this updated though just incase someone hits the same problems.

[SharkBait]

Just to confirm, your issue is that you can't update the firmware of the vertex 3 drive?

Your controller must be in AHCI mode, for the software to pick it up. If you did not load windows, while the controller was set to ACHI mode, you will have to re-install windows or get a pc where windows was installed while the controller was set to AHCI mode.

Yes, you can change from AHCI to IDE, but not the other way around.

[ArchieChoke]

Just to confirm, your issue is that you can't update the firmware of the vertex 3 drive?

Your controller must be in ACHI mode, for the software to pick it up. If you did not load windows, while the controller was set to ACHI mode, you will have to re-install windows or get a pc where windows was installed while the controller was set to ACHI mode.

Yes, you can change from ACHI to IDE, but not the other way around.

Its a mixture,original windows is on drive that is set to IDE so flashing SSD impossible,so i wanted to find out switching IDE to ACHI was possible to perform the flash....confirmed now.

The next phase after flashing is installing windows 7 on SSD while bios on ACHI, i just wanna know will having the ACHI solve the installation crash.
I will have to provide a print screen cause its hard to explain where the crash starts.

[droid]

Win 7 SSDs Setup and Secrets
http://www.overclock.net/t/929553/wi...up-and-secrets

Intel® Solid-State Drive Toolbox
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...&DwnldID=18455

Windows 7 and SSDs: Setup secrets and tune-up tweaks
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/windo...eaks/2910?pg=2

[SharkBait]

Into which port do you have the SSD drive plugged into?

BTW, latest BIOS ver is 2209.

AHCI is something you enable in the BIOS. You don't need the driver when loading windows 7.

[ArchieChoke]

Win 7 SSDs Setup and Secrets
http://www.overclock.net/t/929553/wi...up-and-secrets

Intel® Solid-State Drive Toolbox
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...&DwnldID=18455

Windows 7 and SSDs: Setup secrets and tune-up tweaks
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/windo...eaks/2910?pg=2

Awsum links, off head i can see some bios configs that i can change, probily wont make hure differences,but i am willing to do anything,even sell everything and start again.

[ArchieChoke]

SSD was in port 1.

Thanks for the help, got it sorted by taking all drives out, left the SSD,Set to ACHI, downloaded the Marvell 61XX SATA Driver (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7525007/Untitled.png), started windows install, when i got to drive selection, formated drive, loaded SATA driver then proceeded to finish installation.

Everything is working just need to re-install other apps.

[xera]

If windows XP, to get it to work with AHCI, you have to first change a registry setting, then go to BIOS and enable AHCI
Not necessary on windows 7

[SharkBait]

If windows XP, to get it to work with AHCI, you have to first change a registry setting, then go to BIOS and enable AHCI
Not necessary on windows 7

Have you tried it, cause from personal experience, I know my windows 7 didn't boot, if I changed it from IDE to AHCI in the bios.

[ArchieChoke]

Have you tried it, cause from personal experience, I know my windows 7 didn't boot, if I changed it from IDE to AHCI in the bios.

Hey thanks but its all sorted now,if i didnt have the driver i wouldnt have been able to install Win7.