Storage Got my first ssd the other day, having some issues

rig in sig, its a crucial m4 64gb

ok so bought it the other day, it arrived fine from scan, the first thing i did, was update firmware from 0002 to 0009.

this is where the problems started. i installed windows, it was working fine, when i went to restart, it wouldnt boot. it stopped on that blinking cursor just before the windows animation. I thought this may be because i had my old hdd plugged in when i was installing windows to the ssd, so i did a quick format from the os disk and installed it again this time with nothing plugged in. it booted that time

however, at random restarts and often on cold boots, the same thing happens. i have a blinking cursor before windows animation and i have to restard pc ( i have left it for like 30mins before and didnt get to animation, so its not doing anything). like 2/5 times it will load fine. does anyone know why this is?

thats my first issue. the next one is, although the drive is fast, it honestly hasnt lived up to my expectations. Boot takes about 19 seconds at least, compared to most people getting about 15 seconds (from the animation to logged on). Specifically, after the animation, there is a blank screen for about 1.5-2 seconds where it does nothing, and i am then presented with the logon screen. Why is this blank screen here??

id just like to clarify, in AS SSD, speeds seem fine, i am getting about 510 seq. read, and 108 seq. write. so i dont get why it is 'slow' to boot up, and has that blank screen. and i really dont get that blinking cursor on startup sometimes. at first i thought it was a driver issue but i have installed all drivers. Maybe bios issue..?

i hear this word 'intel rst' thrown around a lot, i know what it stands for, but i thought it was only to do with raid? is it relevant to me? i dont have this installed.

this is what i am comparing my startup to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60603tT6a08

i have better hardware than him but his is quite a bit faster than mine. same drive.

any thoughts?

 

and also, simply so i dont have to create another thread:

the bit before windows animation (is this called post? from when you turn computer on to animation). yeah that bit: it has increased quite a bit since i installed ssd.

this guy has a p8p67 pro not deluxe but should be the same, how the hell do i get my post(?) as fast as his??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aACDtbh17Yc&feature=related

 

First off, your startup time looks pretty decent to me. Mine takes 28secs from pressing the power button to windows being loaded. Thats with 2x M4's in RAID 0 (see picture in profile for benchmark)

It would be worth going into your BIOS and disabling all unnecessary controllers and checks. Your board will have different SATA controllers and you will not necessarily need them all. One of those could be causing the pause.

Also, have you tried removing all USB devices and CDs during boot to eliminate those causing the issue?

 

it is decent, but its not as fast as i had hoped did you watch the vid of that other guy's startup? thats what i had envisaged.

yeah i am trying to do that but tbh i dont really know what im disabling and im scared il disable something important.

i dont have a cd in the drive, my only usb's are keyboard/mouse reciever and my usb audio interface (i.e. sound card)

would it help if i took a vid of my startup and posted it here?

 

Hah.

I'm still lusting over the idea of an SSD, and after reading that it seemed disappointingly slow.

I was about write a post saying this but thought I'd better time a startup first before I opened my big mouth.

1m02s (probably just used to it but without timing, it doesn't actually seem that long).

Yeah, that is quite a difference actually!

Any idea what the difference is between a single M4 and RAID0? Don't suppose you tried but worth asking the question I guess.

One day...

 

I never actually recorded my boot up with a single M4, because i set up my RAID at the same time as installing my new mobo + CPU.

I do know that a single one was just under 500MB/s read speed, compared to my 1000MB/s in RAID 0.

To the op. Save your BIOS profile, and do some tinkering! You wont break anything serious by turning of some unused SATA controllers. Your BIOS should show you the ports you are currently using with your SSD and HDD, so just disable the others.

 

Isn't 1000MB/s faster than Sata 6Gb/s allows (~768MB/s)?

Boot times are not as impressive as application load speeds with an SSD but they are still an improvement.

Have you spoken to Crucial about your problem? Perhaps you have a bad drive or updating the FW caused the issue?

 

I dont actually know if im honest! Its just what ATTO benchmark reported

 

Approx. 500 MB/s per drive when in Raid0

Anyway; Cut down on startup Services & Programs. Windows happily enables things such as "Adaptive Brightness" and "Fax Services" on every machine, despite the fact most users on desktops will never need them.

 

how do you disable these?

i have 2 things ticked in the msconfig startup tab

should i untick stuff in services?

 

Contact Asus tech support & ask for the 9050 internal release bios with the 11.5 intel orom in it...

Simply that, as the 10.5 orom 'can' be a major cause of problems with odd setups, it's *highly* worth trying to rule this out before arsing about with anything else...

These symptoms are exactly the same as odd people get on 6Gb/s SSDs from all of the manufacturers (see it's not just SF people) &, whilst you're in the unluky minority, this is the most likely way to solve it.

 

Disabling startup services will perhaps shave a second or 2 off, but I don think they will address the pause being described by the op.

Services run in the background when in windows. They are different from your startup items in msconfig.

Someone post the goodbytes guide lol its probably easier to explain that way and I cant find it when using my phone

 

Relating to the OP my m4 ssd shows a similar blinking cursor on reboots, not cold starts, but does actually continue to load after a round a minute or so.
As to boot up speed from cold (no blinking issues) mine is slower but not considerably so than the one in the original video, after taking out the time to load my raid 0 drives but I haven't got round to disabling start up items yet.

 

You mean this guide? The one where GoodBytes explains how to make Windows 7 boot really quick?

 

Thats one! Thank you

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

I have nothing else to do at work so I may as well peruse the forums, jumping on threads like no tomorrow lol

On topic, really good guide, got my boot times down to about 40 seconds.

 

Try just using the system for a while. Windows sits down and optimizes boot times over time, that's how come boot times stay roughly the same, even if you keep installing stuff. Also; rummage around in your BIOS, you're looking for an option called "Quickboot" or something similar, it basically skips a lot of BIOS tests that only need to be run occasionally, meaning you go through POST faster.

After that; I've not the foggiest. Might be some drivers lurking somewhere, check and see if there are any unneeded drivers you can get rid of. Nvidia likes to cram in 3D drivers and the Nvidia Audio Manager on most machines that don't need them, AMD might do the same.

 

Seems odd my setup is very similar to yours, I am happy with the 0009 fw update.

First of all, is your SSD on the 6gb sata 3 intel controller, it is fastest. Additionally the SSD should be on sata ports 0 or 1 (the intel 6gb ports) set to IDE mode to receive the update, perhaps consider checking this and consider reflashing it if it was not. My Asus board correctly defaults to AHCI factory stock (fastest most feature rich sata implementation, not including RAID which has proprietary issues if switching the drives from one controller to another), so I would guess your windows install was done under this condition. Switching this setting can cause issues if Windows was installed on another setting (ie if the install was done under AHCI switching to IDE or RAID may cause issues and vice versa, worst case will not boot). I would recommend installing Windows under AHCI (or RAID if necessary), but make sure you do the FW update under IDE before or after it does not matter as long as you switch back to AHCI.

My system boots windows fast, in fact the time booting the windows is less than the post time which is looooong on my Asus board. A useful tip to cut post times is to disable the Marvell controller if you are not using it, then you save the time spent scanning for drives on this controller.

 

yeah thanks for the advice my post times are pretty much non-existent now.

i installed the firmware update on ahci, not ide. but surely if it worked, is worked. am i right? i think it would be a major problem if it went wrong id def know about it

i installed windows uner ahci. and i am using either 0 or 1 cant remember which, the intel 6gb ports

it happened once last night when i was fiddling with bios settings. i must have restarted my computer like 10x one time after the other (just checking post speeds) should i be suprised that it made it screw up? i left it off for half an hour and it was fine booting up.

 

Thats great news, glad we could be of service