Special instructions to fire up Crucial M4 128gb SSD?

[clarinetxkid]

I just installed a brand new Crucial SSD into a brand new Acer TimelineX 3830T. Everything was working perfectly on the original OEM HDD, but after installing, the HDD is not detected in BIOS and at boot. Anyone have any idea about what could have happened? I double checked the connections. When I swapped the OEM HDD back in, it also no longer is detected.

I tried switching the SATA mode to AHCI and IDE, but to no avail.

Anyone else run into this kind of problem?

 

[razel]

Test the drives in another system. Or I'd test using a external USB SATA adapter / enclosure. Test the HDD 1st before testing the SSD.

Otherwise double-check your physical install and put everything back to how it was.

You can also boot up the laptop without a drive, jot down any special BIOS settings you have, then reset the BIOS and reboot without a drive. Shut down, pop your HDD (not SSD) back and cross your fingers. Best of luck.

 

[clarinetxkid]

Thanks for the tips Razel. I'll try testing the drives in a different comp tonight. Is there a way to hard-reset the BIOS? I tried resetting to default, but it didn't do anything. Both the HDD and SSD are undetected.

Could the BIOS power settings have gotten confused because I swapped in 2 new sticks of RAM? I went from 2x2GB to 2X4GB...which didn't appear to have problems (haven't run memtest yet, but were detected). I swapped the OEM RAM back in to test, but neither the SSD nor the HDD was detected.

 

[razel]

Thanks for the tips Razel. I'll try testing the drives in a different comp tonight. Is there a way to hard-reset the BIOS? I tried resetting to default, but it didn't do anything. Both the HDD and SSD are undetected.

Could the BIOS power settings have gotten confused because I swapped in 2 new sticks of RAM? I went from 2x2GB to 2X4GB...which didn't appear to have problems (haven't run memtest yet, but were detected). I swapped the OEM RAM back in to test, but neither the SSD nor the HDD was detected.

You may have to check to see if you can do a hard reset on newer laptops. BIOS batteries in some laptops require removing and organizing 35+ screws to get to.

If you can, repeat it in a USB enclosure. I'm hoping the SSD isn't physically funked and shorted your drive controller. By the sound of the upgrades, I'm expecting the best and maybe you just nudged something... it happens. Just find it and nudge it back. Sometimes kicking the side helps.

Also... I'm finding it hard on some laptops to figure out if the BIOS can't find the drive or if the drive itself is not bootable. My laptop will not easily tell me. In the BIOS setup, there is no drive listing. The only time I can see it is after the BIOS beeps and I press a key to change the boot order. Then it actually displays the drive model/name. Also once during a clone, after the BIOS beep, it said 'non-bootable device not found.' I couldn't tell if that came from the BIOS or boot strap/loader. All it was in the end was the partition not marked as active for booting. Hoping for the best.

 

[clarinetxkid]

Would it be a bad idea to try both hard drives in a desktop? Just at least to see that my desktop mobo can detect said drives. Are HDD controllers prone to getting fried? Even in the boot order settings, both the HDD and SSD don't show up.

 

[clarinetxkid]

I performed the HDD and SSD tests on a desktop last night - both were detected and useable by the desktop. There is something very wrong with the BIOS or the motherboard on the laptop. My guess is it no longer knows to direct power to fire up the HDD or SSD. I will be sending the laptop back for replacement.

For future reference, is there a special procedure for installing this SSD on a laptop? I'm sure it's compatible with the 3830T per Crucial's "guaranteed compatibility" statement. I'm not sure if I want to try this again with the replacement when it arrives.

 

[razel]

Glad your data is fine. Glad the SSD didn't short anything. I just remembered about the Sandy Bridge SATA issue that Intel corrected and Acer actually has a support page where you type in your information to see if you're affected.

https://customercare.acer-euro.com/customercare/ISB.aspx?ITYPE=IntelSandyBridge&CID=US&LID=ENG

Performance is suppose to degrade over time and eventually the controller may not see drives connected. Sounds familiar.

 

[clarinetxkid]

Thanks for all the replies Razel. I didn't lose any data - the ssd was brand new, and the OEM HDD and the laptop were also brand new (< 30 days owned). I just can't comprehend what could have gone wrong from my procedure. This is what I did:

1. Shut down, unplug laptop.
2. Wait some time, unscrew (single screw), slide off back panel
3. Unscrew the two hard drive anchors, remove connector.
4. Replace with SSD, screw back in.
5. Button up.

The one thing I did do was power it on without plugging in the AC adapter. The computer was fully charged though.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Did you remove the battery before changing out the drive? Manuals usually tell you to remove the battery before working on it.

Edit: I mean the main laptop battery, not the CMOS battery. I cannot fathom a laptop without an easily accessible and replaceable battery.

 

[clarinetxkid]

I would have, but the design of this laptop makes the battery inaccessible. Ie. No battery removal. I did many searches to find if this was the case - no results reflect the contrary.

 

[Imouto]

Worst SSD write speeds ever.

 

[clarinetxkid]

I wanted to post an update about the situation and my resulting success.

First, the problematic unit has been returned to the retailer under their 30 day warranty. There was far too much work involved in digging through to find the cmos battery for a hard reset, etc. The retailer was wonderful enough to send me another unit immediately.

The new unit had a BIOS v1.04 (the one it replaced was on BIOS v1.05, different brand of RAM (Hynix in the first unit, Kingston in the replacement unit), different brand HDD (WD in the original, Seagate Momentus in the replacement) and wholly different looking parts altogether (heatsink look/feel, inside of back cover look/feel with/without heat reflective foil). It seems like this unit came off of a completely assembly line with different components.

I didn't even bother booting it into windows on the Seagate HDD. I took it out, swapped in the M4. The one thing I did differently was press & hold the button inside the battery reset pinhole (located on back cover). I booted up on AC power this time, and went to the BIOS settings. The M4 was immediately detected. I set the boot order on USB flash, from which I installed W7 Home Premium.

The first update I did was for the M4, to take it from rev. 0002 to rev 0009. I used the universal USB installer utility to make the ISO bootable on a flash drive. I forgot to change the SATA setting from AHCI to IDE for the update, but the update was successful nonetheless.

After a night or two of updates and downloading drivers from Acer's website, the computer is up and running. It doesn't have all the oem programs and junk from Acer where you can map out how you want to share your everything with people on your wifi network (horrible idea IMO). It is running just a handful of crucial windows processes, and is fast as heck. I don't have benchmarks to show how well it runs, but the boot time is awesome. It's certainly faster than my Dell Adamo XPS, which also runs solid state (apples to oranges of a comparison, maybe).

The upgrade was successful. I might have performed the perfect combination of bad stuff to the first unit to make it fail. Thanks for your input, and thank you for the threadcrap, Imouto. The drive is very good. Most users (eg. 99%+) won't notice the "Worst write speeds ever" difference you're referring to. My sister-in-law, who is the recipient of this laptop, certainly won't.

 

[razel]

Damnn... she is only lucky sister-in-law! Even I don't have a Crucial m4.