SSD's are not being detected on cold boot

[tviceman]

The bios on my asrock h67-itxm won't detect the ocz agility 2 SSD 75% of the time on a cold boot. I have to do a reboot and then it shows up and everything is great. I already RMA'd the SSD drive to OCZ for the exact same problem, and so now this is 2 drives in a row that won't always show up on cold boots. I google'd this problem and seems to be related to OCZ drives and found nothing in relation to my motherboard bios having a problem with detecting SSD drives.

I'm really frustrated now and not sure what I should do next. Suggestions?

 

[tviceman]

I popped the SSD into my laptop, and it was dedicated on 5 consecutive boots. So the problem isn't specifically the SSD. Hmmmmmmmmm.

 

[Athadeus]

Make OCZ keep troubleshooting it until they offer a different model as replacement.

 

[frostedflakes]

It's a firmware issue, SandForce drives have compatibility issues like this with some systems where they won't always be detected.

If you haven't done this already, try updating the latest firmware and see if that fixes the issue. If that doesn't work, your best bet is to just sell the drive and replace it with an Intel, Crucial, or Samsung SSD.

 

[tviceman]

It's a firmware issue, SandForce drives have compatibility issues like this with some systems where they won't always be detected.

If you haven't done this already, try updating the latest firmware and see if that fixes the issue. If that doesn't work, your best bet is to just sell the drive and replace it with an Intel, Crucial, or Samsung SSD.

I confirmed this by testing it out in my laptop. It was detected 100% of the time. Upgrading the firmware did not fix the issue though when paired with the desktop motherboard. Looks like I need to get a different SSD. Thank you for the help!

 

[WT]

Strange as it seems , even a case could be the cause. I was looking at buying a Level 10 GT case which was reviewed by HardOCP. Kyle had issues with the SSD making good contact with the SATA backplane in the case which resulted in the SSD not showing up as the boot device.

 

[taltamir]

It is a compatibility issue
Options:
1. replace your motherboard with another model.
2. don't use sandforce controller SSD

both your mobo and SSD are within the SATA spec, but at opposite ends of it. Both assume that the other will accommodate them and don't make allowances to accommodate the other themselves.
End result is the fail you see.

You could argue that the real fault lies in the SATA spec, that allows 2 in spec components to fail to communicate properly like this.

 

[Ratman6161]

I recently bought an OCZ Solid 3 SSD with a SandForce 22xx. I've had lots of issues but after several days of fiddling with it I finally got it to work. Check out OCZ's support forums and you will see lots of people in the same boat.

It comes down to having exactly the right bios on your motherboard and using exactly the right combination of drivers. Power management seems to also play a role and I've found that going into the Windows power management settings and setting "Turn off hard disk after:" to "Never" helps too. Apparently the information passed to the drive from these drivers somehow impacts how the drive is seen in the bios. It does not make any sense to me but after all this tweaking...it seemed to work for me.

As to drivers: In the past I have always gone with the latest available, pretty much ignoring what the motherboard manufacture provides and going direct to Intel, nVidia, etc instead. Apparently though if you want your SandForce based SSD to work, the thing to do is to go the the motherboard manufacturer and get the latest bios. Then use the drivers they provide as well as its somehow important the the Intel Management Engine and RST drivers are matched to the bios.

For a lot of this, I don't know why it worked for me - just through trial and error, this is the conculsion I reached.

PS: Use new SATA cables too. I read somewhere that older SATA cables might not work well with SATA3 and that it's best to use the brand new cables that probably came with your motherboard. So I switched out the old cable I had with the new ones.

So after making all these tweaks and changes it works - but I'm not completely sure which of the changes or which combination of changes are what did the trick.

 

[Shmee]

as suggested above, try updating mobo bios as well. also, what sata ports are you using? have you tried different ones?