Clevorr Posted January 6, 2013 Share Posted January 6, 2013 Hey guys, just thought i would ask as i have no clue nor can i find any solutions anywhere to the issue. My M18x came with 2x 1TB normal drives in RAID 0 (Striped Disk Array) ?? And so i went ahead and installed my 2 SSD,s afterward and did a clean fresh install. What is happening is that it was slow at the "starting windows" all the time and giving me grief and the biggest thing is that the 2nd SSD just keeps disappearing, if it was there, all i would need to do is reboot and its gone again sometimes longer than other times and the machine was just really slow and crap. So, i formatted the drives again to start fresh again, but this time i noticed that the bios setting was still on Raid from the original setup, so i changed it to AHCI this time thinking this should fix my issues. Same thing, still has issues with slow loading and the 2nd drive disappearing.. So, after this, i ran and checked both SSD,s individually with only one drive installed at a time, no problems at all and super fast on both drives.. Sooo, just running the single drive for now but still dunno what the hell is going on, in future when i want to add another drive, chances are i will have the same issues.. Is there anything i need to change in settings OR does it require a different ribbon connector array to connect the drives (non raid) or something, im just thinking out loud.. ?? :S Apart from that crap, its running great! lol Thanks, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted January 6, 2013 Founder Share Posted January 6, 2013 Might be the drives needing a firmware update. You should check the manufacturers website or forum.Sent from my GT-N7000 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clevorr Posted January 6, 2013 Author Share Posted January 6, 2013 Might be the drives needing a firmware update. You should check the manufacturers website or forum.Sent from my GT-N7000Yeah possible, but then why do they work flawlessly together on the Clevo beforehand.. Hmm, brain buster this one.. Im stumped with this bigtime :S Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Runes911 Posted January 6, 2013 Share Posted January 6, 2013 It shouldn't need any special ribbon. It sounds like a unique problem, have you tried updating the bios? It's worth a shot since A09 just came out. You said you tried them separately and they work fine. What about trying the separately on the two SATA ports you are trying to raid them on, to make sure that its not the ribbon cable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clevorr Posted January 7, 2013 Author Share Posted January 7, 2013 Yeah will try that. Im not wanting to run them in Raid now, just normal but issues with 2nd drive disappearing. I have to try that, connecting 1 drive to the third slot which is the 2nd drive position that was disappearing. Thanks for the ideas, see how i go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted January 7, 2013 Founder Share Posted January 7, 2013 It is weird that they both worked fine in the Clevo but then the AW may be using a different RAID controller. So you should still look into the HDD firmware update. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aikimox Posted January 7, 2013 Share Posted January 7, 2013 Or, replace the ribbon sata cable. Those appear to be plagued with connectivity issues. The first cable I received was faulty, would only read 1 out of 3 connected hard drives and eventually stopped reading at all. I blame Dell for poor design of such a crucial piece of hardware, they should have made it as solid as in the R1. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 8, 2013 Share Posted January 8, 2013 What is interesting about that, and it may be coincidence, that M18x R2 SATA interposer that seems prone to failure always seems to be defective on a new system. They don't seem to go back later. And, as far as I know, the replacement part that they send out always seems to fix the problem. Maybe they are mishandled by the Compal sweatshop in Taiwan during installation and they do something to bugger them up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clevorr Posted January 8, 2013 Author Share Posted January 8, 2013 Yeah thanks for the feedback guys! It was in fact the silly designed 3 way sata hdd ribbon cable that was the fault. This machine was still under warranty so i called Dell up and explained what was going on and i also told them that the ribbon slit connection looks loose even though it wasn't really, but i wanted them to bring more parts in case. She put me on hold and then came back and said if its loose and the connection is faulty, will need to change the whole motherboard. I was in shock but i said yeah okay then.. lol So tech was here today and had a look and after troubleshooting he broke the latch that holds the ribbon in on the mobo after he actually found the ribbon cable to be the fault and after inserting and removing it many times it broke so he ended up replacing the whole motherboard and ribbon cable and now all is great!! Pretty suprised and impressed with there service tbh! Even after i changed some hardware out they still sorted it for me.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted January 8, 2013 Founder Share Posted January 8, 2013 Yup Alienware service is really good despite the complaints you sometimes read about. The only other company that comes close is Apple thanks to their stores being so ubiquitous. Glad you got it sorted out, welcome to Alienware Sent from my GT-N7000 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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