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M17x R4 Crashing with both HDD's on SATA 6gb/s


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I run svl7's unlocked BIOS, version A10, on my M17x R4. I ran it for nearly two years with 240GB Mushkin SSD SATAIII in 1st HDD bay, and stock Dell 750GB HDD SATAII in 2nd bay. It worked without issue. Recently I replaced the 750 with a 1TB HDD with a SATAIII interface and I see the laptop bluescreening when accessing both drives simultaneously (i.e. copying files from one drive to the other.)

I remember there was an issue with these mobo's where there was instability when both drives were in SATAIII mode so Dell limited the 2nd bay to SATAII in BIOS A05 or A08 I think. However it looks like that restriction was dropped in the unlocked BIOS I'm using and HwINFO confirms that both drives are operating at SATAIII.

Assuming I DO NOT want to drop down to the stock BIOS, is there a way I can limit the 2nd drive to SATAII, or do I have to shell out the $$ for a similar 1TB drive with a SATAII interface?

Thanks guys.

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Check this out man~

Does the M17x R4 have true SATA3? | NotebookReview

From what I understand, you shouldn't be having this issue at all, it was a R3 problem w/ their A10 bios, going back to A8 solved their problems, though that a whole different motherboard.

Here's the article on that if you're curious: M17x R3 SATA III complaint | NotebookReview

Have you thought about using the A11 or Pre-A10 unlocked bios'? It might solve your issue~

Good luck! Let us know :32_002:

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Update: I purchased a 1TB SATAII hard drive from Best Buy, so it would be easy to return if I was wrong, and I cloned my existing 1TB data drive onto this new replacement. Unfortunately the problem, which was writing new data of any sizable quantity to the SSD in bay zero, persisted so I had to go back to the drawing board.

Now I'm thinking it must simply be the SSD, although all the SMART readouts are green across the board and chkdsk /r repeatedly finds nothing wrong. I've never gone through an SSD failure before so I don't know if that's really as weird as it seems but I'm hoping that's what is going on, as the only other option would be the controller on the motherboard, right?

I furthered this new theory using BurnInTest on the drives. The HDD passes all tests. The SSD passes sequential write and verify, but as soon as it switches to random write and verify I get the same 0x000000F4 BSOD I got when attempting to save new large files initially. Next I removed some data from the SSD, adding to the free space, and then I was able to write the same large video files that initially caused the system to crash over and over before clearing space. It's interesting to note that the SSD is exactly 75% full! Think it's possible that the last 25% is just bad flash memory? I've never had the drive this full before so it could have even been defective from the date of purchase! If this were the case, is it normal that all SSD self-tests and chkdsk /r report no issues?

Currently I'm awaiting delivery of a replacement SSD. Had to purchase this one online folks so I hope I've got it nailed down this time! I'll know in a few days but what do you think in the meantime?

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