The computer and electronics super geek thread

[azrael]

I suspect it is the Intel SATA controller. As technoblue suggested, try placing the HD on the ASMedia SATA controller. These would be the lower 2 ports on the SATA plugs or the plugs farthest from the RAM slots.

[VF-19]

Tried that too. No dice. I would sub another multi-terabyte drive, except I only have one available. All the others are either in my NAS, or broken. I got the 3TB because my 1TB decided to slowly die (but let me get my data off). I've even tried doing a BIOS reset, assuming I mucked up somewhere, and that didn't work either. Heck, I even tried different combinations of cables, and power rails just to run down the possiblilities, and everything is being super stubborn.

I did put in an order for a SATA controller at my local computer store, so I'll know next week if it solves my problem.

[technoblue]

Okay. A reset to factory defaults will usually rule out the BIOS. This is really peculiar, though. I have the Asus Maximus V Gene and have no problems with larger HDDs. The Max V Gene is based on the older Z77 chipset. Hm, for the sake of sanity, I am guessing that you have been using the following settings with no success, right?

SATA Mode: AHCI

Aggresive LPM Support: Disabled

S.M.A.R.T. Status: Enabled

HotPlug SATA1-6: All Disabled

One last thing you can try is to change SATA Mode from AHCI to IDE. If that doesn't work, then my concern is that the Seagate HDD is failing, which may be why it isn't posting. However, you should be getting S.M.A.R.T. reports on the drive if that's the case. Since you noted that the drive is wokring with a USB connection, it might be worth running Seagate's diagnostic tools on it.

[VF-19]

No dice. The system just gets hung up one step further. Some more investigation setting my SATA ports to hot swap revealed that windows sees the drive as 1.34TB, but Disk management sees it as the full 3TB, as does Intel Rapid Storage Technology. I'm rather tempted to pull all the data off of the drive, delete the partition and reinitialize the drive to see what happens.

[technoblue]

The Windows mismatch sounds like a partitioning issue. If the drive is partitioned using Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning, then Windows will not see the entire drive. In order to see the full 3TB, the drive should be initialized with a GUID Partitioning Table (GPT). I would check that first. If the drive is set up with MBR, then pull the data and start again using GPT and see if Windows behaves.

[Chewie]

VF, do you have UEFI or legacy boot enabled?

UEFI, depending on the motherboard/BIOS likes to try to boot from everything but the drive you specify.

Seems this could be the case since you had no issues in the beginning.

I mean, it could be the hardware on the motherboard, but issues with drives that large usually lead to the UEFI being the culprit.

[VF-19]

Tried switching to legacy boot, and no dice. Hopefully, sometime next week I'll have the SATA controller in hand and we'll see if it fixes everything.

[miles316]

I have seen a article saying that Internet explorer has a flaw but the article is vague it sounds like they are saying it only affects Windows XP computers, and people should stop using Internet Explorer. Does any one have any information on this?

[azrael]

I have seen a article saying that Internet explorer has a flaw but the article is vague it sounds like they are saying it only affects Windows XP computers, and people should stop using Internet Explorer. Does any one have any information on this?

Go read the news. There's a world outside this forum. It's been broadcasted on every tech news site today (like CNet for example).

Secondly, people use IE?

[miles316]

Go read the news. There's a world outside this forum. It's been broadcasted on every tech news site today (like CNet for example).Secondly, people use IE?

Thank you for the link.

[VF-19]

Well, got the SATA card, and it didn't make a difference. Still hung on the same part during boot. Oh well, now to try what I've been trying to avoid. A total re-format of the drive... After pulling everything off of it.

[Archer]

So, a little update to my laptop situation (thanks for the suggestions by the way everyone). I ended up splurging some more money than initially expected to get myself an MSI GS60 Ghost with GTX 870m. I was planning on getting an ASUS ROG g750 or MSI GT60, but when I saw both in person, I figured there was no way I was willing to carry around 12 pound behemoths like that.

I ordered from Gentech PC, and I'm not familiar with their order processing time (it's been pending for a couple days now), but I'll let you guys know how the laptop is. Hopefully, that GTX 870m destroys the GT 650m that I'm working with right now (getting Witcher 2 to even run is a struggle).

I'm also hoping that this laptop will be able to outperform the PS4 I purchased (which, all things considered, I'm thinking it will), so that I can move all my next-gen gaming needs to this laptop, at least for the next 2 years, after which I plan on building a proper rig.

Edited May 7, 2014 by Archer

[myk]

All you need is the right back pack and some time to get accustomed to carrying around a monster laptop and you'll be good; I don't even notice the heft of my Toshiba anymore. I hope your purchase works out for you!

In any case, it's been forever since I've had to duplicate a hard drive (PATA days), buy my aforementioned Toshiba laptop is running out of space on its secondary HD; what're the acceptable methods of cloning/copying a hard drive these days? Someone was telling me about an enclosure or a dock or something where I place both the original and replacement hardrives inside of, press a button and then voila! I'd have a duplicate drive to use. Any other suggestions? My laptop uses SATA 2 if it matters...

Edited May 7, 2014 by myk

[mikeszekely]

All you need is the right back pack and some time to get accustomed to carrying around a monster laptop and you'll be good; I don't even notice the heft of my Toshiba anymore. I hope your purchase works out for you!

I bought a huge Targus backpack for my old Asus, and I figured that'd be enough. And I didn't mind taking it over to friends houses or whatever, but it was a huge, heavy pain when I flew to Beijing. Now I'm all about spending a little extra on the thin and lights; I just wish I wouldn't have bough the one I did. The GTX 660m hasn't performed all that great. If I'd waited a year, I could have and would have bought the one that Archer did, and not have paid that much more.

In any case, it's been forever since I've had to duplicate a hard drive (PATA days), buy my aforementioned Toshiba laptop is running out of space on its secondary HD; what're the acceptable methods of cloning/copying a hard drive these days? Someone was telling me about an enclosure or a dock or something where I place both the original and replacement hardrives inside of, press a button and then voila! I'd have a duplicate drive to use. Any other suggestions?

I've never cloned a laptop drive, but I've cloned desktop drives. I used a free tool called Clonezilla. It's not pretty, but it's pretty simple. You burn it to a blank CD, then boot from the CD. Once the software is up and running, you simply tell it what hard drive you want copied, and what hard drive you want it copied to.

Now, on a desktop you'd figure it'd be pretty easy to slap the new drive in an empty bay and clone away, and you'd be right. And you're probably thinking it's more of a pain on a laptop, which may not have room for another drive (although some gaming laptops actually do!). Enclosures are one option... they're basically USB hard drives without an actual hard drive inside. Another option I use pretty frequently is to just get an adapter. They run around $20 on Newegg, and come with the actual adapter, a power supply, and some extra cabling. They're not a permanent solution, like an enclosure would be, but they're more versatile because most of the ones I've seen/used support both IDE/PATA and SATA, in both the 2.5" laptop sized drives and the 3.5" desktop sized drives. They're handy not just for setting up drives for cloning, but for recovering files from the hard drives of computers that won't boot.

If you're only ever going to need to do this once, to copy your current drive to a bigger one, you're probably better off with the enclosure, since you can still use the old drive as external storage. But from personal experience, the adapter kits are just useful to have around.

[myk]

I bought a huge Targus backpack for my old Asus, and I figured that'd be enough. And I didn't mind taking it over to friends houses or whatever, but it was a huge, heavy pain when I flew to Beijing. Now I'm all about spending a little extra on the thin and lights; I just wish I wouldn't have bough the one I did. The GTX 660m hasn't performed all that great. If I'd waited a year, I could have and would have bought the one that Archer did, and not have paid that much more.

I've never cloned a laptop drive, but I've cloned desktop drives. I used a free tool called Clonezilla. It's not pretty, but it's pretty simple. You burn it to a blank CD, then boot from the CD. Once the software is up and running, you simply tell it what hard drive you want copied, and what hard drive you want it copied to.

Now, on a desktop you'd figure it'd be pretty easy to slap the new drive in an empty bay and clone away, and you'd be right. And you're probably thinking it's more of a pain on a laptop, which may not have room for another drive (although some gaming laptops actually do!). Enclosures are one option... they're basically USB hard drives without an actual hard drive inside. Another option I use pretty frequently is to just get an adapter. They run around $20 on Newegg, and come with the actual adapter, a power supply, and some extra cabling. They're not a permanent solution, like an enclosure would be, but they're more versatile because most of the ones I've seen/used support both IDE/PATA and SATA, in both the 2.5" laptop sized drives and the 3.5" desktop sized drives. They're handy not just for setting up drives for cloning, but for recovering files from the hard drives of computers that won't boot.

If you're only ever going to need to do this once, to copy your current drive to a bigger one, you're probably better off with the enclosure, since you can still use the old drive as external storage. But from personal experience, the adapter kits are just useful to have around.

You mean an adapter like this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812156102

So then I just plug the adapter into a USB port on my laptop, the other end to the SATA port on the new drive and copy away?

[azrael]

All you need is the right back pack and some time to get accustomed to carrying around a monster laptop and you'll be good; I don't even notice the heft of my Toshiba anymore. I hope your purchase works out for you!

And here I went lighter with a rMBP. I don't game on my laptop so I was fine with that direction.

You mean an adapter like this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812156102

So then I just plug the adapter into a USB port on my laptop, the other end to the SATA port on the new drive and copy away?

Yeah, that's one of many adapters. They're nice to keep around since you'll never know when something will break and you need to extract data. An enclosure will also be good if you want to reuse that hard drive as spare storage. I've done that with a few laptop drives after upgrading to a larger drive.

I'll also throw my weight behind CloneZilla. Used it a few times already to migrate to a larger HD. Worked fine.

[mikeszekely]

You mean an adapter like this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812156102

Yep. Although I've never used that brand. I've used the Rosewill one that's a $1 more, and at work we used Startech.

So then I just plug the adapter into a USB port on my laptop, the other end to the SATA port on the new drive and copy away?

More or less. What I usually do is plug the adapter into the drive, then plug the adapter into a USB port. There will also be an AC adapter that looks like a small laptop power supply, except the end will have SATA and IDE power connectors on the end. Plug that in. Cheaper models will be on as long as they're plugged in, better models will have a power switch.

Before you do any of that, you'll need to download Clonezilla and burn it to a blank CD. Set your BIOS to boot from CD, make sure the CD is in the drive, one drive is installed in the laptop, and the other is up and on the way I described, then reboot to the CD. Carefully note which drive you want to clone, and which drive you want to clone to... if you do it wrong, you could end up erasing the drive you're trying to clone (it's not a bad idea to back up any important files before you start). When you have it set up right, Clonezilla will run for awhile, and when it's done both drives should be identical, except one has more space on it. If the one with more space on it is installed in the laptop, you should be able to boot from it like normal, with all your programs and settings. Just more room.

[myk]

Thank you both, gentlemen; now I will go about picking an SSD and regular drive...

[azrael]

Thank you both, gentlemen; now I will go about picking an SSD and regular drive...

Oh...You're switching to a SSD. You might want to read some forums and help guides on that. Especially if you're going from a larger HD to a smaller SSD. There is some work you'll need to do to the hard drive before migrating to the SSD.

[mikeszekely]

Oh...You're switching to a SSD. You might want to read some forums and help guides on that. Especially if you're going from a larger HD to a smaller SSD. There is some work you'll need to do to the hard drive before migrating to the SSD.

Yeah. An SSD makes for a great boot drive, but you're going to run into a lot of problems.

For one, how many 2.5" SATA bays does the laptop have? Most only have one, but some gaming laptops have two. If you have two and use a regular 2.5" SATA SSD, you'll probably have less trouble. If you're like me, though, I only had one bay, but I had a mPCIe available, so I used an mSSD. My laptop's UEFI didn't care for that one bit, until I switched it to Legacy mode.

Either way, if you want to actually clone your existing hard drive, you will need to delete and uninstall everything until on your current drive until the amount of used space is less than the total space of the SSD. Which, to be honest, defeats a lot of the purpose of cloning.

If you're cloning to a bigger mechanical drive, then were you planning to add an SSD for more storage? If that's the case, don't bother. I'm not going to say you won't get any performance boost, but you'll get the most bang for your buck if Windows and any programs that automatically load when Windows does are on the SSD.

If you're going to use an SSD for booting, I'd strongly recommend making a backup of your personal files, then do a fresh install, either with a generic Windows disc or with your computer's specific recovery media. I'd also suggest downloading the wi-fi and/or ethernet drivers for your laptop and having them available on a flash drive either way.

[myk]

I should've been more specific; my Toshiba came with an SSD primary drive from the factory, however it's only 64G's so it ran out of room very quickly. It was my hope that I could just clone my current SSD to a newer, larger SSD, swap it in and call it a day. I plan to do the same thing to the secondary hard drive, but that's only a standard mechanical drive. I'd like to bump that up to 1tb instead of the measly 500G's I have now. How do I know if the drive will fit my machine for sure? Are all of the 2.5" drives the same? Does it matter if my machine uses SATA 2 and the only drives I can find are SATA 3? Are there any brands to stay away from? Thanks again guys...

Edited May 8, 2014 by myk

[azrael]

I should've been more specific; my Toshiba came with an SSD primary drive from the factory, however it's only 64G's so it ran out of room very quickly. It was my hope that I could just clone my current SSD to a newer, larger SSD, swap it in and call it a day.

Ah. Thought you were going from a large HDD to a smaller SSD. Be sure to check (just check it) the alignment of the old drive before cloning and realign the new one after cloning.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html

http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/checking_ssd_alignment

I plan to do the same thing to the secondary hard drive, but that's only a standard mechanical drive. I'd like to bump that up to 1tb instead of the measly 500G's I have now. How do I know if the drive will fit my machine for sure? Are all of the 2.5" drives the same? Does it matter if my machine uses SATA 2 and the only drives I can find are SATA 3? Are there any brands to stay away from? Thanks again guys...

SATA 3 drives are compatible with SATA2. You will just lose some potential speed benefits of SATA3. In most cases, you won't notice it.

All 2.5" drives are the same width, hence the 2.5"-label. Same height? Can't be sure. Especially with larger HDDs. Though most should fit without problems.

Brands? Your mileage may vary. I've used Western Digital HDDs, Segate HDDs and SSHDs without many problems. I've only had 1 Seagate fail on me in recent years. I've used Samsung and Crucial SSDs without problems so far. I've gone through Hitachi's, Toshibas and others with about the same failure rate. Again, your mileage may vary.

[mikeszekely]

I should've been more specific; my Toshiba came with an SSD primary drive from the factory, however it's only 64G's so it ran out of room very quickly. It was my hope that I could just clone my current SSD to a newer, larger SSD, swap it in and call it a day. I plan to do the same thing to the secondary hard drive, but that's only a standard mechanical drive. I'd like to bump that up to 1tb instead of the measly 500G's I have now. How do I know if the drive will fit my machine for sure? Are all of the 2.5" drives the same? Does it matter if my machine uses SATA 2 and the only drives I can find are SATA 3? Are there any brands to stay away from? Thanks again guys...

Check to make sure the SSD in your Toshiba is a 2.5" SATA drive and not an mSSD, then. I don't know of any adapters you can use to clone an mSSD.

I doubt you'll have any issues with a 1TB drive fitting inside your computer. Last I checked, it's only the 2TB drives that are a little thicker. But the best place to check would be with Toshiba. You should be able to find the maximum dimensions, then just check the dimensions of the drive you want to buy.

Like Az, I've used bunches of drives. WD, Seagate, Hitachi, Toshiba, IOmega, and Samsung for regular drives, and Kingston and Mushkin for SSDs. The brand of SSD used to matter more, but I think the controllers have all matured enough that it really doesn't matter. Same with spinning platters, although I admit a slight preference for WD. And when I say slight, I mean I usually buy what's cheapest in the size I want, but if they're the same price, I'll go with the WD.

Oh, just some other random tips with SSDs... I confess, I've been installing stuff on the C drive that I probably don't need to, but on a 120GB drive I'm using about 90GB. It could be less if I installed some of the programs on another drive, or got rid of some of the programs I installed for school (Office 2013 Pro, Visio 2013 Pro, Project 2013 Pro, Expression, etc). The trick is to install large programs and programs you don't need often on another drive, and create a personal folder on another drive as well, with folders inside for pictures, downloads, videos, documents, etc. Then, if you're using Windows 7, just set all the Libraries to use those folders instead of the default ones on the C drive.

[VF-19]

Well, fixed my drive problem. Turns out it had nothing to do with the SATA controller. It had everything to do with how the drive was formatted. Apparently the way it was formatted before (for my Socket AM3 motherboard) is incompatable with my current motherboard. A reformat fixed everything. I was trying to avoid it as it is a bit tricky to find room on the home server to house all the stuff...

Oh well, at least now I have a spare SATA controller if I decide to build a HTPC out of my spare computer parts.

[azrael]

Well, fixed my drive problem. Turns out it had nothing to do with the SATA controller. It had everything to do with how the drive was formatted. Apparently the way it was formatted before (for my Socket AM3 motherboard) is incompatable with my current motherboard. A reformat fixed everything. I was trying to avoid it as it is a bit tricky to find room on the home server to house all the stuff...

Was it MBR or GPT?

[VF-19]

Not sure. It never was the boot drive for the previous system. It was (as is now) being used as a warehouse for everything. In any case, all it really was, was a head scratcher. Nothing was broken, and it was just a really time consuming fix.

This incident kinda motivates me to get a bigger, faster NAS. Transfering files at 16ish MB/s is rather... dull. That and all I have on the NAS is 4TB, spread across 2 drives. I might get a 4 bay NAS and 3-4TB drives to fill it.

[myk]

Thanks again guys. As of now my laptop is running off of a cloned copy of my original 64G Toshiba SSD. I went to Fry's and instead of a docking station or duplicator they just pointed me to some software and a USB cable that cloned my original SSD in under an hour. The only thing I had to do was install a spacer plate between the hard drive cage and the new drive as it's smaller (7mm) than the original drive. Of course, now I'm thinking I should've gotten a bigger SSD than the 120G Toshiba I bought lol. Anything I need to look out for? Are there any tests I should run to see if this clone is good to go? Next month I will start looking at replacements for the secondary hard drive. Again, thanks for your help everyone...

[azrael]

Of course, now I'm thinking I should've gotten a bigger SSD than the 120G Toshiba I bought lol. Anything I need to look out for?

I would only get a larger SSD if you could afford it. SSDs are still pricey despite the benefits. But 120GB should be fine. I would still check to see if the program you used did align the parttitions correctly. Most should, but you never know.

Are there any tests I should run to see if this clone is good to go?

It booted and you're running so that's a good sign. You can enable SMART on the new SSD if it wasn't already. Check the manufacturer for any firmware updates for that SSD.

[technoblue]

Well, fixed my drive problem. Turns out it had nothing to do with the SATA controller. It had everything to do with how the drive was formatted. Apparently the way it was formatted before (for my Socket AM3 motherboard) is incompatable with my current motherboard. A reformat fixed everything. I was trying to avoid it as it is a bit tricky to find room on the home server to house all the stuff...

Glad to see that things worked out for you VF-19. A larger, faster NAS sounds like a nice treat after all the work you put into getting your main system back online.

[myk]

I would only get a larger SSD if you could afford it. SSDs are still pricey despite the benefits. But 120GB should be fine. I would still check to see if the program you used did align the parttitions correctly. Most should, but you never know.

It booted and you're running so that's a good sign. You can enable SMART on the new SSD if it wasn't already. Check the manufacturer for any firmware updates for that SSD.

I take it we're talking BIOS tweaks?

[azrael]

I take it we're talking BIOS tweaks?

SMART is built into the drive. If you want to actually want to read the signals it gives off, you have to enable it in the BIOS. Firmware can be installed from the OS level.

[mikeszekely]

I would only get a larger SSD if you could afford it. SSDs are still pricey despite the benefits. But 120GB should be fine.

This. I bought a 120GB drive for my current box, with Windows 7, Office 2013 Pro, Visio 2013 Pro, Project 2013 Pro, Expression, Visual Studio, Firefox, Chrome, MSE, Nero 9, iTunes, and more all on it. After over a year, it's still sitting on only about 90GB used. Just stick with my tips and install bigger programs you don't use often and all your games on the big drive, and set up your Libraries to use folders on the bigger drive, and you'll be fine.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot... if you play games on your laptop, you probably have Steam, Origin, Uplay, or some combination thereof. Steam installs games the Steam folder, so be sure to install Steam on your larger drive. You can install Origin on that drive to. However, I found out the hard way that Uplay is a piece of garbage, so if you have Uplay for some reason, it has to be installed on the C: drive, or the games won't launch. It's not all bad news, though. Unlike Steam, you can pick where to install the games in Uplay, so you can make a folder on the bigger drive and tell Uplay to install the games there. It's just Uplay itself that has to be on C.

[myk]

Yes, I figured that the SSD should be reserved for just the OS and any other "critical" system files, but for some reason I managed to fill all 64G's of the original SSD. I will try to make sure that all other non-operational data goes into the D drive...

[VF-19]

Glad to see that things worked out for you VF-19. A larger, faster NAS sounds like a nice treat after all the work you put into getting your main system back online.

Well, no time like the present to start saving for it!

[myk]

Ok so I've been considering possible choices for my secondary drive. I figure a 7200 rpm, 1TB unit with at least 16mb of cache would be great 'specs, but the wierd thing is there aren't very many drives to choose from with those numbers; at least not around the $100 price range. Am I looking at secondary drives the wrong way? Are things like drive speed and cache not as important as they are with the primary drive? There are many more drives to choose from if I go with less than 1 TB and a 5400 rpm drive speed...