[Tripredacus]

This is an ultrabook! Your drive type should be set to RAID.

[Tripredacus]

The device you are speaking about is an M-SATA drive. As you posted in another thread, your notebook is this:
http://www.asus.com/...ZENBOOK_UX32VD/

That drive is supposed to have 2 partitions on it, one for RapidStart (partition size match the size of memory) as well as another partition for caching. I have only used mSATA drives that connect via the removable mSATA card, not one that is not-removable.

[Swede]

I was under the impression that ACHI had the raid function, read a guide on installing windows on the 32gb and it says set to ACHI.

[mariog60187]

The only reason that I was telling You to change to IDE, is because use diferents drivers. In that way you could know if the drivers are causing your blue screen

[Swede]

You are supposed to be able to use that 32gb ssd for OS or storage instead though. Bit of a waste to use it as a hibernate storage, fast enough from sleep.

[Tripredacus]

Swede, on 10 December 2012 - 05:56 PM, said:

I was under the impression that ACHI had the raid function, read a guide on installing windows on the 32gb and it says set to ACHI.

Well it may be confusing to me that you bought an Ultrabook which already had its 7 second boot/resume time certified, but then (pretty much) disabled all the Ultrabook features. Now you have a normal notebook (but with an mSATA drive in addition) and are suffering slow boot/resume times. So I guess do you want to restore the Ultrabook config or to just have a normal notebook?

[Tripredacus]

You might need to use Diskpart to make sure that there are no partitions left. There should have been 2 partitions on that disk, one for RapidStart and one for caching. The RapidStart partition may not be visible to you, and will have an ID of 84.

[Swede]

Don't care if it takes a few seconds extra to boot. With OS on the new ssd it would probably be faster anyway. Just want less than 10 min boot and access to the 32gb ssd.

[Swede]

Used clean command several times, waiting for partition master to finish its swipe, considering the time it's taking I'm assuming it's doing a "clean all" I know that's not good for a ssd, but since the only other option I have right now is sending it back...

[RJARRRPCGP]

10 minutes sounds more like Windows went to PIO mode because of ATA errors! I would replace your SATA cable and clear the CMOS.

[Swede]

Not my own build, an ultrabook. Resumes fine from sleep, but not from cold start. As stated above all of the extra boot time seems to be because of that 32gb ssd soldered to the motherboard.

[Tripredacus]

Swede, on 08 December 2012 - 02:50 AM, said:

Still suspecting that 32gb SSD as a cause, can't initialize or anything else. Tried this command from different forum to make it ready to use, but as you can see no luck.
diskpart.jpg

I will kep looking for a way to initialize that SSD, but feels like I've tried everything I could find. Really stuck on this, can usually solve issues or worst case a clean install fixes it, this is a new one for me.

Why did you specify to create an AF partition? You don't need to set an ID on it.

Looking at the teardown, we can see that the SSD is infact soldered to the board.
http://www.ifixit.co.../10120/2#s37426
If the diskpart error in fact means the ssd is bad, its a shame it cannot be removed or replaced.

I'm doing some other research and it is possible that the SSD is locked? I know you cleaned it. I would recommend using the Windows 7 install DVD and use the CMD.exe in it to attempt to create a partition on the SSD.

Also, others have had this problem as well it seems.
http://forum.noteboo...detected-2.html

This post has been edited by Tripredacus: 12 December 2012 - 10:22 AM
Reason for edit: moved and merged topics

[Swede]

Trying some of the ideas on that other forum, swiping it did get it initialized somehow, but still no go on partition or change in boot time.

[Swede]

Ok, tried installing intel rapid storage technology as suggesedin the other forum Tripredacus linked to... suddenly changed to a 90s cold boot instead of 10min, still can't initialize the iSSD thoug, "due to I/O error...
Tried installing the intel rapid start technology as well, but says I don't have enough system requirement, suggested in different forum it was due to the RAM upgrade, 20gb needed for the rapid storage and 1gb per gb of ram. the 32gb disk says 29gb available and i have 10gb ram so...
Will run a boot trace when i get home and post it here in case someone better at this than me wants a look.
Sort of think I'll just give up on that 32gb and leave it be. Things seems stable.. not that I understand the issue though.

[jaclaz]

Possibly already checked/suggested, but is the SSD in GPT or in MBR "mode"?
Compare with:
http://forum.noteboo...d-32gb-ssd.html

jaclaz

[Tripredacus]

jaclaz, on 13 December 2012 - 06:20 AM, said:

Possibly already checked/suggested, but is the SSD in GPT or in MBR "mode"?
Compare with:
http://forum.noteboo...d-32gb-ssd.html

jaclaz

I didn't bothing bringing that up since in the previous posts it is clear that the OP used Diskpart to "clean" the drive. This should reset its drive type right? If it is a GPT disk from the factory, and he runs Clean command, the disk should not be anything right?

[jaclaz]

Tripredacus, on 13 December 2012 - 08:29 AM, said:

I didn't bothing bringing that up since in the previous posts it is clear that the OP used Diskpart to "clean" the drive. This should reset its drive type right? If it is a GPT disk from the factory, and he runs Clean command, the disk should not be anything right?

The linked to tutorial seems to me like implying that this is not the case, that's why I thought to bring up the issue.
That tutorial in a nutshell says that if the "existing" disk/partition/filesystem is not "converted to MBR" when it is validly "formatted" (please take all the terms used in this sentence as "vague" and not exact) the only way is to intitiate an ATA Safe Erase:

Quote

Alternative method to convert the iSSD from GPT to MBR
Follow this guide: How to Secure Erase your SSD with Parted Magic
You will need the 6_19 version of the .iso or newer!
Proceed to Secure Erase the iSSD. Be very careful when doing this.
I've done this and it works perfectly.

which points to this other tutorial:
http://www.overclock...th-parted-magic
though essentially the same can be made with hdparm:
https://ata.wiki.ker...TA_Secure_Erase
surely from Linux, but most probably from a PE too, see:
http://reboot.pro/to...e-from-windows/
and possibly also from DOS using the (but DOS may have issues recognizing the disk drive/device):
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu...cureErase.shtml

jaclaz

[Tripredacus]

jaclaz, on 13 December 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

The linked to tutorial seems to me like implying that this is not the case, that's why I thought to bring up the issue.

It didn't seem right to me, but its easy enough to do a test. Now I do recall that WinPE 2.x diskpart operated a little differently, so perhaps it is knowledge leftover and not corrected. However, at least in WinPE 3 and 4 (x64) it is easy enough to test. I can confirm that if you use the CLEAN command on a GPT disk, it does indeed revert the disk back to MBR format, or at least it ceases to be GPT. Consider this result:

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online           55 GB      0 B

DISKPART> sel disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> clean

DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.

DISKPART> convert gpt

DiskPart successfully converted the selected disk to GPT format.

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
* Disk 0    Online           55 GB    55 GB        *

DISKPART> clean

DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
* Disk 0    Online           55 GB    55 GB

DISKPART>

[jaclaz]

Tripredacus, on 14 December 2012 - 09:12 AM, said:

jaclaz, on 13 December 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

The linked to tutorial seems to me like implying that this is not the case, that's why I thought to bring up the issue.

It didn't seem right to me, but its easy enough to do a test. Now I do recall that WinPE 2.x diskpart operated a little differently, so perhaps it is knowledge leftover and not corrected. However, at least in WinPE 3 and 4 (x64) it is easy enough to test. I can confirm that if you use the CLEAN command on a GPT disk, it does indeed revert the disk back to MBR format, or at least it ceases to be GPT. Consider this result:

Sure , this is "logical" but, I am afraid, "general/generic" .
What I suspect is that the specific hardware the OP has *somehow* implements some non-standard features that (still *somehow*) "connect" the BIOS with the disk device and it's partitioning, at least this is what I can understand from the given links.
And still I have not seen any mention in the OP posts about having attempted the conversion using either Disk Manager or diskpart.from GPT to MBR.
In any case following to the letter that tutorial, that seemingly has worked for several users, cannot in any way make things "worse" than they are now.


jaclaz

[Swede]

Well, I tried the parted magic, downloaded and made a bootable USB, starts of ok, but just leads to a black screen.
Whatever the issue was it was fixed by installing the intel rapid storage driver. 90sec seems a bit long for cold boot, but it works, better than 10min at least. Everything else seems to be stable, no freezing or crashes at all.
Installed CIV V again and even that works, so doesnt seem like that was related to the issue either.