unable to load OS or boot to Vertex...drive seen by bios but unable to boot or load to it.

[Tony]

Seeing this more and more now so please be sure to follow the instructions below and report if it helped you.

Clear the CMOS on the motherboard you are using. Do this in the the most thorough way you can.

Desktop board:

Remove all power from the board....Remove the battery on the board, move the CMOS jumper to the clear position and also short the 2 battery terminals together using a small coin on the edge of the battery. Do this for at least 30secs...then replace everything.

Boot to bios, reset the parameters you use and continue to boot or load the OS.


Laptop:

Remove the mains power...remove the battery. if you can remove the cmos battery also and short the terminals for 30 secs. other laptops have a button you can press...so press it

some have hot keys...im not keen on this but its worth trying.

Again replace everything and continue to boot.

Now please copy and paste the following into your posts and whether it worked or did not work after you experienced the bios seeing the drive but unable to boot or load OS to it.

Motherboard used:
Bios used:
vertex drive used:
AHCI used Y/N
IDE used Y/N
Non-member raid used Y/N
Clear cmos worked for me Y/N

BOLD your answers so we see them easy please.

[cbalano]

How I fixed this one was:

Using my old XP installation I issued a "clean" command in diskpart on Vertex120GB, then I shutdown and removed all disks from the system except the SSD.

Rebooted from the Widows XP Service Pack 2 Disk, and let the Window XP installer create partition and format and install on the Vertex 120GB.

After the installation finished, diskpar showed me the drive was aligned at 32k, without me taking any action to force that.

[Tony]

and you have a misaligned partition...63 sectors not 64

[cbalano]

DISKPART> list partition

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 119 GB 32 KB

Is that misalignment?

[HDCHOPPER]

No that is aligned at 32k which is a valid alignment ...

XP by default will align at 63 sectors ..
32k=64 sectors

[me&er]

DISKPART> list partition

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 119 GB 32 KB

Is that misalignment?

XP/DiskparT 'list' cmd rounds up from 31.5KB/63 sectors to next cylinder bdry @ 64 sectors/32KB.

DiskpaR will report offset 'as is' in sectors.. no round up.

This is the problem when mixing the 2 for info purposes.

To be 100% sure the format partition process in XPSP2 did not mis-align.. use the
DiskpaR -i cmd to double check offset/hidden sectors.

[cbalano]

C:\>diskpar -i 0
---- Drive 0 Geometry Infomation ----
Cylinders = 15566
TracksPerCylinder = 255
SectorsPerTrack = 63
BytesPerSector = 512
DiskSize = 128034708480 (Bytes) = 122103 (MB)

---- Drive Partition 0 Infomation ----
StatringOffset = 32256
PartitionLength = 128026450944
HiddenSectors = 63
PartitionNumber = 1
PartitionType = 7

End of partition information. Total existing partitions: 1

Is this good or bad?

[me&er]

Misaligned.
Offset and Hidden Sectors @ 63 Sectors/31.5KB

[cbalano]

[HDCHOPPER]

Allways pays to use ..diskpar ... for checking or ..msinfo32...or ...wmic partition list full....

[Ian]

There really are some great posts on the subject of alignment on this forum, but despite all these great articles and so many other similar posts here there is still gross confusion on how to align even the simplest of partition configurations.

Clearly there is an opportunity for someone here who writes well to cover this issue in a clear concise guide on alignment once and for all, one that can be used as a sticky to refer folks to who are needing help.

Keep it short, concise and simple yet covering every question..

[hsJc]

XP/DiskparT 'list' cmd rounds up from 31.5KB/63 sectors to next cylinder bdry @ 64 sectors/32KB.

DiskpaR will report offset 'as is' in sectors.. no round up.

This is the problem when mixing the 2 for info purposes.

To be 100% sure the format partition process in XPSP2 did not mis-align.. use the
DiskpaR -i cmd to double check offset/hidden sectors.

How come I cannot run diskpar on my windows xp/vista? It says it is not recognized as a command...etc

[hunterthomson]

HP elitebook 8530w MobileWorkstation.
30GB Vertex with 1.10 Firmware

When I installed Linux on it the installer CD found the drive and installed just fine.
But on reboot the BIOS would not find the drive.
I tried AHCI, IDE, RAID, none worked.

As it turns out the problem was that I had my one and only /root partition on a Logical partition and GRUB boot-loader installed on the MBR. I thought that the BIOS would at lest see the MBR and boot GRUB and GRUB would see the logical partition just fine.

I was wrong.

As a last ditch effort, on the second day, I made the whole drive one big Primary partition and the BIOS could then see the SSD and booted just fine. So, now I re- partitioned the drive. With one vary small 25mb Primary partition so the second partition would be aligned corectly and the rest of the drive a "Primary" /root partition and it is seen by the BIOS and boots just fine.

So, Linux users if your not booting try to make all your partitions "Primary" partitions and it mite work for you too.

Note: HP "so called" tech support tried to tell me the laptop did not support SSD drives.
I had to explain to them that the computer didn't know it was a SSD. SSD's and HHD's communicate to the computer through a standard interface and instruction set, SATA. I think they just grab any guy off the street to work in toughs call centers.
... I'm right.. right?
----------------------------
And as always, You Rock OCZ All the other companies are a joke compared to you
These forums are half the product I was buying. Keep up the 'Amazing' good work

[winston_smith]

MacBook Pro Unibody (Early 2009)
Windows Vista Ultimate x64
Mac OS X 10.5.7
60GB Vertex Firmware: 1.30

I am uncertain if this is the exact same problem described, but I suspect it is. I have been unable to boot into either operating system on my MacBook Pro on several occasions. The system froze during boot, during the sliding green bar on Windows, and during the grey Apple screen on OS X. Oddly enough, I was able to boot into safe mode under Windows each time. I have experienced this problem several times now, though not since updating the drive's firmware to 1.30.

For anyone with a MacBook Pro, there are two different hotkey combinations that seem to resolve this issue:

Resetting PRAM and NVRAM

1. Shut down the computer.
2. Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
3. Turn on the computer.
4. Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the grey screen appears.
5. Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
6. Release the keys.

If that doesn't work you can also try to return the computer to its factory settings by pressing the left Shift key, left Option (alt) key, left Control key, and the power button simultaneously for five seconds. This will not modify any data on the drive. Your mileage may vary, though I have managed to recover from a seemingly borked system several times by using these methods.

[dune2]

Motherboard used: Asus P5K Premium
Bios used:
vertex drive used: 2x120 GBv1.10 RAID
AHCI used Y/N
IDE used Y/N
Non-member raid used Y/N
Clear cmos worked for me Y/N

Clearing CMOS didn't do anything for me (even tried the silly 'short circuit the battery socket with a coin), in the end I had to kill and re-establish the RAID, then re-align the partition and then reinstall. At least it's now booting again.