Another tech fair, another freebie !!

[WalkinTarget]

I went to a tech fair for a vendor based out of Mechanicsburg who we frequently buy PCs from today. They sell a nice PC, and we buy from them pretty much every year. They also have a raffle and give a way a TON of stuff, and everyone leaves with freebies including a nice Intel netbook bag and 8gb thumb drives, as well as a jacket or vest.

So, using a co-workers business cards that appear to be dipped in gold and blessed by holy men, I won yet again for the 3rd time in 4 years. Three years ago I scored a 19" LCD, last year I scored an Ipod Touch 8gb, and this year I got .. this:



A Kingston 96gb SSD V+ drive and a 16gb thumb drive.

Kind of an odd size, and I looked it up and it doesn't support trim that I see, plus it really isn't one of the fastest SSDs out there, but ... its FREE !!

So ... knowing that my PC wizardry skillz have diminished greatly in the past two years, what exactly is the correct way of copying my partitioned C: drive over to the SSD and making that the boot drive ?? I assume I will need to nuke my old C: partition and redistribute the space from that as well.

Ohh, and thank God for my WHS server !! Woohoo !! Full nightly backups of every PC on the network, so no chance I can lose any data over this migration. That might even be the best method for me to use to introduce this new drive.

[Duke{CLR}]

Nice, although it's just the computer gods calling you back form that nasty habit you picked up.

[WalkinTarget]

Nice, although it's just the computer gods calling you back form that nasty habit you picked up.

Nah, its just a minor setback on my computer cleansing. After 20+ years, I think I really hit the wall and could go no further. To say that I was obsessed with building and buying parts was an understatement. Some months I would be buying hardware every other day, and had several thousand tied up in entire PCs that just were not selling at the time.

My 'dirty' habit has me happy, and I even let all my PC mag subs run out, to be replaced by ATV mag subs. My enclosed trailer is the new money pit, as I have huge plans for that. So far, the entire floor was replaced and the wiring completely redone. On the list to do yet this year:

Group 27 deep cycle battery added
750w power inverter added
Interior paint and truck bed liner rolled on the floor
2.1 speaker setup with MP3 player
12v 15w solar charger setup to recharge the battery
Custom ramps that fold up into the trailer
Bag awning added to the exterior for shade

I looked at this kit last night, and its a full retail upgrade kit, so it looks like I will try that route and just put it together and see what happens. My PC was due an interior dusting anyhow, so I will eventually get around to dropping the SSD in it.

[Duke{CLR}]

So I guess it's like an alcoholic switching from small batch bourbon to scotch.

I appreciate your new found hobby and hope to get some sort of vehicles that my son and I can ride together and help increase our carbon footprint but I'm leaning to a pair of sleds.

[WalkinTarget]

Finally got around to setting up this SSD and I have had no luck at ALL getting Win7 to recognize it.

I used its included external drive case to externally plug the drive in to my existing Vista OS, then initialized it and made it one big volume, then formatted it. All thats left is to change my boot order to the SSD and point Win 7 at it .. but ... it will NOT recognize it !!

I'm rocking an old eVGA 750i FTW board, which does not support AHCI, so all I can do is go into the BIOS and set the drive to function in IDE mode, which I think I have done. Looking thru the eVGA forums, this is a known issue, but short of adding an ACHI capable SATA card, I have no way of making this work as it stands.

Even Vista will not see the drive under CompMgmt, as the only way I can get any OS to see it is plugged in via USB as an external drive. I tried changing it from SATA ports 3/4 to 1/2, but still no luck on this blasted thing. I am at my wits end !

[juneau]

I have AHCI. I think you should send me the drive.

[Donziboy2]

Im getting ready to build My Next Rig

I could use a nice free SSD :P

[WalkinTarget]

Well, I found a helpful chap in the eVGA forums who knows his SSD stuff, but everything that he's suggested I have already tried

Latest was this morning, when my Vista OS had a message onscreen that it found the SSD, but it needed formatted ?? Keep in mind that I had formatted it externally (via the included enclosure for the SSD kit) from the same OS yesterday.

So I go ahead, thinking, what the hell, and the OS informs me that the SSD is now an 8mb (yes, that's an 'M', not a 'G', so I know things are borked.

My next workaround was to load the newest Nvidia chipset driver, 15.51, and try the Nvidia drivers for the storage controller (I always use the MS one as the Nvidia one has in the past caused issues). The SSD had not appeared from within the OS since a reboot this morning, leading me to believe that I have either a bad SSD or a bad SATA cable. It does not show up under Disk Management as well, even tho it has been formatted twice.

[Duke{CLR}]

Im getting ready to build My Next Rig

I could use a nice free SSD :P

Nice list.

[Donziboy2]

Ya sadly I spent that much a few years back on an AMD 4800+ x2 CPU

[Duke{CLR}]

Ya sadly I spent that much a few years back on an AMD 4800+ x2 CPU

It's best not to look back on the $$ you spent on technology.

[Zantheus]

Im getting ready to build My Next Rig

I could use a nice free SSD :P

Re you planning on only having that one SSD for a HDD?

[Trooper110]

I need to start following WT around to tech fairs

[WalkinTarget]

I need to start following WT around to tech fairs

Dude, I have used the same co-workers business cards (and scratch out his name in place of mine) to win 4x in 6 years at the same event. Its amazing - like they are dipped in gold dust blessed by ancient Mayan priests !!! What I've won using his biz cards:

Microsoft Office package (with the MS t-shirt - just wore it yesterday too !)
19" AOC WS LCD
Ipod Touch 8gb
Kingston 96gb SSD

Anyhoo, I tried one last time last night. I disconnected the 1tb HD and used it known working SATA cable plugged into the SSD - booted to my Win7 DVD and it found no drive to install to .. arghhhh ...

Pulled it and will now test it on my AMD 965 B.E. build that I promised to build way back in January .. yea, I haven't gotten around to finishing it yet. Its not like the old days for me when I'd knock out a new build every month.

That is also an Nvidia chipset (590 SLI*) so it may have the same issues not supporting AHCI, but I can at least determine whether the SSD is the issue or whether it was the 750i board I first tested.


*What I found most amazing out of that build is that the old Asus M2n32-SLI Deluxe AM2 board (not an AM2+) actually works well with the AMD 965 AM3 chip !

[pigworthy]

Yea I remember spending $1200 for 32MB of ram. Now you can build a pretty nice computer for that with 8GB of ram.