Ssd Follow Up

[HumbleChief]

I know not everyone reads every post but I posted recently about having some problems with my SSD drive here; https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/2712-question-about-archived-files/?hl=drive#entry22099

 

..and in the hopes of saving someone else the pain I THINK I have the problem figured out. While using the computer with my SSD drive hooked up I got a few BSOD's (Blue Screens of Death) and corrupted files and all kinds of mayhem. Eventually I couldn't boot to the SSD. It would just hang at the Windows Welcome screen, or just go black. I figured the boot record of the SSD was corrupted and it was not going to work at all. 

 

I re-set my other 1tb drive as the boot drive and I could still get to the files from the SSD (at least the ones that weren't corrupted) and transfer them to the 1tb drive and I was back in business. (Carbonite SAVED my a$$ by the way).

 

I still couldn't boot to the SSD, but I could read files, a little mysterious but very cool.

 

The other morning I woke up to turn on my computer and - nuthin'. No lights, no noise - no nuthin'.

 

So I'm thinking power supply. One of the dead easiest fixes and one of the hardest problems to diagnose because they go out slowly and just mess with your head. If they go out completely then that can be the greatest news - just go by another and install it.

 

I ended up with a 1050 watt Corsair Professional ($199 at Fry's) and everything sprang back to life but i didn't want to messed with what I thought was a messed up SSD drive so I left it unhooked until today when I had a little time to play around.

 

The PS is a modular one so I took a dedicated SATA power supply from the PS directly to the SSD and tried booting from the SSD just to see what might happen. It booted up fine. Like nothing happened.

 

It's only been running for a half an hour but it seems OK for now.

 

Thing is it's very very hard to tell if the PS is going bad and I was lucky to find it completely dead and the problem is not always related to what you think it is.

 

Anyway hope that helps someone else with computer problems

[Dennis_Gavin]

Larry - I thin is a very valuable and helpful post. Thanks for taking the time.

[DRAWZILLA]

Larry, glad your alive again. Btw ,I have a 1000watt power supply, but you would think the SSD would require less power.

[HumbleChief]

Thanks Perry,

 

I think SSD's only take about 2-3 watts to operate, versus 5 - 6 for a regular HDD,  but maybe adding one more thing to my 750 watt PS was all it could take? And sometimes they draw off of different PS 'rails' and that can have an effect but anything beyond that is above my pay grade.

 

Will never know but it seems stable for now - nothing worse than a system that goes rogue.

[Rich_Winsor]

A little like closing the barn door after the horses are gone,

but check out this link to the Corsair website. You can test

your power supply with literally nothing more than a paper

clip. I had a rig that became increasingly unstable finally to

the point of being unbootable. While in it's death throws it

manifested numerous symptoms; memory error beep codes,

video driver error messages, a totally unresponsive mouse

and others I am probably forgetting. I troubleshot everything

from the video and mouse drivers to swapping out memory

chips to by passing the case power switch to testing the

power supply and lord know what else before I came to the

grim realization that the culprit was the motherboard itself.

This pissed me off to no end since it was a very pricy top

of the line MB and of course you have to tear your rig

completely down to replace it.

 

 

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/support/faqs/power-supplies

[Kbird1]

a lot of (good) PS  have a 5 yr warranty so check into it before buying new , Corsair's RMA process is pretty painless ,and they will cross ship with a C.Card No#.

 

worth checking even if you already brought new , process the RMA anyway ,and you'll have a spare to help with diagnosing next time.

 

Sounds like you cloned the SSD from your HD , did you align the SSD 1st ?  Win7 and 8 will recognise a SSD on a Clean install and align the drive automatically , if you are cloning you must do it yourself 1st, lots of tuts online about it and how to check it.

 

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATIH2013/index.html#21807.html

(acronis has a free version if you have western digital drives)

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATIH2013/index.html#21806.html

 

A PDF from Intel

Intel ssd-partition-alignment-tech-brief.pdf

 

 

M.

[HumbleChief]

Thanks Mick,

 

I don't have any paper work on the PS but may try your advice as it's only a year old, at most.

 

I hadn't heard of aligning the SSD and I did indeed clone from my HDD but it looks like it's aligned anyway according to the pdf you linked to. Thanks for taking the time to offer the advice.

[Kbird1]

No problem , I mentioned it cos I had issues with a cloned SSD myself even though everything I used to test / check the alignment said it was good , the issues went away once I did a fresh install.  That may not be the issue here of course.

 

If you  have the receipt for the computer that is good enough for the PS RMA , most stores only do a  warranty for 1  yr but many parts like Ps and HD's have 3 or even 5 yr warranty's but you need to deal directly with the Manufacturer for that.

[HumbleChief]

..That may not be the issue here of course.

..sorry Mick but probably didn't make myself that clear in that there really isn't any issue here anymore. Power supply was bad - replaced power supply - all good in computer land, but thanks so much for the info and advice, I won't forget it if something goes wrong again..