P55M-UD2 boot freeze with SSD

[Patch]

I found this forum after experiencing problems trying to hook up a new SSD that I bought. Although I appear to have found a working solution I would be grateful for any advice about if my settings are correct and optimised.

Kit -
GA-P55M-UD2 (rev 1.0) with i5 750 & 4Gb Crucial RAM
OCZ Vertex 2 60Gb SSD
Samsung F3 1Tb
Philips DVD R/W (IDE)

After unplugging the existing HD I installed Win 7 x64 to the new SSD without problem. BIOS for SATA RAID/AHCI Mode (Intel P55 Chipset) was set to AHCI and the SSD was plugged in to SATA2_0. Boot up times put a smile on my face and this was confirmed with a Win Experience score of 7.9 for the drive.

I next updated the drivers for the various mobo bits including SATA with the latest versions from the GB web site.

Problems started when I replugged the Samsung F3 into SATA2_2 - the PC would freeze during boot and on subsequent reboots not even allow me to enter the BIOS. To be honest I tried so many permutations that did not work I have lost track a bit. However, last night I found the Samsung could be 'hot plugged' into SATA2_2 once the OS had loaded from the SSD, so I knew that it was not a physical problem. I then tried the Samsung plugged into GSATA2_0 (the SSD was still in SATA2_0) and set the BIOS Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode to "IDE" (I had previously had these Disabled).

Like this the PC boots up from the SSD and the data on the Samsung can be viewed in Explorer.

So  my question is, why does the PC freeze when the Samsung is plugged into any of the 4 blue SATA connectors? I there something I have overlooked? Is my ancient IDE DVD writer the source of the problem (I would be quite happy to get a SATA device and disable all IDE)

Cheers

Pat

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte UK Forum.

Firstly I would advise you to change your IDE optical drive to a SATA one. This is because often IDE and SATA devices don't happily co-exist on one system.

Did your Samsung F3 drive used to be the boot drive for the machine?
If so have you re-formatted it and cleaned off all the original OS from it?

[Patch]

Thanks for such a quick reply.

Yes, the Samsung was my previous boot drive and still contains the 100Mb hidden and an 'old c:'  as well as all my data in another partition. Is that the reason why the boot up freezes? My plan was to get the SSD running smoothly and get all the mail and other settings migrated before wiping the old Win 7. I will clean off the first 2 partitions if you confirm that you suspect this to be the probable problem - I have had several physical disks installed in the PC in the past all with separate OS without problems. Wiping my existing working drive was not something I was prepared to do before the SSD had proved itself.

I think I will also get a new SATA DVD despite my IDE one working OK, it is amazing how cheap they are these days - my first 6x rewritable CD drive was around £250!

[Dark Mantis]

Yes I think that is the problem. Your new OS setup is conflicting with the original. Your system is confused by the two active partitions with OSes on them.
If you dont want to wipe your data off the drive you could always copy it to another medium before wiping it.

About £20 will buy you a decent SATA DVD writer now. Big difference.