Intel SSD toolbox - Can't connect to drive

Ryom

Ryom

[H]ard|Gawd
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Oct 11, 2006
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I just updated my X25m G2 with the latest firmware. I installed the Intel SSD Toolbox but it says: Error connecting to drive.

I'm running Win7, the drive is connected via normal SATA (not RAID enabled).

Any ideas? The firmware updated fine so I don't see why there should be any problems from inside Windows.
 
Shouldn't the controller still be in RAID mode (or AHCI standalone mode of your BIOS offers it)? Otherwise TRIM wont work and Windows 7 could treat your SSD like an ordinary HDD... which is, from what I understand, a BAD thing as Windows 7 constantly defrags and does other stuff in the background that's not needed and even detrimental to an SSD.

What board do you have? If it's an Intel board make sure the controllers are set to AHCI or AHCI+RAID in the BIOS, and make sure you have the latest Intel Matrix Storage driver installed.
 
What did you update from to? (If 02HA to 02HD, there was no need for a firmware update! Wish Intel would be more specific about this.)

It's possible the firmware update borked the controller. Try putting the SSD in a different rig, and see if it can see and access it.

P.S.

After a couple weeks when I did the above version switch, (Not knowing it was not needed.) my SDD disappeared and had to be RMA'd. I just left 02HA on this one, no issues yet.
 
as-ssd-bench%20INTEL%20SS%20DSA2M08%204.20.2010%208-34-33%20PM.png


as-ssd-bench%20INTEL%20SS%20DSA2M08%204.20.2010%208-34-53%20PM2.png
 
You installed nVidia RAID/AHCI/IDE drivers; please uninstall them and use the Microsoft AHCI driver (default) or Intel driver.

Also, i can see you are running with bad alignment; 31.5KiB; that is the way Windows XP creates partitions but you have Windows 7. You probably used some clone software, but that means you are now running unaligned; you may want to look into this if you care about some extra performance from your SSD.

The recommended course of action would be to reinstall Windows 7 to the SSD doing a full format - or - a secure erase before installing Windows 7 and not doing a full format. The default install of Windows 7 would give you a 1024KiB offset which is perfect for SSDs.

The performance difference on Intel SSDs running unaligned is relatively small though, about 23% according to some sources on the web.
 
I installed Win7 directly to the Intel SSD (I let Win7 setup format the drive). No cloning or upgrading involved. The drivers that are being used for the drives should be the standard one that Win7 uses, I didn't install any drivers for the motherboard, only what Win7 provided.

The crazy numbers are from the drive compression I have enabled, it messes up benchmark programs.
 
I checked the device manager, it says that an nvidia driver is installed. I don't recall specifically installing storage drivers, so maybe it came with a GFX driver update? I really couldn't say.
 
Did you install chipset drivers? That would include the nVidia drivers.

Also, it is highly unlikely you did a clean install. Did you delete any existing partition on the SSD; did you let Windows 7 create the partition? If that was true you should have 1024KiB alignment and not 31.5KiB which is how XP creates partitions.
 
You need to manually go to HD controller in the Device Manager... update / change driver... and manually select the default MS driver.
 
I got a brand new Intel from Newegg, unhooked my Raptor with XP installed, plugged the Intel in and installed Win7 and let it format and partition the drive. That was the process. Neither XP nor Vista has ever touched the drive. The first and only OS loaded was Win7 64bit.

I went looking for the MS driver last night, I don't see it available in the list. I'm a bit concerned about fiddling around with the chipset drivers and rendering my PC unbootable as well.
 
I did the exact same thing you did (install a clean Win7 64-Bit on my Intel SSD) and came out with 1024KiB. Could windows possibly be loading the chipset drivers for the 680i instead of the windows drivers? I dont have a friend running the 680i & an SSD to compare. I did switch between the AMD AHCI driver and the MS driver without issue just to compare performance. I ended up uninstalling the AMD driver because it wasn't as quick as the msahci driver.

EDIT: The compression could also cause problems with The Toolbox Software possibly?
 
I removed the drive compression to test, same result: Can't connect to drive.

I checked my BIOS... RAID is disabled, it should be running plain old SATA without any shims from the Nvidia RAID implementation between.
 
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