X25-M + WinXP alignment problems

[[LYL]Homer]

I'm rebuilding 2 workstations here at work that originally had conventional hard drives. My IT budget has been in the crapper this last year, and I can't interrupt any production time. I got two of the Dane Electric 80gb X25-M G1 drives several months back and just cloned them with Acronis to have no downtime. They have been having stuttering of 5-10 seconds several times an hour since and I figured I'd get around to doing a clean install and align them when I had time and swap out the slower CPU's for some E8400's. Today is that time.

It's been one of those hellish days though - BIOS issues, floppy issues, and AHCI issues. I've got 3 boards to make 2 systems out of by tomorrow morning (the 3rd is for the backup PC) - Asus P5K-VM, Gigabyte G31M-S2L, and ECS G33T-M2 and all have been working fine so I know they aren't duds. I'm installing WinXP Pro SP1.

1. AHCI - tried to install under AHCI mode on all 3 boards. F6, load correct driver, Windows continues to load, gets to "Windows is starting" and it BSOD's. I've been all over the web and back looking for solutions, but it seems to be a common problem and I've decided to give up on AHCI. Switched to IDE mode.

2. Alignment - I have my personal Win7 system here at work so I can hook up the SSD's and follow the OCZ guide here to hook them up as a 'spare' and go through the CMD box. I've tried 1024 and 2048 offsets (under AHCI and IDE) and I'm getting further in the install, I pick the partition to install, don't format (per the OCZ guide), and Windows installs. However, on the reboot it is giving me "Error loading operating system".

This second item is where I could use some help. I'm about to clean the drives and and drop the alignment and go for a vanilla XP setup. Any thoughts?

 

[Old Hippie]

Paragon Software was giving away an easy-peasy alignment tool but you may be a little late.

 

[cditty]

Drop the alignment altogether. I have a number of boxes running off both the X25M and the lower class X25V. They are all running XP (albeit with SP3). None of them stutter. They are the fastest systems in the building (but not the fastest processors).

The X25 series can handle XP fine without alignment.

 

[[LYL]Homer]

Old Hippie - thanks, I did get that software a couple of weeks ago when you posted it elsewhere. I just ran it and it did align now (whereas it didn't after cloning the HD to the SSD).

Here is the result:

I'll report back if the stuttering happens at all.

 

[Old Hippie]

Old Hippie - thanks, I did get that software a couple of weeks ago when you posted it elsewhere. I just ran it and it did align now (whereas it didn't after cloning the HD to the SSD).

Here is the result:

Another satsified customer!