Mark Allanson
|
| posted on 21/7/13 at 03:34 PM |
|
|
How to format a SSD
I am building a new computer (again) and have bought a Scandisk 120GB SSD and I am going to load windows 8 onto it.
Thats the plan. I got the computer running, through bios, and started to load W8 but it wouldn't start the load, a brief flash of an error
message which is unreadable unless you are an alien.
Ah! i though - the SSD is not formatted - plug it into a cradle and turn on the W7 laptop, the drive is appearing as a 340mb drive which I
accidentally formatted to NTFS, and now shows 3 drives, 2 at 340mb and one at 0mb. All I want is one 120gb drive formatted to NTFS - why am I
struggling?
If you can keep you head, whilst all others around you are losing theirs, you are not fully aware of the situation
|
|
|
|
|
Slimy38
|
| posted on 21/7/13 at 03:52 PM |
|
|
Having the drive formatted (or even partitioned) should make no difference when you're installing an OS. In fact, you might be better off
plugging it back in the Win 7 PC and deleting all the partitions.
The error message sounds like a driver issue, which would stop the install on to SSD.
|
|
|
Mark Allanson
|
| posted on 21/7/13 at 03:53 PM |
|
|
I just ran Partition Magic 8, and it show 120gb with no partitions, tried to fomat it in PM8 but it errors out
If you can keep you head, whilst all others around you are losing theirs, you are not fully aware of the situation
|
|
|
Mark Allanson
|
| posted on 21/7/13 at 04:00 PM |
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Slimy38
Having the drive formatted (or even partitioned) should make no difference when you're installing an OS. In fact, you might be better off
plugging it back in the Win 7 PC and deleting all the partitions.
The error message sounds like a driver issue, which would stop the install on to SSD.
As this is a fresh install on W8, there won't be any drivers until I load some?
If you can keep you head, whilst all others around you are losing theirs, you are not fully aware of the situation
|
|
|
chrism
|
| posted on 21/7/13 at 04:27 PM |
|
|
The SSD not being formatted will make no difference to starting an install for Win8, it will let you delete and create partitions as part of the
install, how far does it get from booting to trying to install win8, as someone said above it could be a driver issue as sometimes you need drivers to
do the install in, winXP when the new SATA drives started coming out some machines would blue screen when you tried to install if the sata was in
native mode and not compatibility mode unledd you loaded drivers from a floppy disk as part of the initial install.
----------------------------
A little hard work never killed anyone, but why take the risk!
-----------------------------
|
|
|
Mark Allanson
|
| posted on 21/7/13 at 04:51 PM |
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by chrism
The SSD not being formatted will make no difference to starting an install for Win8, it will let you delete and create partitions as part of the
install, how far does it get from booting to trying to install win8, as someone said above it could be a driver issue as sometimes you need drivers to
do the install in, winXP when the new SATA drives started coming out some machines would blue screen when you tried to install if the sata was in
native mode and not compatibility mode unledd you loaded drivers from a floppy disk as part of the initial install.
What is happening, is that W8 fails to load on every occasion, and adds a 340mb partition every time, it now just says missing operating system when I
try to install, I am guessing there is an attempt limit to installing.
Can you explain this bit about drivers, it is a fresh install, and W8 is giving up hours before I would be installing any drivers, so there are no
drivers present except for anything in the DDR3 memory installed from the W8 disk (these should be up to date and up to the job of installing onto a
SSD?)
I also have a 1tb formatted drive in the same machine, would I do better to install to a partition and then use the installed W8 to sort the SSD, and
then try an install to the SSD?
How come something that is so simple normally be such a pain?
If you can keep you head, whilst all others around you are losing theirs, you are not fully aware of the situation
|
|
|
Slimy38
|
| posted on 21/7/13 at 05:35 PM |
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Allanson
quote:
Originally posted by chrism
The SSD not being formatted will make no difference to starting an install for Win8, it will let you delete and create partitions as part of the
install, how far does it get from booting to trying to install win8, as someone said above it could be a driver issue as sometimes you need drivers to
do the install in, winXP when the new SATA drives started coming out some machines would blue screen when you tried to install if the sata was in
native mode and not compatibility mode unledd you loaded drivers from a floppy disk as part of the initial install.
What is happening, is that W8 fails to load on every occasion, and adds a 340mb partition every time, it now just says missing operating system when I
try to install, I am guessing there is an attempt limit to installing.
Can you explain this bit about drivers, it is a fresh install, and W8 is giving up hours before I would be installing any drivers, so there are no
drivers present except for anything in the DDR3 memory installed from the W8 disk (these should be up to date and up to the job of installing onto a
SSD?)
I also have a 1tb formatted drive in the same machine, would I do better to install to a partition and then use the installed W8 to sort the SSD, and
then try an install to the SSD?
How come something that is so simple normally be such a pain?
The driver thing is a bit messy. Basically if Windows 8 installation doesn't have the correct driver, it can't even understand how to
format it properly. It may not even recognise it as a drive, hence the giving up before it tries. Windows being up to date isn't a foregone
conclusion, for example Windows 7 required a driver to handle >2TB partitions, and big drives have been around for quite a while now.
But perhaps it does seem a bit overkill considering as you say you would expect Win 8 to have the driver already. I did do a quick Google search, the
most common SSD problem with Windows 8 is the SATA mode, it should be set to AHCI. I've no idea what that is or why, but might as well start
with the easy options to see if it helps.
I'd strongly recommend against installing on one drive and then on another, I've tried that and every time I end up with the machine
booting off one and running off the other. And that becomes even more entertaining when you want to change one or the other!!
You're definitely not the first person to have trouble with SSD's, although I realise that's hardly a comfort.
|
|
|
BenTyreman
|
| posted on 21/7/13 at 05:54 PM |
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Allanson
it now just says missing operating system when I try to install, I am guessing there is an attempt limit to installing.
This can happen if the boot order is set to boot from HDD first and there is something written to the hard drive. Or it can happen if it's set
to boot from CDROM first, but you don't press enter within 3 seconds when told to do so. Check the boot order is set to CDROM first and make
sure you catch the message to press a key.
There is an option to load drivers in the Windows setup before the partitioning stage. This is only needed if your hard drive is not detected, which
is extremely rare.
Windows 8 does create 2 partitions during setup. One is for the main operating system, the smaller partition is part of the recovery options.
Blue screening can be caused by incorrect BIOS options. Have a look through the entire BIOS, specifically for entries relating to Windows 8. There
usually are a couple. As said before, AHCI is a Good Thing, and definitely recommended for an SSD.
Blue screening can also be caused by faulty RAM or faulty hard drive. You said this is a new build. Have you tried using Memtest86 to check the RAM?
You can also boot Parted Magic to use GSmartControl to run a hard drive SMART test.
Is the SATA cable new? Occasionally, weird things can be fixed just by replacing the cable.
|
|
|
BenTyreman
|
| posted on 21/7/13 at 05:56 PM |
|
|
Also, check for BIOS updates on the manufactures website. You might find yours is out of date, even on a brand new board. Some SSDs also have firmware
updates available, although I have never had to do this.
|
|
|
Mark Allanson
|
| posted on 21/7/13 at 06:03 PM |
|
|
My plan with the second 1TB hard drive was to get W8 on a partition, use it to sort the SSD formatting and the disconnect the 1TB and try a fresh
install on the SSD - does that sound like a plan?
Would a more up to date versio0n of partition magic help?
If you can keep you head, whilst all others around you are losing theirs, you are not fully aware of the situation
|
|
|
Slimy38
|
| posted on 21/7/13 at 06:17 PM |
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Allanson
My plan with the second 1TB hard drive was to get W8 on a partition, use it to sort the SSD formatting and the disconnect the 1TB and try a fresh
install on the SSD - does that sound like a plan?
Would a more up to date versio0n of partition magic help?
Tidying up the SSD partitions would be a very good idea, but you mentioned in your first post that you have the ability to attach it to another PC?
Even though it's running Windows 7 you should be able to clean up all the partitions, using Windows 8 to sort the formatting won't give
you anything extra.
I wouldn't use partition magic at all, let Windows 8 create it's own partitions.
|
|
|
BenTyreman
|
| posted on 21/7/13 at 07:24 PM |
|
|
If you have a spare 1TB, have you tried to install W8 on that? If that succeeds, then you have narrowed the problem down to the SSD. Also, depending
on the motherboard, there might be 2 different SATA controllers onboard. Try using the other controller.
[Edited on 21/7/13 by BenTyreman]
|
|
|
