Two related problems

[pjaj]

I built my current PC 2 years ago. The motherboard is a Gigabyte X58A-UD3R. Originally I used a Crucial SATA II 256Gb SSD, just about state of the art at the time.
Over the next 2 years I suffered at least one BSOD per week which I initially put down to teething problems with Windows 7 Pro, but recently they had become more frequent and after most of them Windows did a checkdisk, so I reluctantly decided that the SSD was to blame and decided to replace it with the latest and greatest (if the reviews are to be believed) OCZ Vertex 4 SATA III 256GB drive.

Initially I attached it via an e-sata cable and an external power supply, formatted it and used EasUS Todo Backup utility to clone the Crucial disk onto it. So far so good I thought. However when I swapped them over the system couldn't find a bootable disk (missing osloader.dll ??). So out with the original WIndows 7 disk and run repair. After a couple of attempts it finally booted, but during the boot process it asked which of the Windows 7 images I wanted to boot from, offering 2 identical looking options! There is only one. It continues to do this. I presume that the MBR has been re-written by the repair and the utility got it slightly wrong. So question 1 -which is the safest MBR editing / repair utility to remove the unwanted double entry?

Upgrading from SATA II to SATA III (6Gbps) should allow me to connect the new drive to one of the two 6Gbps SATA ports on the Gigabyte board, but when I do, and go into the BIOS to tell it to boot from the OCZ drive (which it can obviously see) it says it's now not bootable, swapping back to a 3Gbps port and it boots. Question 2 - what am I doing wrong and how can I use the full potential of the new drive?

[Taxmancometh]

First I would try Backup software for data backup and recovery | Acronis

When you have a successful clone you may be able to use SATA III.

[stroyal]

At this point, I would not be cloning, I would just try to get your data on a good drive, with simple copying, as fast as you can.

SATA III should be backward compatible to SATAIII, both ways


As far as the latest and greatest, the only 2 brands that I have heard, have been dependable right along are Intel, and Samsung.

I would love to hear about others that are dependable, as those are the 2 most expensive ones.
It is hard to find honest reviews today, as all sights advertise, and don't want to loose advertisers.

It took me 6 month to figure out what were the best, by reading between the lines.

[pjaj]

Thanks for the advice, but I've already got the new drive working on a SATA II port. I don't need to copy or clone it again, and I'm stuck with the OCZ drive for now. My understanding is that a plain copy will not necessarily boot, it won't have the MBR or possibly the registry. Some files are hidden and / or locked. A clone utility runs by rebooting into its own minimal OS (looks like a small Linux environment) and then copying the entire drive, probably track for track.

[RicheemxX]

Depends on what kinds of copy you did. I've cloned 100's of drives what it sounds you like you did was just back and copy and not clone. There is a small difference at that is in the boot manager doesn't get copied on a backup.

If you are only using one drive you might try the start-up repair from W7. That might get rid of your problem if not EasyBCD. You can use BCDedit but something like like bootrec/bootrepair would be the last thought
Use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows

[pjaj]

Depends on what kinds of copy you did. I've cloned 100's of drives what it sounds you like you did was just back and copy and not clone. There is a small difference at that is in the boot manager doesn't get copied on a backup.

If you are only using one drive you might try the start-up repair from W7. That might get rid of your problem if not EasyBCD. You can use BCDedit but something like like bootrec/bootrepair would be the last thought
Use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows

Well, EasyUS Todo Backup has a specific clone option which asks you which is the source disk and which the target. After the usual warnings about loss of data on the target, it says it has to restart the PC and when it dose it looks like a cut down Linux environment. The clone then takes place over about 30-40 minutes and then the PC shuts down. At which point disk swapping can take place. It would appear that EasUS didn't do such a good job of cloning as they claimed.

EasyBCD did the trick on the MBR, I'm now only offered one option and I'm going to run it again to skip the offer completely. Apparently Windows 7 recovery had found a straight backup copy of Windows, which I take using XXCOPY, on another drive and it had made this bootable as well. I never tried booting from this. The PC contains multiple physical drives, one of which is purely a backup repository for the others.

[stroyal]

Sounds like you got it sorted.

I've only only been cloning for 25 years, so thanks for the explanation.

I've been using Acronis lately, and it has been flawless.
Every hard drive manufacturer has a cloning program, online for free.
They just don't call it that, except for WD, and they use a free version of Acronis

I wouldn't worry about the OCZ, as it is new, and probably hasn't been out long enough, to know how dependable it is.

Eventually the others will catch up with Intel, and Samsung, and could be their now.

For now, I'll pay a little more, and stick with a sure thing.

Edit
I've read the some cloning programs, can't clone SSDs, but have no experience with that.

[RicheemxX]

I've never used the EasyUs backup so I wasn't sure. I know though alot of people confuse cloning- ghosting and the backup.

Clone - is a direct copy, no software need and you should get MBR and all
Ghost - can be a clone but it can also be just an image and needs software
Backup/copy - You get just that, a direct copy of the contents of the drive you don't get the MBR and all

Like Stroyal I've heard mixed thoughts with cloning SSDs and I too have don't much of that.

Did you get the 6gbs problem worked out? Sometimes that is just something funky with the boot loader. Just like IDE-SATA use to be.

[pjaj]

Thanks everyone for helping me fix the MBR annoyance. Now, any ideas on the SATA II -> SATTA III port boot failure?

[stroyal]

Just a shot in the dark, but I have seen boards online, and in their description, not all SATA ports are bootable.

Some I have been looking at, have 3 SATA III, but only 1 is bootable.

Some have add on chips for the extra ports, and I think those won't boot.

The one that is built into the main chip set are the bootable ones.

Same goes for some SATAII ports

[stroyal]

Here is one, although it says for faster boot time, although that implies they all will boot, just not at the same speed.
Zoom into the SATA ports, and read the tape stuck to the top.
Newegg.com - ASRock H77 Pro4-M LGA 1155 Intel H77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Like I said, just a shot in the dark.

[stroyal]

Did you go into the BIOS and set the drive to boot from?

[pjaj]

Stroyal,

To try and boot from the SSD when connected to the SATA III port I went into the BIOS and selected it by name from the list of drives it presented. It then immediately tries to boot from the selected disk but says it isn't bootable.

Googling "Gigabyte ga-x58a-ud3r boot from sata III" throws up this discussion on Gigabyte's own forum

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R v2 and ssd SATA III

Apparently the Marvel 9128 chip (widely used at the time for its SATA III ports) had all sorts of problems, including being slower than the Intel SATA II ports! The SATA III port does work for a non bootable disk.
There are several threads on other forums which say pretty much the same - issues with the Marvel SATA III ports.
There may also be an issue with RAID configuration. I can't be sure, but it could be defaulting to RAID 1 or 0, and, since there is only one SSD drive connected, can't find an MBR.

So, until I decide to upgrade my mother board, I'm stuck with the Intel SATA II ports for my boot disk.

[stroyal]

So it is a bug, not by design, unless it only works on RAID, as you speculate.
That sucks, you almost can go SATAII speeds with a high end rotating drive.
SSDs really shine with SATAIII

I have used and like Gigabyte, but I'm going to use Asrock, in my next 2 builds.

Marvel makes controllers for SSDs also.

Intel used SandForce, and Samsung uses their own, so no worries there.

[pjaj]

Don't forget that my Gigabyte board is 2 years old, I'm sure they've fixed SATA III by now!