24 April 2019

Fucking Computers

I bought an SSD drive for my laptop.

SSD drives are supposed to be faster than spinning disk hard drives.

The 750gb drive that was in the machine had an uncorrectable error from a crash during an update to Windows, but the 160gb drive that came with it originally was still OK.

So I yanked the 750 and installed the 160 then ran all the updates.

Five hours later...  I waited another four hours for Marv to get home to use his copy of Acronis True Image and cables.

Attached the 1tb SSD to the cables and began to clone away.

When it said it was done, tried to install the SSD into the laptop, Crispy.

No drive.

WTF!

After much wiggling discover that since the SSD is thinner than the HDD, it can flop down and lose connection.

Shimming one end keeps the drive in contact with the mobo and we're in business!

No sound card, or rather no audio hardware detected.

No video, sound and game controllers section in the device manager.

Finally locate the three things that have, for some reason, been disabled and reactivate their drivers.

We have sound!

Put the old 750gb into the Ultrabay HDD Caddy.  Move my files.

Try to play a movie with VLC, works great!

Try to play any video with iTunes.  Stutterwarp activated.  Resolution doesn't matter, file size doesn't matter.  Video is now unwatchable.  There were some little skips before, now it's like a '20's film.  BUT only if it's on the hard drive!  If I play off the cloud, it's fine.  Fuck you Apple!

No apparent cure and no care from Apple.  Lots of complaints.

Music still works, so there's that.

Boot times are WAY faster.

7 comments:

  1. Depending on the flavor of USB on the laptop and drive caddy (USB 2.0 or 3.0) and the transfer speed of the 750 GB drive (SATA 3 gbps or 6 gbps) AND the resolution of the video, that might be appropriate.

    I would guess the USB speed is USB 2.

    Also, is your AV software interfering? On Access Scanning across a slower USB link when you're also trying to read the file for playback could be a very contributing factor.

    Just some ideas, but you already have a work around so my comments are probably moot.

    A couple of notes.

    1: I like to find a piece of cardboard the correct thickness, and trim it to the dimensions of the SSD and use that for a shim for the entire drive. Or you could use an adhesive to keep the shim from shifting. But you're smart and have probably already done that.

    2: Backups are still important. Usually when a hard drive dies, there are utilities that can recover most files. But when an SSD (or thumb/flash drive) dies, there is usually no recovering anything as it's usually the controller chip that dies. Usually. Sometimes. Kinda sorta...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Machine ran fine on both the 160gb drive and 750gb drive.

      Cloning of 160gb drive created 1tb SSD with all kinds of problems.

      Not sure what speed the Ultrabay runs, but it's not on the USB bus.

      Delete
  2. "Fuck you Apple!"

    I think you have pinpointed the problem. :D

    But normally if I'm doing a drive swap I do a fresh install of the OS.

    Also, since your original drive is so "small" now you probably could do a bootable backup of it on a USB stick for cheap.

    ReplyDelete
  3. And let me know if one of these adapters will work in your system.

    https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:108912

    https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:108912

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad T420S. The issue is the bay is 9.5mm and relies on the thickness of the 2.5" drive to keep it aligned with the plug. The SanDisk SSD I got is 7mm. I've found several spacers which should work.

      I think I'm going to try to salvage this drive with a fresh install. The problem with this is the lack of disks which shipped with the refurbished machine...

      Delete
  4. Ultrabay, now I has more understandings.

    If you're running Windows 10, and have signed into it using an MS email account (Hotmail.com, outlook.com, xbox.com, etc) your license key should be saved in the MS cloud. If so, then you can use the MS Windows 10 media creator to build a USB drive to install Windows 10 from, or a DVD to do the same.

    If you're running Windows 7, 8, or 8.1, and have the license key from Lenovo, you can download the OS using the MS Software Download website.

    If you want more assistance with this, you can email me @ gmail via freddyboomboom. I can create the USB thumb drive or installer DVD and send them to you. It would be quicker to use a local machine, but I'd help out if you need me to.

    ReplyDelete

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