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Archived This topic has been archived. Information and links in this thread may no longer be available or relevant. If you have a question create a new topic by clicking here and select the appropriate board.
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Just been caught out aswell, I just expected it to work as it should.

 

I bought two 6560b and two OCZ Agility 3 240GB drives, tried to install Windows 7 Pro 64-bit but wouldn't install, failing on the format of the partitions, if it can see the drive at all.

 

I have tried lots of different ways to get it working, upgrading firmware, linux partitioning, BIOS settings.  I have had some success it installed once, rebooted a could of times, then wouldn't boot.  I could install Windows when I had the SSD as an external eSATA drive, but as that is not what I am after I cancelled the install after the first reboot.

 

I never expected that I would have so much trouble.

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@tsargent:

If I understood you correctly, you meant to type ' failing on the format of the partitions as it can't see the drive at all.', am I correct? 

 

It is interesting to hear that these Sata-III drives worked ramdomly. Do you still have both notebooks and drives? 

 

One possible explanation is a relation to voltage problems. Therefore, plugging the notebook in instead of running it on battery (or the other way round) could have *some* effect on the problem, as well as starting from a notebook that was off (cold-boot) compared to restarting a running laptop (warm-boot)

 

The drives did work fine with an eSATA connection? There could be 2 explanations for that. The first and most obvious one is that the eSata-Port, which is technically a sata-port, is not connected to one of the two available sata-III ports that appear to malfunction somehow (with sata-III drives only).

 

The second is, again, the voltage-thing: external hdd enclosures are connected differently to the battery that internal drives. Remember, I'm just guessing, I'm not ready yet to start measuring the voltage supplied in my 6560b..

 

One possibility of further determining the cause of the hardware malfunction would be quite simple: swapping the internal dvd drive of the 6560b with a sata-III SSD mounted into a HP 2011 BNB-like replacement case.

 

As far as I know, the optical drive is only connected to a sata-II port and should therefore work flawless if the error is caused by the sata-III implementation of the 6560b notebook. If it doesn't, then we know it's a voltage/electricity problem (as drives and chipset seem fine) and simple software changes might not ne able to fix the problem.

 

 

By the way: another non-working m4 drive w/ 6560b notebook.

 

There seem to be a lot of frustrated enthusiasts and experts caught by this problem. All of which won't buy a notebook from HP again, I figure, if HP does continue to ignore the problem.

 

*every owner, sooner or later, when sata-III drives are common with normal HDDs

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I have corrected my post, should have been "if it can see the drive at all"

 

I have done all my testing with the power supply connected, I don't think it would be a power supply issue to the drive as they use less power.  More likely a hardware timing issue due to a board layout or substandard component that might be resolved with different timings in the bios.  Temperature could also be another factor effecting timing.

 

I have ordered a couple of SATA-II SSDs to try and a drive caddy for the upgrade bay, I need to get something to work.

 

I am running at reduced speed the SSD externally on the eSATA port with Windows on the HDD.  Far from ideal but that is the best I can do for now.  I mainly wanted the SSD for running virtual machines on the notebook.  A single HDD is just too slow.

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I agree with you concerning the power consumption, but I can imagine a voltage beeing to high or too low, for example the 3.3V supply, which could cause every SSD to malfunction / revert to an unusable state.

 

I sincerely hope that this is not the case, because that would be IMHO unfixable without serious hardware changes.

 

Hardware timing issues can cause the problem. But why does sata-II work perfectly, and why won't  the drives revert to sata-II if sata-III does not work? Intel surely double-checked their sata-III parts after that 750million+ (?) loss they had due to their faulty sata-II chipsets 😉

 

Stupid BIOS settings make sense. I really hope it's that one, and one update solves it all 😛

But for that, HP has to care about the problem first. Did anyone try to send a mail to HP? They don't even have the 6560b in their notebook list on the support page (Notebook - 'Probook') .. after over 1 year of shipping the thing!

Great job, guys..

 

Back to the error sources:

Temperature .. I can't gurantee that it has nothing to do with it, as most physical properties of most things (including hardware parts) change with temperature, but I can't see any connection here. I'm not using my notebook in extremely hot or cold weather. The problem appears with any notebook (no exceptions known), so failure due to weather or wrong storage of the notebook can be excluded.

 

 

My guess for your experiments is: the Sata-II drives will work just fine.

I'm definitely curious about the sata-III drive in the upgrade bay.

 

I'm familiar with virtual machines being slow..

Generally, programs (especially poorly coded programs), are slow to respond if they have to idle 15ms+ for simple file operations. That's the reason SSDs are so popular, and also the reason why this bug is a serious one. In ~2 years, when the SSD price is 1/2 compared with identical drives today, this bug will impact a lot of users.

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My third party caddy just arrived today and it doesn't work with my Agility 3, I can't say I am too surprised but it was worth a try.  The HDD drive does work in the upgrade bay, so the caddy does work.

 

I bought an older Vertex 2 SSD (SATA II) for my primary drive and that works.  Just have to run my Agility 3 drive on the eSATA which is a nuisance.

 

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Hi everybody,

I got the same problem here. Just bought ProBook 6560b last week and SSD Agility 3 to improve its performace.

But when I boot, the disk is not visible - not for BIOS, not for Win7 install. Also tried that in upgrade bay but with the same result. Strange is that when I boot to live Linux distro, I can normally work with the SSD. That makes me think, that the problem is somewhere in the BIOS.

Just leaving this post here to let HP know that there are more users with this problem.

Dusan

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Same here. I was able to see the disk with a Linux Live USB but not boot it after install on disk.

 

There is definitely something going on at BIOS level. You can see at boot that linux kernel re-initializes SATA speed 2/3 times before being able to make it work properly. (Crucial M4 128 GB SATA3 REV9).

 

I also have an upgrade bay and I can tell you that every single SSD I tried did not work in the upgrade bay. Only traditional disks are working which is really weird.

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@tsargent:

that's bad news for an 'easy' (though not as practicable) workaround for our problem.

 

Be careful with the Vertex 2, they tend to die without warning and without recovery options. (Except for professional data services)

OCZ really scr*wed that one up. 

And by the way: I'm still waiting on my replacement drive ..

 

 ---

 

I am not completely sure that the sata-port in the optical drive bay is only sata-II, but my research with win/linux indicates that. Apparently, ports 0 and 1 are sata-III while the optical drive bay is on a higher port number, therefore non-sata-III.

Keep searching .. there might be differences in win/linux port enumeration.

 

@Dusano, Slym:

You were able to perform normal write/read operations with sata-III drives under linux?

Now that is promising!

In my opinion, that means:

- there is no general electrical issue (unclear during boot time)

- there is no severe chipset bug for sata-III

- there is no general timing issue for sata

 

Could you repeat your tests with linux/sata-III and check for

- real sata-III speed (reported speed class and benchmark values)

- used kernel version (2.6.x, or 3.0.x if your linux is brand-new. Mostly shown during boot time. Also available via 'uname -r' command)

 

 

Is it possible for one of you to call the support hotline (if you haven't already) and demand to get some expert to look at this forum thread? As I'm living outside the U.S., I doubt I'll reach more than just some general help assistant, as the local HP website isn't even listing the 6560b.

 

@Slym: you tried a sata-II drive in the upgrade bay and it didn't work? Really?

Were you able to see them while using linux?

 

By the way, an older thread mentioned the bios option 'hd translation', which apparently has an effect on SSDs and needs to be changed from 'bit shift' to 'LBA'.

Both modes are basically a workaround for the mistake of some guys from the 1990s who thought we would not need more than 528 MB on our hard drives, ever 😉

The change should not have any effect, but somehow it did with the HP nc6320.

If I recall correctly, our BIOS does not have that option .. but HP should be able implement that if necessary.

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Yep, I tried a few SSD in the upgrade bay and none worked (OCZ Vertex 3 SATA3, OCZ ONYX SATA2 and Crucial M4 SATA3 REV2 + REV9).

 

In my tests, Windows 7 x64 was running. It has only detected a standard disk in the upgrade bay.

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Crazy behaviour. But it confirms that there are differences between the main drive slot and the optical drive slot/(upgrade bay slot), at least in software (BIOS, probably).

 

As I said, performance indicators / benchmarks with linux would be great. Do sata-III drives run as sata-III via the e-sata port? Because, if they do, we know where the second sata-III port went ..

 

 

Please, call support or contact them through seller/somehow else.

Somebody from HP should work on this issue as fast as possible, since by now it's totally clear it's their fault and  not Intels / one of the SSD manufacturers ..

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