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All Intel X-25m owners - Intel has fixed your boot camp issue

TechViking said:
I have this working now, Win XP on bootcamp. I believe the fix was deleting a hidden 200 MB partition at the start of the X25-M drive. It seems to have confused XP at various stages of the installation about which partition # XP was being installed on.
Click to expand...

so deleting that 200mb partition is the fix?
 
iJimmy said:
so deleting that 200mb partition is the fix?
Click to expand...

It let me install Windows XP. BUT I discovered that removing the 200 MB EFI partition had side effects. I were no longer able to select a startup disc in the tool in OS X. Neither the OS X partition or the XP partition showed up there anymore. This led to slightly longer boot times, so I was not satisfied with this solution.

This is a step by step list on how I was able to install XP without deleting the 200 MB EFI partition. The key is letting the rEFIt software fix some GUID/MBR issue, halfway through the XP PRO SP3 installation.


1. Install OS X on the entire X25-M as one partition.
2. Use the Boot Camp assistant to create the windows partition. I made the two partitions equally sized at about 37 GB.
3. Start the XP installation. Choose the FAT32 partition created by bootcamp as the XP drive.
4. Continue with XP installation until it restarts.
5. I then get the "missing hal.dll" or "disk error" and cant continue with XP installation.
6. Boot into OS X and install something called rEFIt available from http://refit.sourceforge.net/ .
7. Reboot and hold the option key down to choose what to boot, and then select "rEFIt".
8. Run the partition analyzer in rEFIt. It will analyze the GUID and MBR tables and will find an "error" and suggest a change.
9. Answer yes when asked if you want rEFIt to do the change.
10. Reboot and restart the XP installation all over again.
11. Remove the FAT32 partition created by bootcamp and create a new NTFS partition instead.
12. Install XP on the newly created NTFS partition.
13. When the XP installation reboots, the "missing hal.dll" error is not shown anymore and the XP installation will be able to continue successfully.
14. Uninstall rEFIt.
15. Start enyoing having both XP in bootcamp and OS X installed on the X25-M. :)
 
Is the defragmentation an ongoing thing or do I have to rewrite to the drive?

Is the drive "self cleaning" WRT to defragmentation issue?

Also when I launch Speed Tools Utilities Quickbench to do performance I'm seeing the following error

"Unable to find test file!"

Has anybody tried running Disk Warrior on their new firmware yet because it's not working very well for me. It seems to get stuck right now.
 
I am in the process of doing this right NOW as I write this and I have two SSD drives to do . X bench was 232 just before I started this. Fingers crossed it will get back up. I am using my daughters old white Macbook and inserting my drives in that. This is a pain because I was Raid 0 so i have to zero out both disks and get them formatted first than zap them than put both back in MBP make a new Raid 0 and clone over a backup which I am on right now as the drives write to zero. Geez do i get paid for this or what. LOL

Will report in a hour or so on new X bench score. Hopefully it may actually do something good
 
Booting RAID 0 on a MacBook 17" unibody

Has anyone out there successfully booted a Macbook Pro 17" unibody with two Intel X25-M 160GB drives in a striped RAID?

I just received my two new drives, updated the firmware to 045C8820, striped them in an Apple software RAID 0, and then used SuperDuper to duplicate a fresh install of Mac OS 10.5.6 back onto it.

The machine won't boot. It goes to the question mark icon.

Now, I'm going to try to install from the DVD directly onto the striped partition...
 
I have them in the 15 inch. Here is the issue when you boot up holding the option key. You actually see two drives . Try with Drive 1 and see if it works. If not it will show the question mark. Than reboot and try the other one. I ran into the same thing and I could not figure it out at first. The only other issue is Super duper could maybe not have loaded correctly . I use Carbon Cloaner

I actually have 2 80gb in Raid 0 but same issue
 
How does that compare with MCE's Optibay product then?

Also did you go ahead and buy an external burner then?

What did you do with your original burner?

I have a MacBook Air Superdrive that I guess could be hacked to work over USB but I'm guessing it wouldn't be supported by iDvd etc.

Also, has anybody been able to use UBCD 5 and HDDerase 4.0 to wipe the drive? When I tried all I got was a flashing cursor when it started HDDerase 4.0



Guy Mancuso said:
Yes I have two internal. I used maxuprades bracket and took out the optical drive.

http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=Product.display&product_id=186
Click to expand...
 
There most likely very much the same . The Maxupgrade unit did not come with instructions although that may have changed but very solid and the drive is held into the bracket with two screws and very secure. The connector is also held down with screws so coming loose is very remote. Price difference is 30 dollars in favor of the maxupgrades so not sure what a extra 30 bucks gets you. I figured it out in about 5 minutes .
 
What is involved then in removing the existing Optical drive?

Guy Mancuso said:
There most likely very much the same . The Maxupgrade unit did not come with instructions although that may have changed but very solid and the drive is held into the bracket with two screws and very secure. The connector is also held down with screws so coming loose is very remote. Price difference is 30 dollars in favor of the maxupgrades so not sure what a extra 30 bucks gets you. I figured it out in about 5 minutes .
Click to expand...
 
Really not that hard basically 3 screws to take out the optical but there is a connector you have to take off the mother board that you just need to be careful. Also there is another cable that you just need to free up off the optical housing and slide it out under it . There is a site that showed a tear down on the unibody that was pretty interesting to view the images. I need to find that and post it since it shows what Apple did on installation
 
plesset said:
Well there is a difference. My system is faster. Here are the before and after xbench results. Both were run after a reboot. I upgraded on my 2.66 uMBP. No issues with the nVidia chipset. Update took a few seconds.

Before the Firmware Update:

3439217867_0f502fa65c_o.jpg


After:

3439216651_c4ae527dea_o.jpg
Click to expand...

What benchmark tool is that?
 
I dont know how you managed this, my xbench actually went down a point after the upgrade! :)

plesset said:
Well there is a difference. My system is faster. Here are the before and after xbench results. Both were run after a reboot. I upgraded on my 2.66 uMBP. No issues with the nVidia chipset. Update took a few seconds.

Before the Firmware Update:

3439217867_0f502fa65c_o.jpg


After:

3439216651_c4ae527dea_o.jpg
Click to expand...
 
My 2.4 alu MB arrived today. Here's my xbench on a fresh install.
 

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so, sorry to be a thread resurrector, but could I get a final answer on this: CAN we install a bootcamp xp on this x25 drive or not?

I'm planning on getting a 160gb from newegg, and splitting it 75/25 (haha..."we could do 50/50/50" -one of the McPoyle twins, <i>always sunny</i>) with the 75 (120gb) going to osx, and the 25 (40gb) to windows, primarily to run autocad (I'm even wondering if 40 is too much for windows, but that's not important).

Alright, actually, now I'm planning on waiting for the 2ndGen version to ship...but the point still stands, is bootcamp working on these drives?
 
Anyone know if the firmware can be upgraded when the SSD is connected via USB?
I guess not, as the intel updater fails to find any Intel SSDs (I am trying this on a Lenovo laptop at work). I have the 902 with FW 8610 btw.
Windows sees the drive fine.
 
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