[percman]

Guess I was mistaking the main power cable from the MB for SATA cables. There are 3 cables so far hooked up to the DVD and 2 hard drives. Looks like there is a 4th spot for a cable - I thought the specs said 6? Where are the other 2?

 

I was also confused on what the connector is that I have my index finger on in the pic. It looks like a power connector but it's different than the ones connected to the other drives, plus it has the upper and lower squeeze things. Do you know what this is for? I also attached a picture of the entire PC with the cover off to show you what it looks like.

 

 

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So you do need to purchase a SATA cable then 

 

Picture one looks like an Aux Pex connector, these are connected to a molex type connection on the MB and supply any additional power that may be needed by the PCI-E slot.

 

 

[phillpower2]

So you do need to purchase a SATA cable then 

 

Picture one looks like an Aux Pex connector, these are connected to a molex type connection on the MB and supply any additional power that may be needed by the PCI-E slot.

 

 

[percman]

Don't most SSDs come with a SATA cable? I would assume so.

Little disappointed so far in Win 10 upgrade to the desktop. Even with the 8 GB it seems to run about the same if not a little slower. Hoping SSD might improve that.

[phillpower2]

Don't most SSDs come with a SATA cable? I would assume so. 

 

 

 

Nope, check the picture gallery at Newegg and let me know if you can see a SATA cable in the Mushkin SSD packaging that I post the link to.

 

Windows 10 is faster at booting up than Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 even on the old notebook that I use for work, one or more of your components sounds tired.

[percman]

Ordered from Amazon. With a deal by signing up for a credit card the total came to $30 for the 250 and a SATA cable. Should be in Monday, we'll see how it goes...

 

thanks for all the advice

[phillpower2]

That is a great deal 

 

You are most welcome btw and please do keep us posted 

[percman]

OK, on this saga goes...

For the life of me I can't get Win10 to install on the SSD. Here's the steps I've tried

1) Original theory was to, based on MS webpage, create a bootable USB jump drive. Then route the BIOS to boot to it, follow the instructions and have a clean install of 10 on the brand new drive
2) This doesn't work. Goes through boot sequence and then gets to a screen that just shows a blue window. The light on the jump drive is blinking but nothing ever happens - just the blue logo. Let it go for 15 minutes +
3) The SSD had a [bleep] of time even connecting via USB to a separate laptop (running Win10) Included "wizard" and migration software didn't even see the drive at all. Ran some format comands in the control panel and at last it came up with a volume in Explorer, showing it's size, contents, etc. BUT, migration software STILL doesn't see the drive at all
4) For sake of experimentation, I copied the exact same files that were on the jump drive to the SSD and tried to boot again, this time pointing to it. The boot sequence sees the SSD, but this time the entire boot stops cold with "Verify pool data". No annoying stalled Windows screen, no nothing.

At a complete loss. Couple questions - does the order of SATA cable matter? Back in IDE days you had to select which drive was primary, which was slave, etc. but I thought SATA negated all that. Tried different SATA ports and same result so I might have answered my own question....

Is there something more technical I'm missing? Advanced BIOS settings, some sort of incompatability with the MB? Knowing that Win10 installed and ran cleanly on a standard hard drive seems to contradict that as well. It just seems that no matter what, the PC wll not boot with the SSD.

Is the other route to boot the computer with the old standard HD and tell Win10 installer to place it on the SSD? Wouldn't that confuse things, Microsoft thinking that it is already installed and can't install a separate version on a different drive (to go to a different computer). I would think in installing it, the laptop wouldn't know where to point to???

Any ideas?

[percman]

Another update to previous post.

 

After more forum investigation, I created the USB flash drive using the ISO rather than the bootable. After about 8 minutes or so with the blue window, it finally starts to spin and I'm able to start installation. Gets through the key, etc. and stalls completely when it gets to where Windows should be installed. After selecting the SSD (after partitioning it with the laptop into 2 equal parts), this error comes up:

 

We couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one

After more reading there were two possible solutions mentioned for this. One was to go to the Advanced part and select the command prompt and enter:

 

Start DISKPART

Type LIST DISK and identify your HDD disk number (from 0 to n disks).

Type SELECT DISK <n> where <n> is your HDD disk number.

Type LIST PARTITION

Type SELECT PARTITION <n> where <n> is your partition number of the last drive (Drive 0 Unallocated Space 20 Gb)

Type CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

Type ACTIVE

Type FORMAT FS=NTFS QUICK

Type ASSIGN

Type EXIT twice (one to get out of DiskPart, the other to exit the command line tool)

 

When I type Diskpart, nothing happens. Not even sure what's supposed to happen. Can't even do anything but close the command prompt.

 

The other fix was to make sure the BIOS is showing to boot the HD first, NOT the jump, then select the jump on the boot menu. The theory there being that the install is trying to write to the jump drive rather than the SSD. Tried that, but the problem is that when selecting "removable" on the boot menu, the next screen only shows a floppy disk. There isn't even a floppy disk installed on the system! So, theorizing maybe the PC wouldn't care and would see the USB as the correct boot, I let it proceed and get "An operating system wasn't found. Try disonnecting any drives that contain an operating system."

 

At a loss at this point. Am I totally up a creek with the fact that in 2008 people were still using floppies and now they don't exist? Or the fact that a BIOS update showing that a boot is possible from USB should have been performed? Or, as a last ditch effort, maybe the only was is to try to scrounge for my original WIN7 disk, install IT on the SSD, and upgrad to Win 10 from there? That may be the best bet at this point but I'd love some advice....

 

[percman]

Best Answer

Went with the Win 7/back to Win 10 bit, after miraculously finding the old Win 7 disk. Had some trouble with product key issues until, duh, I found the sticker on the side of the case (though originally it was a Vista code)

 

Results:

 

Power up to full boot - 40 seconds (used to be 4 minutes)

Shut down: 13 seconds

 

Control Panel, office, all other programs run smoking fast. A lot of effort and learning but the end result: you can resurrect an old PC with relatively little $

 

This topic can be closed unless anyone else has any upgrade questions for Phillpower

[phillpower2]

Great news  a job well done on your behalf and thank you for the follow up percman