Help Me Build My PC Catch-All

So I've finally got my new parts and step one was migrating my boot drive or doing a clean install of Win 7. I finally go the SSD and now after cloning it I'm getting stuck on "Verifying DMI Pool Data" when I try to boot from it. Here are the steps I took:

1) I partitioned my old 500GB boot drive down to 240GB cause EaseUS was telling me there wasn't enough space on the 256GB SSD to clone the entire partition.
2) Cloned the boot drive to the SSD
3) Used Gparted Live CD to realign my SSD

Now after changing the start up disk to my new SSD I'm getting stuck on "Verifying DMI Pool Data"

Any suggestions on fixes? Thanks!

Man, my friend had his new MSI laptop shipped to me, as well as a 256gb Crucial SSD. I tried cloning the original hard drive with Win7 on it to the SSD quite a few ways, nothing seemed to work. I tried Acronis, it copied the first 2 partitions, the MSI restore and the Windows 100mb partition, but not the main one. I tried EaseUS, I think I got the same problem as you guitarlicks4, and I tried Clonezilla, and it said that the HDD was too large to clone, although the 3 partitions were smaller than the SSD.

In the end, I just installed a fresh copy of Win7 and got all the drivers from the website. So much easier...

Citizen86 wrote:

Man, my friend had his new MSI laptop shipped to me, as well as a 256gb Crucial SSD. I tried cloning the original hard drive with Win7 on it to the SSD quite a few ways, nothing seemed to work. I tried Acronis, it copied the first 2 partitions, the MSI restore and the Windows 100mb partition, but not the main one. I tried EaseUS, I think I got the same problem as you guitarlicks4, and I tried Clonezilla, and it said that the HDD was too large to clone, although the 3 partitions were smaller than the SSD.

In the end, I just installed a fresh copy of Win7 and got all the drivers from the website. So much easier...

yeah...we're I've talked to a few friends about this issue and everyone seems to agree that just doing a clean install would probably be the best thing to do. If I have to run a repair disc to fix the boot files then who knows what else is probably going wrong in there.

I'm getting stuck on "Verifying DMI Pool Data"

First thing to do is to disconnect all other hard and pen drives; make sure you have only one hard drive in the system.

If that fixes it, it was probably just the BIOS boot order being wrong -- one of the other drives was listed first, and it had enough of a Windows install to start booting, but not enough to complete. When you put those drives back onto the system, make sure to go into the BIOS, and have the correct hard drive listed as the first boot device.

If it fails even with just the single drive, check to see if the drive is set to AHCI mode, usually on the second or third page of your BIOS settings. (it can be buried in a zillion different places.) If it's presently in AHCI mode, change it to IDE or Compatible, and see if it will boot. If it does, you just need to update drivers and make a quick registry edit, which I can dig up for you... once you've done that, you can switch it back to the faster AHCI mode.

If it still won't boot even in Compatible mode, then, hmm. Not sure what to do next. Might be that your cloning utility isn't working correctly.

Thanks for the suggestions. I ended up just going with a clean install of Windows 7. It's working great now! Very impressed with the speed on boot up of the SSD. Feels good to have a clean OS.

Working on the overclocking portion now. After playing with the BIOS I'm 80 minutes into a Prime 95 stress test. I've got it going at 3.42MHz and the temperature is holding steady at 69 degrees. Crossing my fingers that it holds out for awhile.

I'm going to run a 3DMark11 benchmark if this ends up being stable.

I'm looking to get a 128 or 256gig SSD during Black Friday for the OS and frequently played games. What brands and/or models should I be looking out for?

guitarlicks4 wrote:

Thanks for the suggestions. I ended up just going with a clean install of Windows 7. It's working great now! Very impressed with the speed on boot up of the SSD. Feels good to have a clean OS.

Working on the overclocking portion now. After playing with the BIOS I'm 80 minutes into a Prime 95 stress test. I've got it going at 3.42MHz and the temperature is holding steady at 69 degrees. Crossing my fingers that it holds out for awhile.

I'm going to run a 3DMark11 benchmark if this ends up being stable.

Glad you got stable results That mobo and q6600 combo is fantastic. I remember doing a lot of research 4 years ago and I am glad I did it. Just try not to get it over 70c. If you just play games it will never get as much of a workout as Prime95 gives it.

BNice wrote:

I'm looking to get a 128 or 256gig SSD during Black Friday for the OS and frequently played games. What brands and/or models should I be looking out for?

Samsung and Crucial are what I've heard the last few months as the most reliable. Samsung 830 series.

Samsung has the 840 shipping sometime this month.. should be a nice speed boost.

I doubt the 840's will be on the types of sales he's talking about. There have been some really nice SSD sales lately. I'm thinking about picking up a 128GB for my HTPC OS. I think I don't want anything smaller than 256 for my desktop. Sounds like too much micromanagement of stuff at 128GB for day to day gamer use.

Thanks guys, I'll look out for the 830, 840 and Crucial SSD's during the sale.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/...

new Corsair units.. impressive results.. but at about $1GB and max out at 240GB right now.. tempted to get two and stripe them.

edit

I bought two...lol

BNice wrote:

Thanks guys, I'll look out for the 830, 840 and Crucial SSD's during the sale.

In anticipation of the release of the 840's, the 830's have regularly been on sale for the past few weeks. The 256gb and up sizes have the fastest chips in them, so go big if it fits in the budget. I just ordered an 256gb 830 on newegg this past weekend for $160 (no rebates), and looking forward to installing it this weekend.

Also, I've heard that some of the Intel drives are up there with Samsung for fastest and most reliable. They seem a bit more expensive, though.

BTW, for PC parts black friday is a waste of time. "Cyber Monday" (ugh) is usually better and you don't have to deal with brick & mortar mania.

psoplayer wrote:
BNice wrote:

Thanks guys, I'll look out for the 830, 840 and Crucial SSD's during the sale.

In anticipation of the release of the 840's, the 830's have regularly been on sale for the past few weeks. The 256gb and up sizes have the fastest chips in them, so go big if it fits in the budget. I just ordered an 256gb 830 on newegg this past weekend for $160 (no rebates), and looking forward to installing it this weekend.

Also, I've heard that some of the Intel drives are up there with Samsung for fastest and most reliable. They seem a bit more expensive, though.

BTW, for PC parts black friday is a waste of time. "Cyber Monday" (ugh) is usually better and you don't have to deal with brick & mortar mania.

I've been using a 256gb 830 at work for the past few weeks, and it's awesome coming from an older drive. I need to pick up a few for home.

In the prior generations, Intel always had the most reliable firmware, and because they manufacture their own flash, and have the best fabs in the world, their drives are usually an excellent choice. They usually work well with any OS, which is not always true of other manufacturers. I have a Crucial M225 here, which is a nice drive, but it doesn't work for sh*t on a Mac laptop, where it runs really well in my Windows desktop. And an older Intel G2 drive I have on the same machine runs Linux flawlessly. (I haven't tried that drive on the Mac because it's not big enough, sadly.)

If you're doing much cross-platform stuff, and you think you might use that drive on non-Windows machines, then Intel should move up a long way in your list of top choices.

BNice wrote:

Thanks guys, I'll look out for the 830, 840 and Crucial SSD's during the sale.

The Samsung 830s will likely be long gone when the new 840s are out, which Newegg has as Nov 6th. They have the Samsung 830 256GB one at $170 each for the 256GB model. The write speed on the 840s rated much higher though, so they would be my pick.

I bought a pair of 256GB Samsung 830s a couple months back. I use one as my Windows and User drive and the other one as my "Steam" (i.e., Games) drive. I haven't had to do any file shuffling with that setup.

I will say this. I will never put together another system for myself that doesn't include at least one good-sized SSD. I can do a full reboot in about 30-40 seconds (including the time it takes the system to POST before it starts loading the OS). I can start back up from sleep in about 20 seconds (again including the POST time).

"Gee. I just got a popup that there are 10 required and 6 recommended patches from Microsoft ready to install. OK. I can take that 50 second hit. Go! ... ... Aw, man! That was a full 60 seconds."

BNice wrote:

Thanks guys, I'll look out for the 830, 840 and Crucial SSD's during the sale.

The 128GB 830 is $70 and the 256GB is $154 on Amazon today. I got the small one for my HTPC.

MannishBoy wrote:
BNice wrote:

Thanks guys, I'll look out for the 830, 840 and Crucial SSD's during the sale.

The 128GB 830 is $70 and the 256GB is $154 on Amazon today. I got the small one for my HTPC.

!!!!

Bought the 256GB one. Awesome.

BNice wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
BNice wrote:

Thanks guys, I'll look out for the 830, 840 and Crucial SSD's during the sale.

The 128GB 830 is $70 and the 256GB is $154 on Amazon today. I got the small one for my HTPC.

!!!!

Bought the 256GB one. Awesome.

I'm sad that I don't have extra spending moneys

So I am in the market for a new gaming monitor and I am seriously considering going 120hz. Does anyone have any experience with or want to talk me out of the BenQ XL2420T?

I'm going to do a fresh Windows 7 install on my SSD when it arrives. I have the disc but don't really want to sit through all the updates. Is there an official download I can get that includes all the updates?

I'm torn about how I'm going to migrate my HTPC OS drive to the SSD. I've got some recorded HBO content like Game of Thrones that a reinstall will wipe my copy once usage to where I can't play them any more (tied to the OS install).

I might try the harder way to see if I can get it to work. Worst thing that could happen would be I just fall back to the original drive.

Well, you can get Service Pack 1 as a single download, but I think you have to manually download individual patches for everything after that. After installing SP1, I would think Windows Update would be much, much faster than manually downloading and installing patches.

Malor wrote:

Well, you can get Service Pack 1 as a single download, but I think you have to manually download individual patches for everything after that. After installing SP1, I would think Windows Update would be much, much faster than manually downloading and installing patches.

Bah, ok.

So my PC parts arrive yesterday and wow how case design has changed in the ~15 years since I got my SuperMicro 750-A. Other than attaching the mainboard and PSU I haven't had to touch a screwdriver at all. I got the system to where it would post and verified that it showed as having the correct amount of memory and such, then called it a night. I'll finish up this evening, so dropping in the GPU and wiring everything up. Last night about the only thing I connected was the power switch so I could turn it on. I was really fine with the 300 MB 8800 GTS in my current system until I had a shiny new GPU staring me in the face. This build can't complete fast enough.

Nice, complexmath! Enjoy finishing things up.

EriktheRed wrote:

So I am in the market for a new gaming monitor and I am seriously considering going 120hz. Does anyone have any experience with or want to talk me out of the BenQ XL2420T?

No experience with that particular model, I've only bought one 120hz monitor so far. That said, I'm never going back to a 60hz display for my gaming rig. If my 120hz monitor were to die I would overnight another one before I spent any length of time on a standard monitor.

I wouldn't have thought the difference would be that noticeable.

DanyBoy wrote:

I wouldn't have thought the difference would be that noticeable.

Night and day for me, particularly in games. Some people agree, others don't, just like with anything else.

If you're sensitive to framerate fluctuations in your games then I'd say there's decent odds you'll find a 120hz monitor a very noticeable change.

If you're one in the "as long as it stays above 30fps I'm good" crowd then it won't matter for you in the least.

ThinJ,

What are your thoughts on the Asus VG278HE? It's the new model for the 27" in their 3D ready line; I believe they bumped these up to 144hz (2D). It seems to be getting good reviews so far.

When I move back to Ohio next month I will be needing a new monitor; I've been using a 27" lcd tv down here and, I like the size.