Boot problem on cloned dual-boot SSD

[amblabs]

I'm still on the thought that xp is unable to address the ssd due to a driver issue, but have nothing to add other than my previous posts. Here's two posts with symptoms like yours that may be instructive.

How to Fix STOP 0x0000007B BSOD Errors

Blue screen with error message, STOP 0x0000007B (0xBA4CF524, - Microsoft Community

Yes, I have independently done a bunch of searching on the net for BSOD code 0x0000007B and read through many of them. Most of them suggested changing the BIOS between AHCI and IDE modes to fix this, but it doesn't really apply in my case. I actually tried that, changing to IDE mode also causes the same BSOD on XP, and also made Win7 unbootable!

I am beginning to think that yes, it's a driver issue, and it's probably a bug that's making it unable to access an SSD. Maybe it's timing related because the SSD is much faster. Or maybe there is some kind of quirk with this particular Western Digital SSD that is tripping up the device driver. The AMD AHCI driver on XP is apparently the latest available but it still pre-dates most SSDs (12/29/2011).

If I am right, then maybe I'm SOL with this whole SSD thing.

 

[SIW2]

the HDD and the SSD is in the fsutil output, the "bytes per physical sector" is shown to be 4096 for the HDD (which is strange)

That is not strange, it is normal nowadays.

but as "<Not Supported>" for the SSD

"Not supported" is very strange.


https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...t-policy-for-4k-sector-hard-drives-in-windows

maybe there is some kind of quirk with this particular Western Digital SSD

Yes that fsutil report is odd. Win7 might be able to cope with it, but XP can't. Perhaps the ssd is faulty.

 

[johnhoh]

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...t-policy-for-4k-sector-hard-drives-in-windows

H-m-m-m. The chart in that article seems to say XP only works with 512 byte physical sectors. Then again, you've been booting just fine on a 4096 physical sector hdd up until now. But given the chart, isn't it worth a shot to reformat your ssd with 512 byte physical sectors instead of 4096, then clone again? Macrium says it can clone from 4096 onto 512.

Incompatible Disk Selected - KnowledgeBase - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

 

[amblabs]

There are actually three disk drives I'm playing with now:
1. The original 320GB HDD (a WD Blue Scorpio WD3200BEVT) that came with this laptop
2. The new 500GB SSD I am trying to make work (a WD Blue 3D NAND WDS500G2B0A)
3. The new 1TB HDD (a WD Blue Mobile WD10SPZX) that I purchased for experimentation

The fsutil output I provided previously (and repeated here) is taken while booted Win7 on Drive #3. This drive reports as having 512 bytes per sector but 4096 bytes per physical sector. Win 7 and XP both boot fine on it. The SSD (drive #2) was connected as an external drive and reports as having 512 bytes per sector and "<Not Supported>" bytes per physical sector.

Interestingly, cygwin's fdisk reports 512/512 for Drive #3 (logical/physical sector sizes). This is a contradiction to what fsutil says. But nevertheless this is not the problem drive.

Here is the fsutil output while booted Win7 on the SSD (drive #2). Note that the bytes per physical sector is now 512, not "<Not Supported>".

Cygwin's fdisk also reports it as 512/512 (logical/physical sector sizes, /dev/sda):

This is the fsutil output while booted Win7 on Drive #1 (the original 320GB HDD), and fdisk output, again showing 512/512.

So, @SIW2, The SSD isn't faulty. The "unsupported" physical bytes per sector is probably a consequence of connecting as an external disk. Something got lost in the translation from SATA to USB. And as I found above, the SSD's logical and physical sector sizes are both 512, as reported by fsutil and fdisk.

And @johnhoh, since the SSD already has a physical sector size of 512 bytes, there is no need to change it. As far as I know there is no way to low level "format" a SATA drive to a different physical sector size anyway. There is confusion in the Windows world as the word "format" is usually taken to mean "create a filesystem" (the conceptual equivalent to the Unix "mkfs" command), and that's not the same as changing a disk drive's physical sector size.

 

[johnhoh]

since the SSD already has a physical sector size of 512 bytes, there is no need to change it.

Thought I saw 4096 for the SSD on an earlier post. My bad

As far as I know there is no way to low level "format" a SATA drive to a different physical sector size anyway.

Some Intel SSDs allow for this via a firmware update. No idea about other brands.

 

[amblabs]

One week has passed since my last update and I am going to give up trying to make this SSD boot WinXP. After all the experiments and trials I think I'm basically stuck with an unfixable AMD AHCI driver bug that makes it not work with SSDs, or at least the WD Blue 3D NAND model I have.

It turns out that the WD Blue Mobile 1TB HDD I purchased for experiments performs quite a lot better than the old WD Scorpio Blue 320GB HDD that came originally with the laptop. It's not as fast as the SSD of course, but is an acceptable improvement that I'm going to use this new drive on this machine. It boots both Win7 and XP just fine, despite having 4096 byte physical sectors. Being 1TB, it's also got a lot more disk space to work with. Not only did I expand both the Win7 and XP partitions, I changed the XP partition to be on a logical partition (rather than primary), and it continues to boot fine. I also added Linux and Linux-swap logical partitions and installed openSUSE Leap 15.0 on this drive, making it now a triple-boot machine. It's all working well.

I'm going to try replacing the HDD in my other laptop (a Lenovo) with the WD Blue 3D NAND SSD that I couldn't make work with XP. That laptop runs Linux only, and should have no trouble with the SSD.

Even though the problem was not solved, it was quite a learning experience for me. I want to thank @digi1261, @johnhoh and @SIW2 for your help and comments. You guys rock!

 

[SIW2]

All's well that ends well. Thanks for the update.