SSD not showing up and long (>2 minute) startup

[hellopaul]

Hello,
I have been having trouble with my Windows 7 PC recently. It is an overclocked machine (3.3GHz overclocked to 4.7GHz), but all the temps are fine. I have been having the occasional BSOD, which is probably related to CPU voltages.

Also, as it seems is quite common on windows systems generally, when it goes to sleep, it often does not wake up. A press of a key will make the PC sound as if it's coming to life - fans spin up - but nothing else happens - the displays remain blank.

So, that's the background. We're not starting out with a terribly healthy PC, I know.

After a recent non-wake up event, I did a force shutdown (hold the power button) and then started it up again, only to be confronted with various 'Windows did not shut down properly, I'm fixing lots of things' screens. Then a restart, and slowwly, very slowly (2min 15sec on the Starting Windows screen) it came back to life. Except one of my SSDs is not showing up. I scheduled a diskcheck on all the (three) good disks, just to be sure - they all passed. Crucially, the SSD is not listed on the BIOS list at the very start of the startup process.

I tried shutting down and removing and reinserting the SSD (it's the type that is on a clip-slide-out kinda thing in the front of the machine) in case it's jiggled out of position, but that achieved nothing.

So, any help would be GREATLY appreciated, please!

 

[GokAy]

You can try loading defaults in BIOS.

And check Power Options and Sleep Mode Problems for anything you may have missed setting up the sleep

 

[countzero]

patch the ssd in via usb-sata adapter, see how that goes.
if you don't have one: you want one.

 

[Layback Bear]

You have a lot of over clock. 3.9 to 4.7.

You will need a lot of cooling to use the vcore volts needed for that over clock.

Exactly what kind of cpu cooling do you have.

Exactly what is your Vcore volts in bios.

 

[hellopaul]

Thanks for all your help on this!

To cure the sleep problems, I've turned off all sleepiness except the displays, so that's avoided the sleep problems for now. Unfortunately I don't have time to do a lot of tweaking at the moment - I have too much work to do.

I will order a USB3 to SATA adapter and see if I can temporarily bring the SSD back from the dead. I have removed it, and now the system boots up in a healthy 15 secs or so. The SSD was a 512GB cache drive (for After Effects), but I also used it for storage of occasional other stuff - but I can't remember if there was anything important on it!

Layback Bear: I have a Corsair H100i water cooler. It does a good job of keeping all the temperatures in check; the processors are normally around 46°C, up to 78°C under heavy load (all cores at 100% for 15 minutes while doing a 3D render).

Here are some of the Vcore voltages in BIOS:

CPU VCORE Voltage: 1.200V

CPU VCORE Offset Voltage: +0.060

CPU VCCSA Voltage: fluctuates from 1.286V to 1.289V

CPU PLL Voltage: 1.838V (set to 1.825000V)

VTTVPU Voltage: fluctuates from 1.271V to 1.277V (set to 1.25000 (red!))

 

[hellopaul]

I was just wandering through sevenforums and thought I'd update this, in case anyone was interested.

I have now dialled back my overclockery to a much more stable 4.5GHz, and the system is a whole lot more reliable for it. It feels like the processor's "in the zone" and happy at 4.5. I'm happy to live with the 0.2GHz reduction!

The SSD did completely die. I sent it back to the fantastic guy who built my PC; he tried to bring it back from the dead, but it was a goner. Happily, it was still under warranty from OCZ, and they wonderfully sent out a replacement, with a whopping 5-year warranty, which is happily caching all my After Effects data.