M18X R2 Refurb with failed drive on SATA port 1 no matter what.

Hi guys,

Just wanted to put this one out there, I decided to pick up an M18X R2 as a refurbished unit and slap my 7970m crossfire setup in there, which worked great, and everything seemed to be just fine so I took my 750 GB Hybrid drives from my old R1 and put them in and reloaded Windows, and again seemed ok.

Well that's where the funny business starts, I noticed my PC would start to stutter and act really odd. So I reboot and then I notice that the SATA drive on port 1 is showing an error. Ok I think so I check the drive with seatools and it shows as failed. So I replace it and everything "seems" ok.

Within 24 hours the other one is failed as well and at this point im calling foul play, I check the drive and sure enough it says it failed. So I return it to the store and swap it for another one which instanaly says it failed as well. Ok at this point I quit being lazy and stuff both drives into my old R1 and wouldn't ya know it they are fine!

Sea tools appearantly does not like The hybrid drives and will fail them, just in case anyone has that issue. So I get the bright and wonderful idea, hey I got an extra SATA II port on that ribbon cable on my R2 so I reinstall the drive plug it into the SATA II and it works fine, no issues at all. Has been for like 2 days.

At this point I call Alienware support and they are sending me a cable and a new drive mounting bracket, they are pretty awesome like that. So I wanted to put this out there for anyone else who might have the same issue or has seen it before. I'm just wondering if its the flex cable or hopefully not the motherboard itself (I doubt it would be the board).

TL : DR
I think I have a bad SATA port on the motherboard or a bad cable, has anyone else out there remotely ever seen anything like this?

 

You just have a bad cable; I've gone through this exercise before and replaced myself 2 motherboards until realised is the ribbon that is at fault. Once replaced, everything should work just fine (I have only SSD's and the same port was not booting, or running at a lower speed etc.).

You will enjoy shortly the benefit of all the ports provided for this system, as long as you will have them occupied.

P.S. I sent the old ribbon back and requested a complain. I was promised that Dell will look into this very serious. Unfortunately you may be the one with a system skipped from before. As long as you will get the replacement ribbon, you are good to go. Take care!

 

sorry about the inconveniences but it does seem like the issue was just the cable. Let us know if anything else comes up.

 

Brother Luis - Good info! Thanks to you and Julian for posting it again.

Question: is there a part number change, revision number or something on the interposer cable that can easily identify one that is anticipated to have issues, or is it only a random "replace when discovered" scenario?

 

It's an isolated issue, it'll be replaced when discovered

 

Luis,

I got the new interposer cable and bracket today, and have already installed them, thus far it seems like there are no issues with the new cable, im doing a full RAID re-initilization right now which should bring issues out of the wood works should this cable also be bad, its already well in progress so I'm thinking that the issue is fixed. I will keep you guys posted.

And again thanks everyone for the quick response times and useful information.

 

Luis,

I am having these problems with Port1. What steps do I need to take to get a new cable? I can install it myself so no need for a on-site tech.

Thank you,
Monnie

 

If you are having exactly the same issue please send us an e-mail to [email protected] with your tag, phone and a brief description of the exact issue and we'll help you as much as we can.

 

Luis,

Sent an e-mail 09/26/2012, no response as of yet. Please advise how to get the resolved.

Thank you,
Monnie

 

Hi, sorry for the delay. Please escalate the case by sending an e-mail explaining the situation to [email protected]. Normally the response time is only 24/48hrs.

 

I have also decided to write you an email about this issue with my dual vertex4 256GB SSD drives, I cant get them to run in RAID mode no way and yet sometimes I get OS SSD drive to switch to 3GBps and sometimes be at 6GBps ratio, even it sits in PORT0 as achi drive.... brief description of problem has been emailed, so Im also now waiting for an input

 

Juliant,
Are you speaking about the cable that physically connects to the SSD's(data & power connector) then leads to the connector on the mainboard(one that so many break the retainer )?

Luis,
You were not kidding when you said "escalate". Received not one but two cables within 24hrs. Very impressive support. Only one problem, it's the msata cable, not the SATA cable for ports 0 &1.
Attached image of cables sent

 

God! Will have to re-send them. Sorry about the inconvenience MonnieRock.

 

Got the new SATA Cable. Drives are now staying at 6gb/s. Did a before and after ATTO bench. See results for yourself :hi2:

Thank you for all your help Luis. Alienware support ROCKS !!!!

 

.... this is what I should have but cant even get damn drives always boot in to 6GB/s , I notice some lagging odd time when start machine, also OS startup feels like a suck'y old HDD and I notice after checking in IRST menu my OS drive @ 3GB/s , reboot usually solves this but if I try bench SSD with no matter what I can not get same results at second run or any other X time run untill I reboot machine again... it drops more than half less than sata2 speeds.... I need this cable ribbon asap too... I emailed to AW people to the email given with complete data provided etc etc no reply yet and week has passed...

 

I have got the exact same issue and I was searching for the resolution before I read up this.
In the very beginning I doubt it could be a software problem because it sometimeS worked at SATA 2 and sometimes SATA 3. After this odd situation, I found that if you use the SSD on PORT 1, say, run a program or install a program or move something on this particular drive, the transfer speed will reduce to 3Gb/s instantly.
Now, I think the issue is on the cable rather than other software problem. I will try to write to [email protected] and look forward what will happen after that.

Thanks a lot for all who experienced this and share the exp here.

 

no help for me regarding this, no response over a month ago now, so I just ended up returning my second M18X R2 back to dell, I will be waiting for M18X R3 instead I guess... unless cheap M18X comes handy as a project I would reconsider but not like brand new retail unit thats giving me a headache, wonder how long will it take for R3 to come out

 

Hope you still can be happy with your new MSI system.

I just got the reply within 2 days. I wrote to them on Sunday and I got the phone call back on this morning. I live in Birmingham so it is not far away from Ireland I think.

Hope this can reslove the problem. Hope the problem not exsits on the motherboard.

 

Lucky you man, Ive been left in the darkness with that one... Yea MSI will keep me going till my next AW, thnx