p55w v4

Just picked up a gigabyte p55w v4 from newegg blackfriday deal for $999

ready to install my intel 730 480gb ssd, but i'm struggling with the gigabyte factory image.

There is a tool called "Smart USB Backup". Supposedly you plug a 32GB or larger USB flash drive in and it will wipe it, copy the factory image media onto it and make it bootable.

That's all find and dandy. So I proceed to install my ssd. Plug the bootable usb drive in. Boot the laptop and nothing happens. It doesn't recognize either drive.

A little investigation leads me to the "secure boot" feature that is enabled by default for windows 8. It is doing what it was designed to do, prevent booting off media that does not have the secure boot key embedded in it. Fair enough that would explain why my SSD was not regocnized, but shouldnt the USB stick with the factory media be recognized?

So i disable "secure boot" in the bios and now both drives are recognized, however, attempting to boot off the usb drive fails with the message "Missing operating system"

Am i missing something here?

I have another USB stick in the mail, just to rule that out, but i am doubtful that is the issue.

I have imaging software, i can image the 1TB hard drive, shrink the partition and blast it on my SSD, but i was hoping to avoid that hassle.

Should i just grab a stock windows 8 disc and load it up from scratch? i would assume it will read the windows 8 key from the bios and be happy.

Contacting gigabyte seems like a pointless endeavor as their website and software is all in broken english.

*****Update*****

Loaded from scratch with windows 8 to the intel ssd, had to leave secure boot disabled.

Gigabytes' driver site leaves much to be desired. If you pull up this model laptop and download the latest drivers only to find out after installing them all that they are way outdated. The website does not have the current drivers listed anywhere.

If you want current drivers then you need to install their "Smart Update" tool, which again, needs an update immediately after downloading. Then you get links to download current drivers via the tool, straight from taiwan. Enjoy sitting around for hours while the drivers travel under the ocean at 1mbps. That's too bad their software can't determine your location and use the US based download servers. The us servers were available on the website, but again, without links to current drivers.

website/software shortcomings aside, I have discovered a new issue. My intel 730 480gb ssd is only running in sata 2 (300mb/s) instead of sata 3 (600mb/s). So I went into the bios and changed "sata controller speed" from "default" to "gen3", but that did not fix the issue. Just to test, i went back into bios and changed it to gen1. That did "reduce" the operation mode to sata 1 (150mb/s). Tried gen 2 and received sata 2 speeds. Tried gen3 and default again, but only get gen 2 speeds. No firmware updates available for the ssd. Bios and all drivers up to date according to "Smart Update".

any thoughts on the ssd issue?

I'll try to see if i can get my hands on another sata3 capable system (i don't own one) just to rule out the ssd as the issuet. Or perhaps take that factory image I made with Stoaragecraft, resize it and blast it on the ssd. Doubtful that will fix the issue.

Another minor annoyance, is one "unknown device" in device manager. "Smart Update" has nothing left to install and searching PCI database and the web turns up nothing (Hardware id "0005" vendor id "GBT"). Again, I might load up that factory image to see if this plagued by the same issue or not.