[michaelcly]

I bought a ssd on eBay; 64gb Pro IV Runcore, T style. I put it in my Mac and did a Guid partition and erased freespace. All was great. Then I tried secure erase (stupid). I booted up my mini9 (osx 10.6.7) and plugged the Runcore in the usb port. I used CCC and cloned the internal 32gb Stec to the new runcore. It seemed to work fine.

I could boot from the new runcore as a usb from the mac screen, but not as a primary hard drive on the mini9. I can boot my mac from the runcore on the USB as well. I can copy files too and from it. But the Dell bios does not see it.

So I decided to start over and install from scratch and use netbookmaker. But now, even though the partition shows up, I can't re-partition or erase or do anything to it. The partition shows 63mb but the Runcore Drive shows 2TB. I've done a lot of reading and concluded I hosed the MBR which OSX only uses for bootcamp (and apparently my mini9). When it boots OSX it uses GPT, not needing the mbr. Between GPTs, GRUBs, and MBRs my head is swimming. I've tried erasing numerous times. After the last time, I can't see the partition anymore, only a 2tb Runcore. I also learned secure erase and erase free space is not a good idea.

Any ideas before i cuss and throw it in the trash? Do you think updating the Runcore bios would do anything?

[holmes4]

What is the exact model number of the SSD you bought?

[michaelcly]

Not sure of exact model. I know it came out of a mini9. here's where I got it:
eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices

Thanks for taking the time holms4

---------- Post added at 09:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:55 PM ----------

I believe it is this model: RunCore 64GB Pro IV 50mm T-Style PCI-e PATA Solid State Drive SSD | My Digital Discount

[holmes4]

Ok, just wanted to be sure it wasn't a SATA drive. That one should work. What does the BIOS show when you have this inserted? Does it say not found, or does it say 0MB or something else small?

[michaelcly]

I think it says "you gunked up your ssd" :-)

"PXE-E61: Media test failure. Check cable"
"PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM
"Operating system not found"

---------- Post added at 09:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:24 PM ----------

I booted my working SSD with full Mac OSX from the USB and it gives me the option of initializing it. I'm tempted to try it. From Disk utilities, it now says total capacity 0



---------- Post added at 09:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:37 PM ----------

I've read that OSX lion has more powerful repair tools. I'm thinking of using my real Mac, disconnecting the HD, putting the Runcore on the USB port and booting from the Lion install disk and see if it will "repair" the Runcore.

[rrfranczak3]

if the capacity is 0mb in the BIOS, it is toast

[holmes4]

The "PXE" error is simply that the OS did not find a bootable disk. I doubt the problem is in the "disk structure" - it may be in the SSD controller. Can't hurt to try, though.

[michaelcly]

Originally Posted by rrfranczak3

if the capacity is 0mb in the BIOS, it is toast

Bread's gone up, eh?

[ByteMe Networking]

I have to post 3 times before I can post my resolution

---------- Post added at 07:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:51 PM ----------

All,

I tried the above solutions and was not able to resolve this issue until I got in touch with a user from the Dell Forums.

They gave me a program that fixes the BIOS reading the drive as 0mb.
My drive is a STECH 8GB SSD drive std that came with Mini 9.

This app needs to be ran from dos so you need to either make a bootable USB drive or find some other means to get to a dos prompt.

(Sorry for the cruddy pics)
I forgot to take a picture of the bios before I ran the app but it looked the same as the picture below other than the "HDD Size" showed 0MB.




Then I ran the application provided to me which will !!!!!ERASE YOUR HARD DRIVE!!!!! and looks like the following when ran. App attached.

[michaelcly]

Originally Posted by holmes4

The "PXE" error is simply that the OS did not find a bootable disk. I doubt the problem is in the "disk structure" - it may be in the SSD controller. Can't hurt to try, though.

This weekend I'm going to try a Lion repair, and next some terminal commands to copy a good pmbr to the first 512k block. I don't expect either to work as long as everything that reads it thinks it's zero capacity. The only other thing i can think of is a bios upgrade flash. Expensive lesson.

Meanwhile, I got a runcore 32 pro iv lite and it works like a champ.

Thanks for the advice guys! I'll let you know if I change the toast to burnt toast.

---------- Post added at 01:05 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:54 AM ----------

[QUOTE=ByteMe Networking;194772]I have to post 3 times before I can post my resolution

All,

I tried the above solutions and was not able to resolve this issue until I got in touch with a user from the Dell Forums.

They gave me a program that fixes the BIOS reading the drive as 0mb.
My drive is a STECH 8GB SSD drive std that came with Mini 9.

This app needs to be ran from dos so you need to either make a bootable USB drive or find some other means to get to a dos prompt.

(Sorry for the cruddy pics)
I forgot to take a picture of the bios before I ran the app but it looked the same as the picture below other than the "HDD Size" showed 0MB.


Then I ran the application provided to me which will !!!!!ERASE YOUR HARD DRIVE!!!!! and looks like the following when ran. App attached.

WOW. I can,t wait to try it. Now I have to figure how to make a dos boot usb.