[oatmeal123]

Hello,
I purchased 2 Dell Mini 9's on eBay for £70.
They were being sold as 'Faulty' cause of a lack of OS, I figured this to be the easiest problem to solve but apparently these little buggers are more hassle than anyone care to mention.
So I used WintoFlash and put Windows XP onto a 4gb USB stick, plugged it into the computer booted it into windows setup only to receive an error that many people are getting which is:

7327 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atapi

Setup cannot access disk

Now most people appear to complain of the lack of disk space being shown on the actual drive in the bios, with my two little netbooks they both state that they have "7683MB".

I've read around on countless forums in the last few hours and led to one conclusion, I need to use a program called 'Parted Magic' to erase the disk so it can be written to again. This is apparently quite a risky procedure and I risk bugging up the drive, seeing as they appear buggered anyway what have I got to lose? No really, what else is potentially dangerous?

I'm going to try it on one of the netbooks, I'll post my results afterwards.

So to sum it up:
What risks are there when using 'Parted Magic'?
Is the drive considered to be buggered despite the space being shown in the bios?
How do I unscrew screws that have had the thread 100% completely ripped off, the guy that sold me them must have messed them up completely.

Neither Disk in either laptop will install windows

[holmes4]

Given that the disks are already unusable, I doubt you can do more harm with a tool. The symptom you describe is probably the most common for a "buggered" SSD. You may want to look at the sticky thread at the top of this forum section for another approach.

As for the screws, the most popular method is to use a Dremel (or similar) rotary tool with a cutoff wheel to cut a slot in the screw, then use a flat-blade screwdriver to extract it. You need to be very careful to prevent metal shavings from flying elsewhere within the box. You may find it additionally useful to apply some heat to the screwdriver, while the tip is touching the screw, to loosen the thread locking compound that is used.

[oatmeal123]

I tried the program, it sat there for a couple hours doing nothing, left i over night, but nope. Hadn't worked.

Just bought a 16GB replacement, has a two year warranty So at least I won't be spending any more on these things.

I do not have a dremel and up until now I've never known what one is, looks like something a dentist would use, I'll see if I can find a friend who owns one or better yet considering the card is knackered find some other means of making the screws loose.

---------- Post added at 01:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:27 PM ----------

Oh, there is one more thing. I have a 32GB SD card I bought from eBay as storage, is it possible in the mean time to install windows XP to it and boot from that instead?

[holmes4]

The Mini 9 won't boot from the SD slot. Also, Windows makes it hard to install it on a "removable" device. You can connect an SD card or other flash drive to a USB port and boot from that. There are some very small USB flash drives that barely stick out at all. Linux is probably a better bet to run from those.

[Dell910Master]

There is actually a usb flash drive bootable utility that will restore the correct firmware to the solid state drive allowing windows or ubuntu to be reinstalled correctly. I have used it many times and so far it has always worked for me.

[oatmeal123]

Originally Posted by Dell910Master

There is actually a usb flash drive bootable utility that will restore the correct firmware to the solid state drive allowing windows or ubuntu to be reinstalled correctly. I have used it many times and so far it has always worked for me.

What is the program called my goodman?

[holmes4]

See STEC 8GB SSD 0MB in BIOS