56 replies to this topic

[airbillion]

I have had my eee since its first shipment in November. I had the stock distro installed until this week when I installed XP. In the BIOS the ssd capacity only shows 3.56 GB not 4 GB, and in XP the capacity only is 3.24 GB total for the c: drive. I emailed ASUS about this and am waiting for a reply. However, I am fairly sure that I have permanently lost about 250+ MB of storage from the ssd.

[Thracian]

Are you sure you have all the partitions allocated to C drive in xp?

Im showing 3.71gig as I type this.


Thrac

Edited by Thracian, 08 January 2008 - 08:08 AM.

[airbillion]

I am sure. I just reinstalled xp again with the same result. Even the bios reports only 3.56 gb of space on the ssd!

[superpat]

Hi

Have a read of my post yesterday about ssd's getting smaller:-

http://forum.eeeuser...id=82035#p82035

Are you hammering your SSD or is it getting "normal" use?

regards

Patrick

[Steep]

You chose to wipe all partitions and make one big one yes? If so try and find some disk checking software to find out if it's bad sectors.

[08MagRT]

its A software/bios issue
not a hardware issue
reflash your bios and get a good disk checker

[geoelectric]

pat:

I'm not convinced the drive gets smaller without reporting bad blocks. I know that IDE controllers automatically exclude/remap bad sectors, but that's based on having some redundant/extra ones to remap to. Once a standard IDE drive shrinks past normal capacity by using all of those, I believe it starts reporting bad sectors within the volume. Without other documentation, I'm not convinced that an IDE SSD (which is supposed to look like a magnetic drive in all respects) would do any differently.

[superpat]

@ geoelectric

I agree with you, however the SSD controller SM223, that ASUS have used in the EEEPc is a programmable ucontroller device with it's OWN firmware. AFAIK the firmware is written by ASUS (The SSD controller vendor Silicon Motion provides an SDK for that purpose). It is extremely hard to find out much information from the SSD vendor. The web site is very sparse, and they have ignored my requests for a data sheet!

The problem is that the magical incantations for EEC checking, and wear levelling are regarded as commercial secrets, and no-one is revealing them in detail! Whether or not the SSD controller reveals when the flash is failing in large chunks is a function of the SSD controller microcode, and again AFAIK there is NO industry standard for it yet.

However if you have a look at

www.nextwarehouse.com/DS/iERP/ATA_SMB_DMA.pdf .

This is a data sheet for an ATA flash card that uses the Silicon Motion SM222 chip (similar to the SM223), There are pages and pages of control register details there. I know its not exactly the same but it does give you some idea how powerful the SM223 is!

I think it all depends on how well Asus and perhaps Silicon Motion have implemented the SSD, (The SM223 is advertised as a Flash memory controller not specifically as an SSD controller) See:-

Quote

SM2XX Family

Key Features

* High performance flash memory controller with dual channel flash interface
* Supports In-System-Programming capability- Resolve compatibility issue without silicon change
* Supports patented FastMDC™ and QuickWrite™ technology
* Supports CPRM™ (Content Protection Recordable Media) for Secure Digital™ Card
* Supports High-Speed CompactFlash® and SD/MMC card spec.
* Flexible flash memory configuration
* Supports both 8bit/16 bit Flash Interface
* Supports dual supply voltage: 3.3V/1.8V
* Enhanced ESD design

Overview

Silicon Motion introduces the Zoom family of silicon offering unsurpassed performance for flash memory. The growing popularity of supplemental removable storage on digital devices, has created a tremendous demand for removable storage devices, such as CompactFlash®, Secure Digital™ Card, miniSD™, microSD™, MultiMediaCard™, MMCplus™ and MMCmobile™. MMCmicro™.

Silicon Motion's QuickWrite™ is a proprietary technology to boost the performance up to 50% for all data write cycles going through file systems. In addition, the patented FastMDC technology is to ensure ultra high performance of flash access time and high reliability of data storage.

The Zoom family can support up to 32Gbytes total capacity with max. 8 NAND flash memory devices. Furthermore, it is capable of supporting the latest NAND flash memory, including Samsung, Toshiba, Hynix, Micron, Intel, ST Micro SLC/MLC NAND Flash and Renesas AG-AND Flash.
The Zoom family is in compliance with security scheme, such as CPRM for Secure Digital™ Card.
Silicon Motion has developed 0.16um technology for next generation of Zoom products that meets users' needs by offering 1.8V operating capability while also being usable in products such as digital handheld devices that operate at 3 V.


Family Part No. Description

Zoom CF SM222 Compact Flash card controller with Multi-word DMA support
SM223 Compact Flash card controller with UDMA support

Also of course it depends on your kernel ide implementation whether the "smart" module will even look for the requisite registers!


cheers

Patrick

Edited by superpat, 08 January 2008 - 11:08 AM.

[geoelectric]

Interesting info, pat.

[o2smartphone]

Those fade-at-heart about SSD may die before their SSD does :)

[Dragonduster]

s**t s**t s**t!!!!!! i think i f***d my SSD >.< i installed windows xp on the SSD to clone it to my SDHC, all wa smooth, then after cloning, i wanted my other 4gb back from the SDHC card, so i was learning on how to use the program (forgot name) and was doin some stuff with the SDHC (NOT SSD card) then i got an error, i rebooted win, then couldnt start it, so i went to reinstall windows, got many problems with it, but after some time, i finally installed it, i clicked on my PC to see my space available and i saw 1.3gb free from 3.7gb and windows install is only 300mb -_-

i reinstalled windows deleting the partition and creating it again, no luck....... its 5am already and i gotta go to school >.< (booooooooooooring) so i will install linux with the DVD and hope i can recover all my space and try again with installing windows on the SDHC card again lol

[MorganJ]

Dragonduster,

I would sugest making yourself a windows boot cd, booting from that, and using good old FDISK to check your partition info, and fix if necessary.

[airbillion]

Quote

s**t s**t s**t!!!!!! i think i f***d my SSD >.< i installed windows xp on the SSD to clone it to my SDHC, all wa smooth, then after cloning, i wanted my other 4gb back from the SDHC card, so i was learning on how to use the program (forgot name) and was doin some stuff with the SDHC (NOT SSD card) then i got an error, i rebooted win, then couldnt start it, so i went to reinstall windows, got many problems with it, but after some time, i finally installed it, i clicked on my PC to see my space available and i saw 1.3gb free from 3.7gb and windows install is only 300mb -_-

i reinstalled windows deleting the partition and creating it again, no luck....... its 5am already and i gotta go to school >.< (booooooooooooring) so i will install linux with the DVD and hope i can recover all my space and try again with installing windows on the SDHC card again lol

My problem started the same way almost. I couldn't get windows installed from a dvd for hours because the install kept stalling. Then all of a sudden it installed and now I am missing nearly .5 GB of my ssd. I have been using the 4g normally, no heavy usage, and I had the stock eeeOS on it until last night. Now all of a sudden, I lose part of the ssd. I'm pissed. The only thing I can hope for is that either asus or sandisk release the mini pci-e ssd and I can place it in the open slot on my eee4g 7A and boot from that.

[hukie69]

Quote

Quote

s**t s**t s**t!!!!!! i think i f***d my SSD >.< i installed windows xp on the SSD to clone it to my SDHC, all wa smooth, then after cloning, i wanted my other 4gb back from the SDHC card, so i was learning on how to use the program (forgot name) and was doin some stuff with the SDHC (NOT SSD card) then i got an error, i rebooted win, then couldnt start it, so i went to reinstall windows, got many problems with it, but after some time, i finally installed it, i clicked on my PC to see my space available and i saw 1.3gb free from 3.7gb and windows install is only 300mb -_-

i reinstalled windows deleting the partition and creating it again, no luck....... its 5am already and i gotta go to school >.< (booooooooooooring) so i will install linux with the DVD and hope i can recover all my space and try again with installing windows on the SDHC card again lol

My problem started the same way almost. I couldn't get windows installed from a dvd for hours because the install kept stalling. Then all of a sudden it installed and now I am missing nearly .5 GB of my ssd. I have been using the 4g normally, no heavy usage, and I had the stock eeeOS on it until last night. Now all of a sudden, I lose part of the ssd. I'm pissed. The only thing I can hope for is that either asus or sandisk release the mini pci-e ssd and I can place it in the open slot on my eee4g 7A and boot from that.

Before getting everyone a bit worried that their SSD might also fail (myself included!), you might want to use some disk tools to check your partitions. I've got a feeling you'll have 3 on there - not 1. You've not metioned using FDISK in any of your posts.

[airbillion]

No, I only have 1 partition and it is roughly 3.5 GB in size. Some of the ssd is permanently lost!

[Dragonduster]

i used the DVD to "try to repair" it and it kinda worked, but Xandros boots a little slower (takes around 20-30 secs to fully load Xandros in advance) and sometimes i see weird stuff when power it on or off. now i have a 3.7gb SSD (i think thats the correct one?) and i will try to install windows again.

[Kelpie]

All harddrives report a chunk off their space. It is truly normal. Do not be alarmed. It's due to the OS and other very important things taking up space you cannot use or move. Like it shows in the defragger. It shows space that is reserved for file systems that cannot and will not move.

[Bremen]

Dragonduster, after you install windows be sure to delete, or make much smaller, your page file. It is normal for a pagefile to be a gig or more so your XP install may be half a gig, but it would actually be taking up 1.5 gig or so........

[Dragonduster]

Quote

Dragonduster, after you install windows be sure to delete, or make much smaller, your page file. It is normal for a pagefile to be a gig or more so your XP install may be half a gig, but it would actually be taking up 1.5 gig or so........

i know, i had pagefile disabled >.< i solved that problem using the DVD and installing Xandros, now the problem i get is that i cant see the screen when it starts reading Bios and all that, so i cant predd F2 for Bios setup or ESC for Boot menu, it only shows me a screen where it says "reboot or insert a boot device and press any key" if i press any key, it loads Xandros >.<

[DrEEE]

I may be barking up the wrong tree.. but is it not the ame with most storage...?? a 500gb hard drive, will only have about 460gb usable, due to partition tables and other format info... my 8gb usb stick has 7.6 useable...

You never have the rue capacity available for use...