Aspire V7-582pg SSD

Does anyone have an Aspire V7-582pg working well, with SSD actually used, straight out of the factory? Does Acer use the SSD differently (not RST caching)? Did I just get a bad build? Is Acer's Customer Support really as bad as my experience leads me to believe? Please read on...

I purchased this laptop on Saturday (it's Wednesday now) and ran into some problems from the get go.

I looked away for a moment and the sales girl skipped through the initial Windows setup at the shop. Being a little OCD, I wanted to read every options so I ran the Acer Recovery application when I got home and chose to reset the laptop to factory default. 4 hours later sitting at just 18%, I left it to run overnight and got some sleep.

First thing in the morning I rebooted the machine and walked through Microsoft's Windows 8 setup process - Machine name, user name, etc... - at the end, the machine rebooted and wouldn't let me login.

I click my name at the start, key in my password, wait as the spinning thingy shows that it's working, then the system would crash. Tried cold booting several times with the same result. Being a Sunday, I couldn't contact Acer support so I borrowed a retail Windows 8 DVD and repaired the OS build. (Bad idea huh?)

All seemed fine after that. I could login and use the laptop, but I decided to run Windows Resource Monitor (OCD remember?) and realized that the SSD had zero activity.

Poked about the laptop, found that Intel RST was installed and launched it. It showed the HDD and SSD as two separate drives and both not cached or enhanced. Googled it. Checked Intel's site and various other RST how-to-guides which all stated that RST needs SATA drives to be in RAID not AHCI to work.

I contacted Acer tech support Monday and they told me Acer does not have RAID drivers for this model and if I made any config changes, it'll void my warranty. (the heck!?). They then suggested I bring the laptop back to Acer where they'll charge me $50 to reinstall Windows cause "software isn't covered under warranty". (double the heck!?)

Anyway, I downloaded the RAID driver off intel.com, set SATA to RAID in BIOS and clean installed Windows 8. RST now shows that SSD caching is enabled and the laptop takes about 6 seconds to start up and everything is running faster.

...but does it mean I either run a faulty build, or void my 3 year warranty by fixing it?

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mazen

hahaha, by fixing it you challenged acer Tech and i congratulate you as i have the same problem in my v7.

Acer comps are good and great but needs some one like you to for adjustment and to tune the settings that not done yet.

About acer did not install a raid hardware in your comp, i beleive them cause they only information in a template in from of them(not all are realy Tech) as Tommy.

I bought 2 computers from acer and never called Tech support for 2 years now cause, i called once to install another windows8 in the v3 i own from last year the answer was that i cannot install another OS with UEFI bios with GPUT partition, i challenged them at that time and installed it as UEFI. Since then i never need someOne that needs informations.

Tommy-Acer

I'm not really sure what you're asking Mazen, or that you're intentionally offering insult to Acer or the people who post, like myself. No, there's no 'script' for posting on these forums.

I do use macros frequently to ask for information. It is because I answer the same questions or ask for the same information repeatedly. I originally wrote this article, How to get quick and efficient help in the Community, to prevent having to do that.

So, should that system have the SSD raided using RST for caching? Yes, it should. The OP did nothing wrong in getting their system to work. I'm not sure what the 'shop' was doing running an inital set up on the system for a customer ... I'd personally do that myself on any system I owned.

And no, it does not void your warranty to install software on the system. We may not be able to support the software, but the hardware is still covered.

Amduscias

Hi.

My Aspire V7-582pg bought from Amazon also came shipped with non-raided setup. Hoewever I've been fighting with it for two days already and can't get it to work. Unfortunately you only wrote two sentences about how you did it. Smiley Sad

My problem is that Windows won't recognize the SSD. Occasionally it shows up in device manager, but it is never visible in disk management. diskpart list disk also only shows one drive (the regular HDD).

If I boot from a Windows 8 installation DVD and get to the part where I can edit partitions the SSD shows up no problem. Going to console with Shift+F10 and running diskpart list disk also shows two disks.

Did you change the partition layout during your "clean install"? The regular HDD was (and still is) partitioned into an MSR, EFI, regular and the mysterious "push button reset" partition.

Also, after installation, what device drivers did you install? I have two unidentified PCI devices showing up in device manager.

Amduscias

I just booted again via Windows DVD and the SSD was visible so I decided to reinstall. After that the SSD showed up in device manager and in disk management after the installation. It was gone again as soon as I installed the Intel RST tools.

Ethos

Hi I have acer aspire v7 and i didnt bothered with orig small ssd and hdd

I threw them out from my v7 and purchased Plextor M5M 256GB mSATA SSD and Installed win 8 on it and it flies !

And i had RAM 4GB stick in it and it became faulty .. windows was crashing into blue screen .. it took me few days to figure out ram was the problem..

Now I have purchased 8GB samsung stick and v7 flies even faster ..

But now what bothers me is that I want to buy second Plextor M5M 256GB mSATA SSD and install it into mSATA to SATA III adapter and put it into my V7 and create RAID 0 with these two SSDs .. so I will have 512GB in RAID 0 and then it wont be flying but it will be lightning speed then .. First I need to make sure that RAID 0 is possible on this machine !!

kirkers

Very impressive Ethos!

Did you have a service manual to guide you in all this work? If so, would you be willing to share the link or other soure of the service manual?

If you had no manual, would you be willing to share from your experience how to achieve replacement and/or installation of SSD, mSATA chip, HDD, and battery? Most of these you definitely accomplished according to your post.

Cheers!

Ethos wrote:
Hi I have acer aspire v7 and i didnt bothered with orig small ssd and hdd
I threw them out from my v7 and purchased Plextor M5M 256GB mSATA SSD and Installed win 8 on it and it flies !
And i had RAM 4GB stick in it and it became faulty .. windows was crashing into blue screen .. it took me few days to figure out ram was the problem..
Now I have purchased 8GB samsung stick and v7 flies even faster ..

But now what bothers me is that I want to buy second Plextor M5M 256GB mSATA SSD and install it into mSATA to SATA III adapter and put it into my V7 and create RAID 0 with these two SSDs .. so I will have 512GB in RAID 0 and then it wont be flying but it will be lightning speed then .. First I need to make sure that RAID 0 is possible on this machine !!

kirkers

Great work JuanBA!

I think I follow most of what you did.

Was the reinstallation of Win8 due to your earlier issues with crashes on log-on? Would that step be needed if the OS were behaving normally otherwise?

-------------------

JuanBeegAhs wrote:

... I decided to run Windows Resource Monitor (OCD remember?) and realized that the SSD had zero activity.

Poked about the laptop, found that Intel RST was installed and launched it. It showed the HDD and SSD as two separate drives and both not cached or enhanced. Googled it. Checked Intel's site and various other RST how-to-guides which all stated that RST needs SATA drives to be in RAID not AHCI to work.

I contacted Acer tech support Monday and they told me Acer does not have RAID drivers for this model ...

I downloaded the RAID driver off intel.com, set SATA to RAID in BIOS and clean installed Windows 8. RST now shows that SSD caching is enabled and the laptop takes about 6 seconds to start up and everything is running faster.

JuanBeegAhs

Well, "normally" is subjective. It was running, just from my point of view, with a redundant SSD drive.

I reinstalled the OS from scratch after changing SATA to RAID in BIOS only cause I wanted to... I did not attempt to just inject in the RAID driver on the factory build so I can't say for sure if that'll work, or not. Only certain thing is you will need the RAID driver or Windows will not even see your drives after that switch to RAID in BIOS.

Ethos

Hello Guys

So I purchased scond mSATA and unfortunately I cannot create RAID 0 on this machine (V7) shame Smiley Sad

I've ended up with two mSATA SSDs I don't really need that second mSATA now ..

I really don't need to make SSD caching it would be useless or stupid ..

kirkers it is very easy undo screws underneath laptop remove bottom lid check pic below

V7 Inside

Peeti

Hi Ethos,

My question might sound stupid, but why don't you put a separate partition on the second SSD? So you would have c: and d: drives.

Ethos

?

That is wha I have ... What you think I have now ?

ricky124

I ran into an issue when removing the existing SSHD of this laptop. Essentially, the connector housing the male tip of the SSHD broke. Luckily, it only broke one of the sides, none of the small pins in there were damaged. What did I do wrong? From videos and research, the SSHD should have been easy to come out but it was rather stuck. Did I miss a fastener?

Ethos

i have no idea .. u should just pull it .. did pull it proper way ?

ricky124

I am sure that I pulled it out the proper way (but maybe not since I broke it Smiley Happy . Pull to the right or left depending on where you are standing. It was pretty much stuck. Since I saw no fastener, I then started pulling from a little bit to the left and right, to wiggle it out. I am happy to report that the machine works and I have not noticed anything out of the ordinary. At first I thought it was getting hotter but now, since I have used it for so long, I notice that the fan does not come on as often. The batter life is maybe a bit better but not by much. The speed increase is marginal but noticeable. The laptop boots up quickly but then when programs are loading in Windows it takes about hte same time as before. I thought MS Word would fly open but it does not. My desktop with a hard drive opens Word faster by like two or three seconds, my desktop though has a Quad Core Pentinum i7 haswell.

The ssd drive experience is marginally better, maybe I should have gotten a Samsung or SandDisk Extreme ssd to notice more difference. Did you tweak anything on your computer to make it better with the ssd? I pretty much just put it in, stuck the recovery USB into the machine and reloaded all the programs, updated windows and removed many acer programs which I did not need.