Unmountable Boot Volume

[Scotty_E]

Hi Forum,

I have just received a new HP laptop with an Intel SSDSA1M160G2 SSD drive installed. I use SCCM SP2 to deploy sysprepd Windows XP images (WIN7 soon). Using my usual SSD DISKPART script results in an 'Unmountable Boot Volume' error after the sysprep mini setup. I can also see that the disk has been changed from NTFS to RAW.

Easy your thinking, its the UBER WINPE bug.. I wish! I have already ensured that the DISKPART compatibility mode is set to true, and as a backup, am applying the required registry settings to WINPE as outlined in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931760/en-au.

What I have narrowed it down to is the DISKPART align parameter. If I use the same DISKPART commands to create my volume without the align parameter, the volume is created and the Windows XP Deployment process completes as expected. If I add an align parameter into the DISKPART create partition line (I have tried align=64 align=128 align=2048) Windows XP ends with the Unmountable Boot Volume BSOD.

There are alot of posts online regarding the importance of correct alignment of a volume for Windows XP and SSD, which is why I have added the additional step. My DISKPART script is below.

SELECT DISK 0

CLEAN

SELECT DISK 0

CREATE PARTITION primary align=128 noerr

SELECT PARTITION 1

ACTIVE

SELECT PARTITION 1

FORMAT FS=NTFS quick noerr

SELECT PARTITION 1

ASSIGN Letter=C noerr

The above has worked fine for other laptops with SSD drives installed (non Intel SSDs)

Has anyone had any experience aligning the new Intel G2 SSD drives? I am wondering if the Intels need a particular align value or something obvious I am missing. I would really like to prepare these partitions properly to get the maximum performance out of the machine until we move to WIN7 later this year.

Thanks For Reading..

[cluberti]

What happens if you use align=16065? If it works, you'll have 16 to 32MB of space unused on the disk, but you'll know you're absolutely running into 931760.