Crucial M4 can't be partitioned

[Buckeyes1995]

I'm on my 2nd Crucial M4 drive now, and no matter what I do, during partition it always times out and fails formatting. I was able to get the first drive to frmat one time, and then after that started getting errors.. I returned that drive and got a new one.. this time it just times out and sometimes get POSIX errors.. regular SATA drives format fine.

I'm about at my wits end.

 

[Buckeyes1995]

Hrmm.. when I pulled the drive out of my Mini and put it in an external enclosure (firewire 800) it formatted fine.

 

[Buckeyes1995]

This is really frustrating. I moved the M4 into the chassis and it won't boot Lion. Boots it fine as an external drive. Verbose mode didn't really reveal anything useful.

Has anyone run a Crucial M4 in their Mac Mini Server?

 

[NoisyCat]

I have one running on my Mac Mini 2011 base model. Had no problems partitioning. I updated the firmware from 002 to 009 before putting it in the Mini. What firmware is your disk running?

 

[Buckeyes1995]

I have one running on my Mac Mini 2011 base model. Had no problems partitioning. I updated the firmware from 002 to 009 before putting it in the Mini. What firmware is your disk running?

I believe it is 9. When I run sysinfo all I found was 'Revision: 9'.. assume that is firmware version.

 

[Buckeyes1995]

Solved!

Welp, I think I've solved the problem.

I had some time today, so I thought I'd tear apart the mini and do some troubleshooting.

After I pulled out the bottom drive, I just happened to glance at the data cable.. and noticed that one of the tiny copper contacts was missing.. all I can figure is back when I installed the first M4, a couple of weeks ago, I then tore the MM apart to install the 1TB Scorpio drive.. I must have been to rough unseating the cable and damaged it...

So I tore the MM apart, put the SSD in the top drive slot (with the top drive cable).. and it works flawlessly. What is weird is.. that my 1TB drive (and even an old Intel 80GB SSD) I had works fine with the bad cable.. maybe it's due to SATA6?

Next question.. where can I order a bottom slot cable?

thanks.