Unbootable from Phoenix Pro 60GB

[silverfire]

I received my two SSDs from Newegg today and cloned my system partition from my existing Vertex onto one of the Phoenixes only to find that the disk would hang on boot prior to reaching the Windows 7 bootloader. Not willing to chance it to something random, I redid the disk clone after aligning the partition to 1024KB as all my other disks were aligned still to no avail. I then took out my other SSD to downgrade the firmware to v2.0 in an attempt to get something working, but discovered that something inside the drive was rattling and will need RMA regardless of the outcome of any firmware, driver, or software fixes. I'm assuming the PCB came unglued during shipping (thanks, UPS) so I downgraded the firmware anyway and attempted once again to boot off of the cloned partition.

I read that several people were encountering issues booting from AHCI mode and SMART errors at boot (which I am also getting, but as I understand, it doesn't affect actual operation) so I switched my ICH10R to IDE mode and attempted to boot with each drive to no avail. I also tried the Gigabyte controller on my GA-EX58-UD4P (F13 BIOS) in both modes, but no luck.

At this point, I'm just at a loss as to how to proceed. The odd thing is that if I use the drives without trying to boot from them, the v2.1 drive works fine but the v2.0 one has issues partitioning properly -- diskpart and diskmgmt.msc both hang.

Here's the relevant software/hardware specs:
Motherboard: GA-EX58-UD4P (F13 BIOS)
OS: Windows 7 Enterprise (64bit)
Driver: Intel RST v9.6
SSD Part #: FM-25S2S-60GBP2
Various SATA cables used, some new, some old.
Disk imaging software: Acronis True Image Home 2011

Here's the configurations I've tried:
v2.0 firmware, no alignment, AHCI
v2.0 firmware, no alignment, IDE
v2.0 firmware, aligned to 1024K, AHCI
v2.0 firmware, aligned to 1024K, IDE
v2.1 firmware, no alignment, AHCI
v2.1 firmware, no alignment, IDE
v2.1 firmware, aligned to 1024K, AHCI
v2.1 firmware, aligned to 1024K, IDE

I only tried the 1024K aligned partitions under the Gigabyte storage controller, but as it's mostly performance-related, I doubt the outcome would be any different were I to reimage the drives without preserving alignment.

If I need to provide more info, or if something doesn't seem quite right, please let me know and I'll try to sort through and/or add to the info I've provided so it makes sense.

Thanks in advance!

[silverfire]

Sorry for the double post, but this is partially resolved now. The drive that doesn't rattle is now bootable -- I just needed to make sure the Windows 7 bootloader was pointing to the correct drive. The GUID of the new drive didn't match the one from the old drive (of course), so it never found the W7 installation to boot from.

Still need to call about getting that rattling drive RMA'd though.

[vaca]

Sorry for your inconvenience.
To that defective SSD, please contact newegg for an replacement or RMA it