Some time ago, a friend bought this ZEUSLAP laptop from AliExpress and she asked me to install Ubuntu alongside the original Windows 10.
Relevant specs: 240GB SSD + 1TB HDD (this turned out to be an SSHD)
Preparing for the Ubuntu installation I opened the firmware settings (UEFI) and noticed that of all the available SATA modes - "Native IDE", AHCI and RAID - the factory default was "Native IDE". Knowing that it should be AHCI because newer and better, I then first rebooted and installed some AHCI drivers in Windows, then changed the mode to AHCI. Then installed Ubuntu uneventfully in an SSD partition and it worked fine. Copied some video clips and music for my friend to the secondary drive and then played a few to test graphics performance and stuff like that and it worked like a charm [in Ubuntu].
But when I rebooted to Windows which is also installed in the 240GB SSD I noticed a weird problem: Playing the same media files already in the 1TB SSHD didn't work, it kept doing what looks like buffering so I suspected there was some problem reading from the SSHD, the same that was fine in Ubuntu.
What I did to troubleshoot:
- Copied one big file to the SSHD resulting in acceptable speeds during the first seconds then dropping to almost zero, going up a little bit, down to almost zero again and so on.
- Rebooted with Ubuntu and everything was fine as before.
- At UEFI I changed the SATA node back to "native IDE" and then things seem to work in Windows (playing the video clips, copying to/from the SSHD).
So, my question(s) is/are:
- Has anyone noticed any similar problem? Is there any solution to use the more modern AHCI without affecting Windows?
No need to tell me the laptop has a problem, that's evident and confirmed at the troubleshooting. Maybe it needs a UEFI update? I hope not because this Chinese brands rarely provide such kind of support.