topic Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2) in Archive

RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:39:10 GMT

Hello all,

I have reviewed some of the other posts in the forum, but haven't found any that directly address what I am experiencing with my configuration.

As always, it is a challenge to troubleshoot the source of the issue - driver? mobo BIOS? etc.

I just purchased two 80GB SSD X25-M G2 drives (SSDSA2MH080G2C1). I connected them to my PC, I have an EVGA x58 Micro motherboard with updated BIOS.

In the BIOS, I have it set to "RAID" which the documentation indicates to me means that AHCI is enabled.

Installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 64-bit.

I installed the RST driver set in Windows and am able to see that the drives have NCQ enabled etc (that indicates AHCI is working, right? wrong?).

I have run CrystalDiskMark benchmarks and the performance was outstanding.

Through usage, be it web browsing (watching some Hulu) or playing games Modern Warfare 2, eventually the system freezes. It is not a blue screen, but it becomes non-responsive (task manager won't open, etc).

I changed the Windows driver installed to the Intel MSM drivers 8.9 set, and this lock up/freezing does NOT happen. However the benchmarks post statistically significant lower numbers performance-wise than with the RST drivers.

I installed the RST drivers from the Lenovo site 9.5.7.x listed in a post on this forum, and the freeze/lockups returned.

I am happy with the drive performance with the MSM drivers, it is damn quick, but it is bugging me that there is a 10-15% gain I could have with the RST drivers but there is no system stability.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

DZand — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:07:38 GMT

Have you tried the other Intel RST drivers (v9.5.0.1037, v9.5.4.1001 and 9.5.6.1001)?

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:12:44 GMT

Hi Fernando,

Yes, I originally tried 9.5.6.1001. That is when I experienced the first set of lockups.

I am back home from work, so I have access to the benchmarks I ran you can see them below. I have highlighted the dramatic gains from use of the RST driver set.

BTW - Is there a way I can tell of AHCI is enabled for my SSD drives? I have RAID0'd them... so not much software will let me know if they are AHCI enabled.

MSM 8.9

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

Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/

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

Sequential Read : 494.933 MB/s

Sequential Write : 171.280 MB/s

Random Read 512KB : 280.993 MB/s

Random Write 512KB : 143.522 MB/s

Random Read 4KB : 21.711 MB/s

Random Write 4KB : 131.616 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB

Date : 2010/02/24 18:52:31

RST 9.5.7

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

Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/

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

Sequential Read : 601.346 MB/s

Sequential Write : 170.583 MB/s

Random Read 512KB : 392.803 MB/s

Random Write 512KB : 194.468 MB/s

Random Read 4KB : 22.136 MB/s

Random Write 4KB : 160.312 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB

Date : 2010/02/24 19:10:02

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

DZand — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:34:41 GMT

Hi Hajji,

I am running 2x160 GB Postville SSD's in RAID0 and I had not a single problem with any of the RST drivers.

Regards

Fernando

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:39:36 GMT

Hey Fernando,

Are you running Win7 64-bit?

EVGA x58 brand mobo?

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

DZand — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:57:45 GMT

Hajji schrieb:

Are you running Win7 64-bit?

EVGA x58 brand mobo?

Yes, I am running Win7 x64, but my mainboard is a P45 chipset one (Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R) with an Intel ICH10R Southbridge.

Regards

Fernando

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:15:35 GMT

Bump.

Anybody else noting this behavior. It is 100% reproducible.

Using the MSM drivers, I am all set with no issues.

Using the RST drivers, even the newest 9.5.7 version - Play Modern Warfare 2, or Flash Video (Hulu) for some time, and the system seizes.

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:44:33 GMT

I think I have a similar issue, but different OS / in AHCI mode. also, just happened at the desktop. Instead, I've gone to the IMSM and no problems: http://communities.intel.com/message/87248# 87248

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:40:46 GMT

Ozz wrote:

I think I have a similar issue, but different OS / in AHCI mode. also, just happened at the desktop. Instead, I've gone to the IMSM and no problems: /message/87248# 87248 http://communities.intel.com/message/87248# 87248

Hey there Ozz, yeah I found that to be the case in my original post. But there is a ~15%+ performance gain with the RST drivers. I didn't know if it was a setting / configuration issue.

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:58:51 GMT

I should clarify that and say it only happened at the desktop because I didn't really go into any 3D environment, games etc. But I'd hedge my bets that it probably was something similar if not the same issue. However, I think I'll leave tinkering alone for now as that machine can't really afford much downtime

Yeah, RSTs are faster, but I'm happy to take a slight performance hit using the IMSM driver whilst the RSTs are left in the oven a bit longer.

Cheers.

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:09:58 GMT

Out of interest, you're not running Kaspersky antivirus/internet security are you Hajji?

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:16:45 GMT

Ozz wrote:

Out of interest, you're not running Kaspersky antivirus/internet security are you Hajji?

Hey there Ozz,

Sorry about the late response. No I run Microsoft Security Essentials.

So I un-RAIDed my drives, per another thread I started, and have them individually so that TRIM is supported. Running RST drivers with no lockups since. So maybe it is an issue of the RAID not playing well with the drivers.

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:31:04 GMT

Ah, you running the new RST v9.6s?

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:31:21 GMT

I'm having a similar problem. I have two 120gb Intel X25-M SSDs in RAID-0 on an ASRock P67 Extreme4 mainboard with the 2600k Sandy Bridge CPU and 16gb of memory. After a lot of testing and experimenting I found the following: A fresh install of Win7 64-bit ultimate WITHOUT the F6 RST driver during install results in a system that does NOT freeze after being left idle for 15-30 minutes. After installing the RST driver the system will freeze after sitting idle for 15 minutes. This is also the case if I install the driver while installing Win7 (F6). I found that the power plan was set to power off the disk drives after 15 minutes so I reduced that to 5 minutes and sure enough the freeze happens after 5 minutes of idle time and the system never comes back to life - can't even start task manager - I have to reset the PC. When I set the power plan to NEVER power off the disk drives then it does not freeze - ever. I have not found a work around to this but have found that this is NOT a problem on Vista 64-bit Ultimate on the same hardware. Also, the PC wakes up fine from sleep even with the RST driver installed. There is either a problem with Windows 7 or the RST driver or some interaction between the two. My only solution is to (1) set the drives to never turn off or (2) go back to Vista.

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:27:18 GMT

I was about to create a freeze related thread..

I do have the same freeze issue on my 2500k build. It's very rare and random, and unpredictible. I run the system for 24/7, and usually it freezes while idling, browsing or doing some other light work. It never freezes while gaming or running prime95, etc. I thought this must be a BIOS related issue and spent hours working on it, but without a success.

I just had a sudden freeze on a firefox. The system has been runing stable for a week, 24/7, and this sudden freeze doesn't excite me at all.

It's not the power settings because the disks are set to never sleep or shut off.

I didn't know what to do, so I unistalled the RST driver. I am using a Win7 default driver as of now.

Please, update this thread, I really want to find out the cause of it.

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:05:26 GMT

There is a number of bugs with the P67 chipset and drivers that cause all sorts of sleep & freeze problems.

Hard telling if Intel will ever get it fixed. We are at B3 version of P67 and still so many problems.

Try changing your power plan to not power off the disk drives after being idle for some period of time. In Win7 go to:

Control Panel > Power options > Change Plan Settings > Change Advanced Power Settings

> Expand "Hard Disk" > Expand "Turn off hard disk after" > Set to "Never".

That is what stopped the freezes on my pc.

You might also try setting it to power off after 4 mins, allow the pc to be idle for 5 mins, and then see if it is frozen.

Thats how I reproduced the problem. If this doesn't solve your problem then its some other issue.

Re: RST Driver Lockup / Freezes (Win7 x64 w/2 x 80GB X25-M G2)

idata — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:45:34 GMT

Many thanks to rwp1993, this was the solution to my lockup problem!

My new build uses a Gigabyte P67A-UD7-B3 mainboard with a Core i5 2500k CPU. OS is Win 7 Pro 64-bit.

I'm running two raid arrays off the P67 chipset:

- Array 1 is Raid 0, two WD 320 GB SATA III Caviar Blue drives.

- Array 2 is Raid 5, four WD 1 TB SATA II RE4s.

Array 1 is the system drive, and an image of it will be maintained on Array 2. I say "will be." because until now I've been fighting this lockup problem, and haven't yet set up the utility that will update the image. Add me to the list of people breathing a big sigh of relief.