Drives randomly change from SATA 3 to SATA 2

[idata]

Hi,

I have recently purchased (1 month ago) a Dell XPS 8300 dekstop which has an i7 2600 chip on what appears to be an H67 motherboard (made by Dell?) and I separately bought 2 Intel 510 120gb SSDs. My motherbaord has 6 SATA ports, 4 x SATA 2 and 2 x SATA 3. Obviously my SSDs are connected to the SATA 3 ports.

They went in easily and work very well but they do have a habit of changing from SATA 3 (6gb/s) to SATA 2 (3gb/s) for no obvious reason. It can happen to one or both of the drives and 90% of the time a complete shutdown and start returns them to SATA 3. I am using the Intel Rapid Stroage Technology Tool to check the SATA speed.

I'm quite sure they really are changing speed and that it isn't just a reporting issue as I can see a slightly longer load time for windows when the system SSD has started up as 3gb/s. Normally the windows logo only half completes when it's at 6gb/s but when it has gone back to 3gb/s the whole logo forms. When this happens I check the Intel tool and indeed the system SSD is running at 3gb/s.

One of the drives reports firmware PPG4 and the other PPG2 but the problem affects them both equally. I downloaded and booted the Intel SSD Firmware Update Tool which found both SSDs but told me that both firmwares were up to date. That seems a bit odd as one is PPG2 and surely that is not as new as PPG4?

Anyway, they work and even at 3gb/s they are considerably faster than a mechanical drive but I would obviously prefer them both to stay at 6gb/s. I expect no help whatsoever from Dell because when I first asked them about adding SSDs they said it should be possible but they couldn't offer any support as they hadn't tested them out with this system yet.

Does anyone have any idea? I've also sent a message to Intel support outlining this problem but thought I'd see if anyone else put there has come across/solved this problem.

[idata]

Dell isn't being very nice about disclosing full system specifications, but from what I can tell it looks like the Dell XPS 8300 is one of the systems which uses the latest Cougar Point southbridge. You know, the chipset that http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2379241,00.asp was recalled due to SATA silicon-level bugs? More details are http://www.anandtech.com/show/4142/intel-discovers-bug-in-6series-chipset-begins-recall also available. Although http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge# Cougar_Point_chipset_flaw this sums it up quite nicely, there's also http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12354263 double confirmation Dell systems are affected.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/p/19375380/19862045.aspx This thread will almost certainly interest you, Ian. I say all of this with full knowledge of your previous post where you said "Southbridge : Intel H67 Rev B3". The reason I'm not so sure I believe that is that the same output you stated says "Chipset: Sandybridge". Sandy Bridge is not a chipset; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge it's a model (code name) of CPU. SATA is driven entirely by the southbridge (code-named Cougar Point). There's even a major news site which said "Sandy Bridge chipset" recently, so don't feel bad -- people keep screwing up the two. 😞 So read the Dell forum thread and you might be surprised.

EDIT: Oh, and http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/p/19362560/19812684.aspx# 19812684 read this one too, particularly the end statement from Dell.

Dell needs to tell you whether or not your model of system is truly running the B3 stepping version of the Cougar Point southbridge or not. It's their responsibility. Dell Technical Support needs to own up to assisting you in this.

Now that I got that out of the way -- is this chipset bug what's causing you all the grief? Impossible to tell. But it is something you need to consider, and something Dell needs to work with you about.

[idata]

All of this stuff about Sandybridge flaws is very old news and I don't think this is helpful at all.

"Now that I got that out of the way -- is this chipset bug what's causing you all the grief? Impossible to tell."

Enough said.

To return to more practical matters....

Intel have now escalated the case so hopefully they will do some more investigation.

Dell say that they are about to start testing SSDs with this system with a view to offering it as a buyable configuration. This would involve releasing a new BIOS which might address this problem. Sounds like they're almost admitting it is a known problem.

I may well buy a different brand if I see a cheap SATA 3 SSD on eBay and give that a test but for now I wil have to just make sure I do a cold boot if I want the speed.

Cheers,

Ian

[idata]

I just created a new discussion (http://communities.intel.com/thread/23997?tstart=0 http://communities.intel.com/thread/23997?tstart=0) that is very similar to this one and in fact I'd say the symptoms are identical. Reading this thread gave me the idea to turn my system off/on and voila! Drive C, which RST had reported as 3Gbs was now reporting as 6Gbs. This is a new system built on the Asus P8Z68 Deluxe motherboard so the whole B3 discussion is irrelevant. Intel ... please help!

[idata]

I still haven't heard anything more from Intel. It's now been 8 weeks since Intel were first informed of this problem. I guess they just don't give a sh*t?

8 weeks? It looks like they don't think it's important enough or not enough people have the problem for it to be worth the effort. I recommend just taking the drive back to the retailer and asking for an exchange. It's been proved that there is an issue so they shouldn't give you too much trouble. Howeber, I thought the same of Intel but they've turned out to be utterly useless! /report.php?p=32404585

[tpart1]

I am having the same problem with my sata3 intel 7 series controller

sometimes my Crucial m550 ssd drive will work as a sata3 device and get amazing speeds then some times I get sata 2 speeds which are half the sata 3 speeds

Very annoying.