Intel 520 freezes on MacBook Pro/Mac OS X Snow Leopard

[idata]

Hi all,

I installed an Intel 520 SSD (240GB) in my MacBook Pro yesterday. After reinstalling the system, I moved my datas.

I encounter freezes! A few seconds freezes/hangs. Quite often actually.

It seems a bit random but it is really annoying! The whole computer is frozen.

I noticed it happens more often when a lots of datas are going in and out. Browsing the web doesn't do much things. Copying a file from a disk image (DMG) to desktop, it freezes… sometimes.

The SSD has the 400i firmware. I installed the drive in the HHD bay. Negotiated Link Speed is 6 Gigabit. MacBook Pro EFI is up-to-date. Software is up-to-date.

I haven't activated the "Trim Enabler" software (Mac OS X doesn't manage for 3rd party drives).

I cannot run the SSD Toolbox from my Mac. I'll try to install Windows and see if it hangs up.

Have you heard about these problems? What can I do? I don't want to keep a drive behaving like this!

Thanks for your help,

[idata]

Thanks for your reply.

I contacted the Intel support who told me to contact the Apple support and ask if they knew about incompatibilities. The Intel support also told me that it should whether work at the first time or not at all as there are no ways to tweak things around (which is the case on the MacBook Pro).

The support at Apple wasn't very helpful "as it is not a part coming from us, we do not do support for this". I was just asking for a yes/no answer about "do you have feedbacks about this drive". Apparently, they don't. Apple said they will investigate the case but I think it would have to call them back and talk to a senior adviser to be sure about it.

I now have a case open at Apple as well as a ticket number at Intel.

If there is someone from Intel reading this, I would be very happy to help to test a new firmware or a new solution.

[idata]

im having the same issue. Mac freezes randomly with spinning beach ball of death, I even reinstalled Lion and same issue happening still, I never had this problem with spinning HDD. I hope they are working on fix for this, as it is really annoying having to restart all the time.

Please update us on your progress, as it would be great to get a fix for this! Thanks

[idata]

I have the same problem with an Intel 330. I'm trying to use fs_usage, so that when the OS freezes I will have a clue of what's happening.

[idata]

Same issue with 520 on lion with and without trim enabler.

I hope Intel is looking into this, as it seems to be either a firmware or a hardware issue. It should not be caused by Lion, as it would just use the SATA interface of the disk.

Let me know if you need any debug information.

[idata]

I am also encountering 15-second beach-ball freezes when OSX 10.7.4 writes memory pages to disk on an MBP 5,2 with 8GB of RAM. I used the Intel SSD 520 180GB without issue from April through the beginning of July. TRIM is not enabled. The drive is filled to 70% of capacity.

In my case, I believe this is just the Intel SSD performing internal housekeeping and garbage collection because TRIM isn't enabled in OSX. Keep your SSDs at below 50% capacity and performance should increase. I am enabling TRIM and I'll report back if anything changes.

EDIT: Enabling TRIM support fixed all "beach ball" issues in OSX 10.7 and 10.8.&# 13; http://www.groths.org/?page_id=322 http://www.groths.org/?page_id=322