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

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

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,

36 REPLIES 36

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

There is really no one who fixed this issue? What did you do guys with your non-working SSDs?

I experience all the symptoms described in this thread. I enabled TRIM, disabled Time Machine, no success. Still 30s freezes repeating on a random basis. Sometimes once an hour, sometimes every five minutes. My patience is over and I have replaced it back to the original drive.

A friend of mine put the SSD into his thinkpad and run Linux on it. No issues at all. So it seems the problem is in Macs. Either OS X or hardware.

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

have the same freezes on my macbook pro late 08. using a 120gb 330 ssd with mountain lion (clean install)

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

Same issue — MacPro'11, 120 gb Intel 520 SSD. TRIM or hard drive sleep settings don't help; latest firmware version installed. Especially often the freezes happen when both SATA3 SSD and SATA2 HDD are accessed at the same time (eg. copying). Considering some posts attributing the issue to crappy sata2/3 compatibility in the controller, I tried one solution and it actually seems to work!

Originally I had the SSD in the optical bay. I have simply moved it to the HDD slot and the hard disk into the optical bay. I have still my fingers crossed, but it is 30 mins into the boot and there seems to be no hangs or freezes so far!

I think, the issue indeed is related to sata controller. Probably the ports used by the optical drive have a different controller than general HDD array, probably its sata2. So when a sata3 device is connected - the controllers just go mad.

Did anybody else manage to solve the issue this way? What about sata3 hard drives, does anyone have an experience in running these through 'optical bay' ports?

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

I had the SSD placed instead of the old drive and the old drive put into the optical bay. This setup does not work either. The SATA negotiated link speed for the SSD was 6gbps.

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

Well, yes, it does not eliminate the problem completely, but I am now getting hangs about once per day, while the previous setup would freeze every several minutes, rendering the machine unusable.