Intel 520 Series 120G SSD random BSOD's - please help

[idata]

Gday guys,

just wanted to humbly ask for some help. I've recently fitted a new 520 Series SSD into my PC and im getting random BSOD's. I've had 2 today so far after loading a fresh installation of Windows 7 Ultimate 64 early this morning. I wasnt doing anything taxing (just using Firefox and copying files to another PC over ethernet).

My hardware:

Gigabyte P67A-UD7-B3 running 2nd latest BIOS.

8Gb Corsair Vengeance RAM

2x GTX570's in SLI

2Tb WD RE4

1.5Tb WD Green

72Gb WD Raptor.

LG Blu-ray

History:

I had an OCZ Vertex 2 fail completely in my machine last week. No history of any problems before that. I fitted a backup SATA HDD till i received the Intel 520 i planned to replace the Vertex with. No issues with the backup SATA HDD running in IDE mode.

I fitted the intel 520 and initially set it up using IDE. Realising i should have set it to AHCI, i tried the registry tweak trick but it didnt work and wouldnt load windows on reboot anymore. So re-installed Windows fresh using AHCI. Loaded the latest Intel inf drivers, RST drivers and the other mobo drivers from Gigabyte. I also flashed the BIOS to the most recent non-beta version.

First issue was the extremely slow boot times (2 mins to desktop). After i was at desktop, there didnt appear to be any problems except for the first BSOD. Tracked the slow booting problem down to the 1.5Tb WD drive. If i remove it, the boot time is only about 20 secs. Fit the drive, and its back to 2mins. I plan to replace that drive this week but will leave it fitted for now to remove data from it.

Most annoying issue atm is the random BSOD's. The first time it happened, it was too quick and i didnt see the code/ file. No dump file either. I changed windows settings to catch the next one and it happened a few hours later calling a MSRPC.SYS file.

Problem signature: 

Problem Event Name: BlueScreen OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1 Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem: 

BCCode: 7a BCP1: FFFFF6FC4000CA68 BCP2: FFFFFFFFC0000056 BCP3: 0000000127165860 BCP4: FFFFF8800194D780 OS Version: 6_1_7600 Service Pack: 0_0 Product: 256_1

Files that help describe the problem: 

C:\Windows\Minidump\020412-120214-01.dmp C:\Users\cylon2\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-121867-0.sysdata.xml

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Im not sure what to do now. Im just waiting for it to crash again to gather more data i guess. I've read that the Sandforce controllers can cause BSOD issues but i would have thought intel would have ironed those issues by now if theyre using it on their new 520 series. You guys have any thoughts on this?

Apart from swapping the HDD out with another one, is there anything else i can do to narrow down/ force the problem? Maybe its the AHCI playing up? Maybe its not the SSD, but the history of events points towards it. Am tempted to try installing Windows again in IDE mode to see if that changes anything. Is there any special "drive erase" that i should do before reloading windows in IDE mode? Ive just been formatting the drive as per normal.

Would appreciate any advice at all guys. Bit disappointed and have had my head in the pc case for some days now and quite frustrated. Need to get up and running to continue my work. 😐 Thanks for reading so far.

Cheers

Anthony

[idata]

Gday Dave,

thanks for your response mate. Let me fill you in on whats happened so far.

I assume your benchmarks are for a RAID array? Great performance.

Well, ive followed your advice and ive made some progress. Here's what i've done so far.

1) removed SDD and hot swapped it into another machine. Mucked around getting the secure erase done and followed a couple of the tutorials online. Basically, it was a case of deleting everything in diskmgmt, then "cleaning" the drive in DOS via the disk part tools. I then power cycled the drive and Intel SSD Toolbox finally let me do the secure erase.

2) I saw another guy (with the same motherboard and a SSD) had a youtube clip showing his BIOS settings, so i copied those. He had AHCI enabled for the PCH SATA, extreme HDD turned off, and also the esata and gsata controllers turned off. I installed windows from a bootable USB thumb drive i made up and it went on much quicker.

I also noticed that start up times were HEAPS quicker. I didnt load any other drivers about from the motherboard inf drivers, LAN, and audio drivers so that device manager was clear. I then ran my benchmarks again and got the following results. So these results are without RST loaded.

Everything was running stable for a day or so too. So i went the next step and loaded Intel RST. Got some slightly better results.

However, with RST loaded i started getting some BSOD. Maybe one or two a day. No stuttering or freezing, just straight to crash. Load times are still quicker (and quicker than when i tried IDE mode).

I read http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/Solution-C300-Disk-Freeze-ups-in-Windows-7-solved... another forum post where the dude had issues with his Crucial C300 SSD and he suggested turning off LPM via registry. I did that and its been stable since. Have done a pile of updates, loaded several apps, played some games and it seems to be going well.

So hopefully, we've got it all sorted

Just thought i would get back to you and leave some notes if anyone else has similar problems.

[DShar11]

That looks much better. Can you open your IRST control panel and check to see if you have write back cache enabled? If it's not just enable it and try atto again.

[idata]

Unfortunately, the resident SSD-hater in the Anandtech forums (and others) is using this post as an example of the "failure" of the Intel 520 SSD.

As we can see, this forum is NOT filled with reports of problems with the 520, and although it is still early in this product's life cycle, I don't expect to see problems, simply because this is an Intel product.

I'll be receiving my 520 very soon.

[DShar11]

Hey, I find they are good for a laugh parsec.

Been on two of these for over two weeks now, not a single issue in terms of the drives and performance. The guy above made mistakes that quite a lot of people make, all easily fixed.One thing I would like answered though is if you are on an X79 mobo like me, and you use the recommended enterprise raid drivers, how come the Intel Toolbox is completely dysfunctional? I have to load the 11 series driver through device manager to get a fully working toolbox.

[idata]

Yes Dave, Some of those forum posts are quite... entertaining.

Regarding the Toolbox on X79 platforms, DooRules may have some insights into that, but I think he also had problems with it on his X79 PC using the enterprise IRST driver. I don't see any mention of the Toolbox not being compatible with the enterprise IRST driver, but that info may be hiding somewhere.

Do you notice any difference in performance, etc, between the two drivers you mentioned?