Intel X25-M G1 80GB SSD hangs/freezes in Windows 7

[idata]

About a week ago, I bought Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH080G1 80GB SATA II MLC from NewEgg.com.

I plugged in the new SSD as my main (OS) drive (all my specs are in my sig.) and started installing Windows 7. During install I split the drive into 2 partitions: 20GB for win7 & the rest. On the first attempt win7 install froze at "completing installation" stage, iirc. As it was only my 2nd attempt to install windows 7, and first attempt to install it on the desktop pc, I waited for it to "unfreeze" or continue for ~30 min. Finally I gave up and had to push the reset button. I did my first windows 7 install that very same day on my Acer AO751h netbook and it went smoothly and pretty **** fast (and is still working perfectly).

On the second attempt I was able to install windows 7 successfully. I deleted partitions during second install and recreated/formatted only 1 partition 20GB for win7. The 2nd partition I created/formatted already in windows 7. Just after installation, on my first log in to windows 7, I installed Acronis True Image Home 2009 and tried to create an image of my fresh win7 OS partition. That is something I always do, I like having last fresh windows install image for quick "fresh restore", especially in this case, as I knew there are numerous tweaks to be made, to optimize SSD drive usage. Creating the image failed, as True Image software froze and shortly after-wards windows completely froze as well. At that point I had 5 Seagate 1.5TB (ST31500341AS) drives connected to my pc. Knowing the story behind those drives and from my own experience (from the 17 Seagate 1,5TB drives I had, 2 developed freezing/hanging problems), I obviously suspected the problem was one of them. I disconnected all drives, but Intel's SSD and tried to make partition image again. I probably tried 5-6 times and all attempts failed. By now I wasn't sure, maybe True Image was not working properly on windows 7, so I gave up on making image. I used windows 7 for a couple of days, applied tweaks for SSD, like moving paging file, temp files, disabling system restore, hibernation, indexing, superfetch, defrag, firefox memory cache, etc. Windows 7 was flying, I was ecstatic seeing the performance of windows. Though time from time, windows would just freeze up and nothing helped, but the reset button.

I started googling for solutions. All I could find, that maybe Intel SSDs have trouble with nForce chipsets (ironically, neweeg product review that was posted just yesterday put me on this track).

The questions I would like to ask:

What software should I use to diagnose this SSD? I could not find any tools on Intels site, and googling for SSD diagnostic tools gave me nothing.

Is the incompatibility of nForce chipset an Intel SSD the main and only reason for these hangs and freezes? Does the new G2 drives have this problem as well? If it is, I need to think about returning this drive.

Any other ideas/solutions?

I'd be very disappointed to return it, after experiencing the performance boost it delivered, when it was working

Thanks in advance.

[idata]

Please post your S.M.A.R.T. data

You can use speedfan online service or anything you want (speedfan http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php Open SMART tab, select drive and press "perform an in-depth online..." and post link given under "The link to get back and see a new report about this hard disk in the future is http://www.hddstatus.com/hdrepshowreport.php?ReportCode=3920166&ReportVerification=C6D4E975 this." in opened http://www.hddstatus.com/hdrepanalysis.php http://www.hddstatus.com/hdrepanalysis.php ) .

Message was edited by: w00thisButtonDo

[idata]

I have the exact same drive as you also running on nForce and I have the same problems. Sometimes it will run for 5 minutes, sometimes it will run for 45 minutes but all the sudden it will just freeze...even the mouse. I upgraded the firmware last night but it didn't make a difference and I tried using the nForce drivers for my mobo and the ones from nVidia and nothing seems to work.

I am using Windows 7 x64 (RTM) and haven't tried x32 but I don't have this problem with the X25-E.

[idata]

I have this exact same problem.

I couldn't get vista 32 to even install on the drive. It would hang or crash during install every time. So I did a fresh vista install on WD Caviar Black 1TB drive (on a 50gig partition of that drive) anthen patched it all up and cloned the fresh install to the SSD to get it up and running. It worked fine for a while and then would randomly freeze the entire system.I tried multiple fixes and couldn't get any of them to work so I reformatted and installed windows 7 instead.

The Windows 7 install worked flawlessly (and very quickly) and the drive got up and running just fine. At this point, however, it began behaving in the same way the others in this thread report. It freezes at random intervals, occasionally it will run for an hour before freezing the entire system (can't move the mouse, can't ctrl+alt+del, nothing. Have to hit the power switch) but most often it runs for between 5 and 25 minutes.

Any help would be awesome because I'm pretty close to RMAing it.

[idata]

RMA it ASAP. There is no simple way to fix it.

But please post your S.M.A.R.T. data too before RMA