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]

I switch to AHCI mode in the bios and it seems to run better, at least didn't crash for me while using it, but once I let it sit for a couple hours, I returned to find the screen frozen on the desktop with no mouse.

Wonder if I should reinstall windows 7 now the bios is in AHCI ?? Otherwise I want a refund and just stay old school til this technology becomes more reliable.

[idata]

Go to Device Manager in windows, bring up the Properties for the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers section controller that's got your drive attached, click on Port X that has your drive plugged into it, uncheck "Enable Command queuing".

Only solution I found to this problem months ago when I first purchased the drive, because it is CQ-related.

My assumption is that the older motherboards (especially nVidia chipset boards) have issues with the SSD's so my hope is an upgrade will eliminate the problem. This worked for an Intel X25-M 160gb on a 680i SLI in multiple versions of windows (vista, 7, etc.).

[idata]

I too am having this problem with the 80GB G2. Anyone isolate or resolve their problem?

[idata]

Use my method that i mentioned a few lines up! It will for sure help you out here! Im using X25-M G2 too!

Good luck!

/M

[idata]

For me, (atleast it works so far...), It worked to change the volt on my memory from 1,5 to 1,65. and I also disable the EIST function in the advanced CPU options in BIOS. I can say that the SSD was not the problem acutally. because I removed my SSD and still had the problem.