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]

THIS IS THE ANSWER!! Ignore virtually all the above suggestions, they are useless, believe me, I went through them all, including everything found at this site: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/247280-32-slow-freeze-stuttering-vista-outlook-solved http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/247280-32-slow-freeze-stuttering-vista-outlook-solved. I spent weeks working on this problem and finagled this solution from a number of resources about a week ago. I have not had a single freeze-up since, and now this puppy ZINGS baby!!

Ok, the problem is due to some, shall we say, 'stickiness' in Intel's wear-leveling algorithm (yes it is entirely Intel's fault). I don't know the specific technical reasons why, but there is a permanent, perfect fix to the problem, but you're probably not going to like it. It involves completely wiping the SSD with more than just a format, it requires a special tool for the perfect wipe. I tried using HDDErase but my Dell has every protection possible to guard against that so I went with another utility, Darik's Boot and Nuke found under the disk wiping utilities on the UltimateBootCD.iso which can be found at http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ (naturally).

My process went something like this:

- First, be sure you are working with the latest firmware update from Intel (on your own for that one)

- Backed up my non-windows partitions to a USB hard drive

- Backed up my windows boot partition with Ghost to a USB hard drive

- be sure you have both a windows install disk and the Ghost recovery disk available

- created the ultimateBootCd from the iso from the above-indicated website (you can burn ISO's to disk for free with ISO Recorder V2. http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm

- rebooted with the UltimateBootCD

- navigated the menus to hard drive utils, wiping utils, to Darik's Boot and Nuke

- selected the twister one pass fill the hard-drive with nonsense option

- started it

- still waiting

- still waiting

- kill me please

- sat staring at my screen for 36 UNBELIEVABLY LONG HOURS waiting for this thing to complete. Pure torture, especially since it seemed like such a long shot that it would work

- OK, finally finished.

- rebooted with my windows disk to recreate the partitions that were smashed by the wipe, but after that I didn't continue with the installation of windows of course

- rebooted with my Ghost recovery disk

- plugged in my USB drive

- restored my operating system from USB drive using Ghost

- rebooted from SSD

- restored my non-boot partitions from the USB drive using windows copy commands

Not once has my SSD frozen since. It's paradise.

Best of luck

[idata]

It might have things fixed for you. But I don't see the necessity in wiping a SSD-drive 36hours long. It would have been enough to take a hex-editor and do a full "00" write stroke from start to end of the drive. The drive will be thoroughly clean, Windows will detect it as uninitialized. Takes only 20 minutes with a 80GB drive.

In my case, I had those random freezes because I had Gigabyte's feature DES turned on. This "dynamic energy saver" is normally to optimize power-comsumption in reducing the number of mosfets used to power up the CPU. It seems to do other things only Gigabytes engineers know, but this feature has no measurable effect on my wattage... and its usefulness is really doubtfull.

While this feature worked without any problems with a regular 7200rpm hdd, it was the culprit for those freezes with an SSD. Not only Intel, Super-talent drives were affected too, so this is not a problem of Intel's drives.

If you are unsure, if its activated or not, download the Gigabyte DES tool from their homepage, install it, and deactivate that function - it helped me with the freezes. System is now running 30 days 24/7 without one freeze.

[idata]

I was having same issues and that's how i realized that SSD slowed down terribly then i run WEI and it could score more then 5.9. Run HDDErase 3.3 and let me know. My SSD performs faster then what i had originally when i bought it. Amazing utility. And as far as new storage drivers, you don't need any of that crap. I use Windows 7 default and it's screaming.

[idata]

First of all I did run great without any firmupdates to either motherboard or the SSD drive. The only thing that really annoyed me was it didn't shutdown properly somethings so I updated my motherboard bios (to bios firmware F9)...and the fun began!

I had ALOT of hangs en freezes for no apparent reason (I have a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 with firmware F12). Good thing I make backups (Regular Window Backup, and do make the DVD FIRST!) I hate reinstalling everything because I have a zillion programs running on my selfbuild workstation.

The advantage I had was I knew it was somehow bios related but took me somewhile to figure out what kept it crashing/freezing/hanging...

1. Get the latest and greatest bios of your motherboard! Don't ever use the windows bios update software. And After doing this SHUT DOWN the computer for like 10 seconds, and yes this could actually keep you sane! Load Optimized Default Bios Settings!
2. Get the latest and greatest bios of you SSD drive! Intel made a really nice ISO for the X25-M (my firmware is now 2CV102HD, just follow instructions and yes SHUT DOWN your computer again for 10 seconds.
3. DON'T use AHCI, I use IDE with ZERO problems after this!

I tested it and it might be very little less faster with AHCI but I just want to work without interruptions and get things done!

Hopefully this helps some people without pulling their hairs, I know I did! Good thing I have little

Cheers,

Mischa

[idata]

Well, I don't have the answer but this line of thought might provided an answer. First, I'm running Windows 7 Professional 32 bit OS on an EVGA 790 sli ultra board which has Nvidia and Realtek onboard drivers. Be sure and update these drivers as Realtek has been causing a lot of issues. The biggest thing that bothers me is ...when I go to my Intel 160gb SSD drive and look at the driver in the properties, I see it listed as a Microsoft driver which was dated 2006 ! This bothers me a lot, first Windows 7 was not even on the drawing board back then much less this drive. So, it's my guess that Microsoft is not coming up with an update for this drive as it's an Intel drive and maybe they should be providing the driver or at least an updated driver that will stop the blue screens and errors with the MBR or corrupted main boot record as this really needs to be seriously looked at. Intel would or should be able to replicate these issues with little trouble and they should be able to provide some answers even if they can't provide an immediate solution. Intel ... you listening ?