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]

Not sure if it is the same issue or if this applies... but if you have this driver you could try making a safe config and then uninstalling the driver, see if the situation improves, or vice versa, if you don't have this driver (or latest version) try installing it.

It does mention it enables "Native Command Queuing" so its worth a shot...

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&softwareitem=ob-90495-1 http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&softwareitem=ob-90495-1

I searched and found a Sony one as well, so may want to get that...

You could also try the Intel version of the driver, not sure if it will work for your hardware but it was released last month, so worth a shot:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3327&DwnldID=20110&ProductFamily=Serve... help http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3327&DwnldID=20110&ProductFamily=Serve... help

Pie in the Sky reaching, have a backup, but if it works, its well worth the effort.

Alec

[idata]

Thanks for the link Alec. Intel's driver is now installed (ver 10.0.0.1046) and it works

I can see with "Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technologyenabled"-program that "Native Command Queuing" is enabled, but value cannot be changed.

Let's see if there were any differences between the new driver in relation to freeze.

[idata]

> Let's see if there were any differences between the new driver in relation to freeze.

Did not help, froze again...

[idata]

Hello everyone,

Seeing that this post is already 2 years old and people are still having problems with the ssd drives I wanted to add my version of the problem.

I recently bought an intel 160 Gig 320 Series 25NM sata II 2.5 ssd drive.

They told me this was the next step in making my pc even faster but instead, I got more migraines then ever before.

Here is what happened to me:

My computer is about 2 years old, I have a p5q-e motherboard and nvida Geforce gtx 285 video card, I also had a raptor hard drive that worked perfectly, very stable system, no crashes, no problems at all.

After I installed a fresh copy of Win7 on the ssd drive I began to have weird problems and crashes. Most of the time I had issues with flash player (with wich I have never had problems before) that caused all my browsers to crash. My windows explorer would crash from time to time and I have had BSOD's (blue screens of death) and random crashes that made my system reboot without a reason.

I reinstalled several times on AHCI mode and IDE but to no avail.

Crashes are still happening, luckelly not too often...

I've been searching for more than a week to resolve this problem and this is the the first forum I found with people having kind off the same problem.

I am going to try the secure erase and will see if that helpes.

If anyone else can offer other solutions, it would be much appreciated.

I will post my findings after the secure erase.

Kind regards from Belgium.

[idata]

Hi Smilterman,

I have had actually got my SSD working fine now as I put it in a different computer with an Intel chipset.

Your problem is not actually the SSD, it your motherboard. The Nvidia chipset on your motherboard is really the issue as it does not correctly support "Tagged Command Queueing" or something. What I can say is that if you buy a new motherboard which does not have the nforce chipset your SSD will work fine. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I was in the same boat.

It seems we should all be moaning at Nvidia about the nForce being crap rather than Intel.

Some motherboards have an option to turn off tagged command queueing but mine didnt, if yours does then this might help.

Cheers,

Ash