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 have been in contact with Intel multiple times regarding this issue. Initially they ask me to RMA the SSD and let them replace it, I did so but the second SSD suffered the same issue.

Conclusion was obviously that it was a compatibility issue and not a faulty drive, I informed Intel of this but also informed them that because they had requested that I do an RMA to them, rather than a return to the retailer, that I was now passed my return to retailer date and could not return the drive but also could not use it.

There was some back and forth on the issue that took about a month to resolve (partly because I was busy and partly because Intel took my name and contact information and then never contacted me. I am not upset about this, I could have called them back when they didn't contact me but I was busy). About a month after my initial RMA for a second drive I called them again to resolve the issue and was told by a phone rep that there was a known compatibility problem with the Generation 1 drives and certain Nvidia chipsets (he specifically mentioned revision 530 but also said there may be other revisions having this issue that they haven't found yet) he also said he suspected that a Generation 2 drive might not have the same issue and offered to exchange my generation 1 for a generation 2 in a second RMA.

I am currently waiting on that RMA to be completed. I was going to wait to update this thread when that occurred, but since someone has responded suggesting he has a possible solution I felt I should reply before anyone started tweaking voltages or blaming gigabyte boards. There is, at the very least, an acknowledged problem with some Nvidia chipsets. Its possible a firmware update could fix the issue but it is also possible this issue may not effect G2 drives. I will let you know what happens when I receive my Generation 2 drive and connect it.

Also, I want to be specific about my problem because there are a number of people in this thread having similar but not the same issues or completely different issues.

My issue is that the drive randomly stops responding at unpredictable but relatively short intervals. The entire system will freeze and can only be recovered by shutting down the computer (either via the power switch on the power supply or holding the power button until power is cut). The period before the drive locks up has been as short as a few minutes or as long as about 90 minutes, but I have never, at any point, been able to use the drive for more than 2 hours before it stops responding and the system freezes. It should also be noted that the system will not freeze until it attempts to access the drive. For example, if I am watching a movie that is playing and there is no reason for the system to attempt a read or write on the drive, the system continues functioning, but when I attempt to do any activity requiring a read or write action from the drive there is the possibility of it triggering the system lock-up.

Also please note that, unlike the above poster who claims to have found a solution to his problem, this is a fully functioning system. The above poster states that he has the same problem with other drives connected, that is clearly not related to his SSD then. My system functions without error so long as I do not connect the SSD. I have tried running the system with only the SSD connected as the primary boot drive and with the SSD as a secondary storage drive, and it fails in both capacities. My systems functionality is instantly restored when the SSD is removed.

[idata]

I propably fixed this for me. or at least my system has been running for few hours with out crash.

I got msi p6n Diamond motherboard. I installed nvida drivers from ther website. Then Device Manager -> Ide ATA-ATAPI controllers. Found the Serial ATA controller that was working against my SSD drive. There I disabled Command Queuing.

Now my system is stable and working fine. Intel should tell us if htat is bad for performance or not....

Best Regards

Einar Guðsteinsson

[idata]

I've got problems on an ICH9bpardin ACHI mode.The firmware update worked without problem but now I'm starting to get freezes, followed by a BSOD. I've noticed that if I'm running multiple apps not all of them will necessarily freeze at the same time. For up to a few minutes before the system crashes at least one app will typically continue to respond whilst the others have hung. Weird, I've never seen anything like that before.

Here are the event viewer errors just before the BSOD:

An I/O operation initiated by the Registry failed unrecoverably. The Registry could not flush hive (file): '\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE'.

The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur.

A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the Windows Error Reporting Service service to connect.

[idata]

I had the same random freezing problem with my first gen X25-M 80GB disk and I have resorted to wiping the disk using the ATA Secure Erase command. I use my disk in a Dell Studio 15 laptop. The secure erase does restore the performance but you have to go through the pain of wipe, format, reinstall everything - price we will have to pay for being early adopters. Unlike the reviewers around the world, I don't believe the G1 disks are immune to SSD performance degradation.

There is more detail on the Linux Kernel Wiki about how to use ATA Secure Erase:

http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

[idata]

I do have the G2 SSD but still got this problem... Anyone who really knows they've solved the problem please post a guide here!