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]

Are you using a generation 1 or 2 drive? I posted above that my issues were solved by an RMA exchanging my gen 1 drive (black case) for a generation 2 (silver case) drive. I've been using the drive for several weeks now and it functions perfectly.

[idata]

it's a G1

[idata]

Then I would suggest you find all previous posts by me and compare my description of my issues to yours, if they seem similar try calling Intel and asking for an exchange for a generation 2 drive, if they tell you they cannot do that, then tell them you would like a refund for your drive and that you can provide them with a copy of the invoice to show how much you paid.

[idata]

I had this problem in Vista and thought it was caused by firefox or the downloadmanager plugin i use because with me it always happened during download or browsing. To be sure and avoid plenty of small files on the SSD i used an old USB stick to dedicate it to firefox temp files and internet cache.

Since i was moving over to W7 i started fresh and managed 3 weeks without freeze. One week ago shit started again, this time i did not use download manager but during rebuild of my Itunes music lib 3 times in a row freeze and release after 30-40 seconds.

As you know the bloody itunes saves album art on de op disk and this happens to be my SSD. So i ran out of available space again and/or had to wait for SSD to release space to save thumbs. I have 100 Gb of music so its a lot of small thumbs to handle.

This time i spend more time looking for answers. I came across a post where someone mentioned reporting services might cause delay in release.

I checked and my reporting services setting was manual and i changed this to automatic.

I also switched off the write cache, noticed no difference in speed.

Also changed swap file to 200 mb.

I have been butchering my pc since then, plenty download cues with fifi downloadmanager and for fun again rebuild music lib at same time.

No more freezes.

Maybe this helps for others. Good luck

p.s. 1st gen intel 80 Gb.

[idata]

I have a G2 drive and I've got the freezing problem so... I guess it's not only G1 drives..