Until recently I was using the Intel Rapid Storage drivers 9.5.0.1037 with my G1 X18-m. I have since rolled back to the Microsoft AHCI drivers in Windows 7. I discovered that the Intel driver may have difficulties when bad sectors are detected on the SSD. I had several sectors showing as bad when running an HD Tune error scan and the Intel Toolbox full diagnostic scan would fail on the read scan. When the HDTune scan reached a bad sector under the RST drivers, my system would freeze up for several minutes before continuing the scan. With the Windows 7 standard AHCI driver, however, the bad sectors are detected as normal and the system does not freeze. Also, under the RST drivers, the sectors appeared not to be marked as bad as one would expect. With the MS AHCI driver, the bad sectors were correctly marked as bad and the SMART "Reallocated sector count" was updated to reflect this. Subsequent HD Tune scans now show that the sectors that were previously marked as bad have been replaced with good sectors. Maybe the Intel drivers have something to do with the stuttering that some users have reported if bad sectors are not correctly replaced?
