Intel SSD 530 startup problems - Bug in SSD?

[ajoha7]

I just bought an Intel SSD 530 240GB to replace my Intel SSD510 for my HP Elitebook 8460p.

When i cold-start my computer everything is fine, but when I restart my computer from within a freshly installed windows-7, the drive is not found.

If i turn off the computer and start it again, the drive is found and boots up again as usual. So the drive fails after reset.

I have upgraded the firmware of the SSD to the latest version via the SSD toolbox but still no luck. also updated laptop bios to latest version.

I had no problems in the past with the Intel SSD 510 edition.

Any ideas on what to do?

Clarification:

So, when I insert my Intel 510 SSD and start windows and restart windows it works without problem. But with the Intel 530 it wails when I do restart, the BIOS does not find it after a normal reset. So that must conclude that the Intel SSD 530 has some bug? or is sensitive to some timing issue?

Should I return it? or just assume its incompatible with my laptop?

Message was edited by: andy johansson (added some clarification at the end)

[BWolf2]

Hello, Ken

I would like to report that I have the same issue with my ASUS G750JW laptop.

Here are the information for my issue.

Laptop : ASUS G750JW

CPU : Haswell i7-4700HQ

Motherboard Chipset : Intel® HM87 Express Chipset

GPU : GeForce GTX765M

RAM : 24GB DDR3L

SSD : Intel530 SSD 240GB

HDD : Seagate 1TB 5400RPM

ODD : DVD Multi

** All firmwares of motherboard, intel530 ssd are the latest version : intel530 ssd with DC32

1. It perfectly works with IDE mode

2. But, doesn't work with AHCI mode. means that BIOS cannot find Intel530 SSD if I turn SATA to AHCI.. 1 out of 10 was successful to find it and booted well.

* I'm new to Intel530 SSD, so need to look into it to see if it also has something to do with "cold boot" "warm boot"

3. If I swap Intel530 from 1st hdd bay to 2nd hdd bay, then BIOS easily finds it more than 1st bay. but not 100%.

Even though, BIOS finds it in 2nd hdd bay, sometimes during ASUS logo is showing up, it gets freeze with no respond so need to reboot.

4. Anyway, once it gets into Windows 8.1 screen with Intel530 SSD, then it works perfect. But BIOS is hard to find Intel530 SSD with AHCI mode.

5. A strange thing is... even if BIOS cannot find Intel530 SSD, with this situation if I install Windows 8.1 with USB stick, then the installation can find Intel530 SDD to place Windows 8.1.

* If I go into BIOS, SATA port information is empty but the SSD is physically connected to this SATA port. The other HDD, ODD are well displayed as usual.

6. Before trying Intel530 SSD, I used OCZ Vertex3 240GB in this laptop with no problem.

9. even if it successfully gets into windows8.1 Intel530 is recognized as SATA2

I received new Intel530 SSD 240GB yesterday, but it stuck with this problem.

I would be grateful if you could give me some help.

Maybe today, I'm going to remove all the other HDD, ODD from the laptop, and try booting with only Intel530 SSD placed.

If I cannot see some green light on this, maybe I need to refund it.

>> added, i have tried this. same as before SSD is not found with AHCI. and even it gets into windows 8.1 SSD is recognized as SATA2 not SATA3

* It seems like some ASUS based motherboard still experiences this problem when looking into this thread ( SSD no found with AHCI mode )

i believe there is incompatibility between Intel530 and asus based motherboard.

Thank you,

Regards,

[LLI52]

Hi Ken-Intel,

I'm having the exact same issue as aemes described, a pro-1500 series SSD working on X220T with reboot problem.

My firmware version is LADi and the upgrade tools I found from both Lenovo and Intel website are all saying I have the latest firmware

would you please advise how to solve the problem?

Thanks

[HH6]

This bug is so annoying I finally jumped through the hoops to register and post this. Bought in December and have had the problem since day 1.

PC is a Zotac Zbox ID42+, 8GB RAM, latest bios with a 120GB 530 SSD. Restarts are the worst, the bios will load and when it gets to the boot stage I see constantly "No bootble device found". Pull out power cord, let it sit for a few seconds and try again. Usually take 3 or more tries before the disk is found. Sometimes a failure from cold start or sleep but not as bad.

Occasionally it will fail to boot windows and hang at the WIndows 7 initial boot screen, just before the windows flag starts animating. Disk activity light on solid but nothing happens, just hangs. Pull cord out then another one or two "no bootable device found" messages, then Windows starts with the dirty shutdown "do you want safe mode" screen. Wait 30 seconds as I use a bluetooth keyboard and then it probably boots.

SSD at latest firmware according to toolbox 3.21 (DC32) If the toolbox would allow you to copy the System Info screen I would post that, here is what Windows reports:

System Summary

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate

Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601

Other OS Description Not Available

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Name ZBOXID42

System Manufacturer ZOTAC

System Model ZBOX-ID42-BE

System Type x64-based PC

Processor Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 847 @ 1.10GHz, 1100 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. B201P006, 1/18/2013

SMBIOS Version 2.7

Windows Directory C:\Windows

System Directory C:\Windows\system32

Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1

Locale United States

Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"

User Name ZboxID42\Hildegar

Time Zone Pacific Daylight Time

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB

Total Physical Memory 7.97 GB

Available Physical Memory 6.05 GB

Total Virtual Memory 15.9 GB

Available Virtual Memory 13.7 GB

Page File Space 7.97 GB

Page File C:\pagefile.sys

Storage->Disks

Description Disk drive

Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)

Model INTEL SSDSC2BW120A4 ATA Device

Bytes/Sector 512

Media Loaded Yes

Media Type Fixed hard disk

Partitions 2

SCSI Bus 0

SCSI Logical Unit 0

SCSI Port 0

SCSI Target ID 0

Sectors/Track 63

Size 111.79 GB (120,031,511,040 bytes)

Total Cylinders 14,593

Total Sectors 234,436,545

Total Tracks 3,721,215

Tracks/Cylinder 255

Partition Disk # 0, Partition # 0

Partition Size 100.00 MB (104,857,600 bytes)

Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes

Partition Disk # 0, Partition # 1

Partition Size 111.69 GB (119,926,685,696 bytes)

Partition Starting Offset 105,906,176 bytes

Storage->IDE

Name Intel(R) 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller - 1E03

Manufacturer Intel

Status OK

PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1E03&SUBSYS_A20919DA&REV_04\3&11583659&0&FA

I/O Port 0x0000F070-0x0000F077

I/O Port 0x0000F060-0x0000F063

I/O Port 0x0000F050-0x0000F057

I/O Port 0x0000F040-0x0000F043

I/O Port 0x0000F020-0x0000F03F

Memory Address 0xF7306000-0xF73067FF

IRQ Channel IRQ 19

Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\msahci.sys (6.1.7601.17514, 30.38 KB (31,104 bytes), 1/10/2014 12:23 PM)

Name ATA Channel 0

Manufacturer (Standard IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers)

Status OK

PNP Device ID PCIIDE\IDECHANNEL\4&FD1401D&0&0

Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\atapi.sys (6.1.7600.16385, 23.56 KB (24,128 bytes), 7/13/2009 4:19 PM)

[LLudi]

So I too have this issue with my new ASUS Q550LF laptop. Its running an 8 series chipset with all intel controllers. The problem to me (just my guess from my last two days working on it) seems to be with the security locks that intel started to put in the drives. After windows 7ish (I say 7ish because it happened in the middle of 7) Microsoft switched over to UEFI boot tables which allowed for the creation of drive tables that are larger than 4 partitions and support disk sizes of larger then 1.7TB. Now the issue seems to be that as soon as you try to write to the partition table using a UEFI capable disk, the partition table locks up and makes it so no data can be read or written to the drive until a full power cycle is run on the drives. This being a cold boot or unplugging and replugging the drives. Personally I have been able to get the drives to show up using two different ways.

1. Format the drive and make it have a single primary partition. Once formatted, usually a windows install disk will recognize it, however any attempt to allow windows to modify the partition table will cause it to fail, this occurs both when the drive is in GPT and MBR formats.

2. Using a recovery drive from a preexisting install on my computer causes the drive to be recognized when booting to winRE.wim, however it will not perform a refresh, reset or any other actions as it will claim that required partitions, even though those boot disks should theoretically be allowed to reinstall a copy of windows from scratch.

The two other symptoms I have notices is that any attempt at all to clean the disk or format while in WINRE will cause the drive to become unreadable until the Freeze Lock is removed by rebooting the computer. The second thing I have noticed is that you can clone over an old disk and have it boot 1/4 of the time. This seems to be in my opinion one of two things

1. The timing of the SATA Sync Signal is off meaning the COMWake or COMReset is missing the triggers. This seems to be a little far fetched to me but I have been looking at SATA Protocol handshakes and they seeme to work allot like I2C or SBI where the inerface is required to hit timing sent by the board. I know from some project's I have worked on missing of the timing can cause massive issues with system stability and boot.

2. The system is putting the drive into a locked state. This seems to me to be the more reasonable issue, though stranger things have happened. Part of the new Intel Drives / Securty in UEFI booting computer is that they will not allow for partition tables to be rewritten on boot, meaning that rootkits and MBR kits cannot piggy back on the MBR to override boot sequences. The problem with this though is that when a legit program trys to, alot of the times it will cause the boot to fail.

Again these are just my guesses. I would love to hear what the guys at intel thing about all of these issues and if they have been able to reproduce them.

[PVerm3]

I am having the same problem with 2 brand new 530 240gig SSD's. One is mounted in a brand new Toshiba Tecra Z50-A-11R, the other in a desktop with an ASRock P67 Extreme4. Both systems have the latest bios update.

It seems that there is no solution for me.

Should I return the SSD's? How do I do this?