C300 ssd switches from 6gb/s to 3gb/s on it's own

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mcg75

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May 1, 2008
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Yep, got a strange occurance alright. First the players involved.

p8p67-m pro asus board which is running in ahci.
c300 64gb ssd
WD Caviar 1 TB

I reinstalled a clean version of windows 7 for other reasons earlier tonight. Of course, I ran a bench of AS-SSD to make sure everything was up to snuff. I knew by my read @ 265mb/s that something was up.

I looked in the Intel RST to see if anything looked wrong. That's when I noticed my c300 is being reported as Sata II 3gb/s despite being in an Intel Sata III 6gb/s port. My WD Caviar is plugged into the other 6gb/s port and does not change.

So I switched the cables and rebooted. RST now reports my c300 at 6gb/s. I start doing some other updates and reboot, check RST again and I'm back to 3gb/s again.

The speed on my c300 has been fluctuating between 360mb/s and 256mb/s before. I would always check my SSD tweak setting and reboot and it would be back up. But it's obvious, I now have a problem.

Opinions? Looks like my cable might be bad or the SSD is possibly failing?
 
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Do you have the newer ASUS P8P67-M PRO REV 3.0 (New P67 B3 Revision)? The older original P8P67-M PRO and many other SandyBridge motherboards had issues, including SATA problems. It was actually an Intel design problem. There was a massive factory recall. There is still time to get a free replacement.

Here is a link to the official ASUS web page with all the information you need:

http://vip.asus.com/eservice/changeSandybridge_MB.aspx?slanguage=en-us
 
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I appreciate the reply Johnny but that's not it. Not only do I have the newer B step version but the problems Intel had were in the 3gb/s ports only. They had no effect on 6gb/s ports.

 
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Not normally my section, but in MOBO section I see everything.

4 xSATA 3.0 Gb/s ports (blue)
2 xSATA 6.0 Gb/s ports (gray)
Marvell (dark blue)

SSD use the Gray port closest to PCB, and put the HDD in the top Blue closest to the PCB.

BIOS:
SATA Mode -> AHCI ; by Default it's AHCI but check.
 
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I think I might have somewhat solved but it makes no sense.

I haven't run the as-ssd benchmark in the last two nights and I haven't had it go back to 3gb/s since then. It's staying at 6gb/s all the time now.

Perhaps between reloading windows and all the tests as-ssd runs, it was slowing down the drive till it had time to trim?
 
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Well, so much for my solution. Windows froze on me twice and I had to shut down and restart. Upon restart, 3gb/s was staring me down.

I think my c300 is going bad. The chances of two cables or two ports being bad are slim especially when the same thing is not happening to my WD black in the 6gb/s port.
 
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I'm familiar with P67's and C300's.
1. Does your C300 have the latest firmware 0006 -> http://www.crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx ?
2. Do you have the latest BIOS for your P8P67-M PRO 0708 -> http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=iT2FJPCMOGBHClu4 ? While there get the latest drivers installed.

Many P67's have had SATA issues until they use the latest BIOS, and I'd keep the HDD off the SATA3; there's no need at best it's 1/2 SATA2 speeds ~140~150 MB/s; don't confuse interface with speed.
 
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Both the C300 and p8p67-m pro are updated the latest versions available. I was away for a few days and on bootup, everything is working good in 6gb/s. I dunno what to do from here.
 
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It's not always staying at 6gb/s is the problem. I can't find the trigger that sets it back to 3gb/s.

I'm using the Intel RST from my motherboard driver disk and AHCI is verified.
 
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I applied the fix it since it couldn't hurt to do so. I rebooted and back into 3gb/s.

I used Win7 to format the c300 before the clean reinstall. Could that play a part at all? I'm running out of options except replacement.
 
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If the drivers are causing the problem, then in the Device Manager [+] Disk Drive & [+] IDE ATA... then restart. This both forces the drivers to reinstall and overwrites the registry in case there's a corruption. Potentially, 'reinstalling' the OS will accomplish the same.

If either fails then either start a post at -> http://forum.crucial.com/crucial/ or RMA the C300.

I've never seen a SSD switch types on its own as you've described.
 
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I've started a post as the crucial forum already. Nobody there has tried to help me as much as you have. Thank you.

I just ordered an Ocz Vertex 3 max iops from newegg. When it arrives, set it up and see what happens.
 
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While waiting for the Vertex to arrive, I played with the c300 more.

I did a secure erase with parted magic. I reloaded windows again and let it align and partition the C300. First boot was ok, second boot back to 3gb/s.

I took the c300 out of the Intel 6gb/s port and plugged it into the Marvell port. It's been running at 6gb/s speed for 2 days now according to as-ssd. That's leads me to believe I have a motherboard issue going on.
 
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Update: It's going to be another week before I get the Vertex 3 due to Newegg's unexpectedly slow processing time, so I've been playing around some more.

I had no issues during the c300's time on the Marvell port. I would do a benchmark each day and they never dropped to Sata II speeds.

I've been reading that Asus p67 boards that have an ssd and hot plug disabled on that port have been running into issues including freezes for several minutes. I haven't had many freezing issues, possibly 2-3 at most and I really figured they were due to something else I did. My hot plug or hot swap was set to off.

So I enabled it Friday night and moved the c300 back to the Intel controller. Knock on wood, I haven't had an instance where RST reports 3gb/s yet even after a bunch of reboots and benching.

I'm thinking that the fact that I could tell when my system was slowing down before checking RST to confirm makes me think it was this issue. Realistically, I shouldn't be able to tell the difference of the c300 being 3gb/s or 6gb/s for most applications.
 
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On this motherboard, you can have ahci on but hot plug disabled. In fact, it's disabled by default and does not turn on by itself when achi is enabled. You have to manually enable both. Apparently this is an Asus p67 thing as it was other Asus owner than pointed this out to me.
 
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I'd normally believe the manual as well. However, since I'm actually in bios and seeing it with my own two eyes like I am, the manual is wrong.



When achi is enabled, I have the option to turn hot plug on or off for every drive I have connected.
 
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Well, it's been over a week and no freezes or reverting back to 3gb/s so I'm going to call this one solved. Ironically enough, there are threads popping up over on the OCZ forum about not having hotplug enabled causes freezing issues for Vertex 3. I've had no issues with mine since it was installed Saturday.
 
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Do you have it on the Marvell controller or the Intel? This is my first SSD, and first SATA3 for that matter, and just read on the Crucial site where they saw better performance on the Intel controller.

Were you able to upgrade to Rev 7 successfully?

I have the C300 128GB with the ASUS P8P67 Pro as well.

Thanks.
 
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The c300 was on the Intel controller first. That's where I started to have problems. I secure erased the drive and reloaded windows, no change. I moved it to the Marvell port and all the problems went away. I moved it back to the Intel ports and enabled hot plug and no more problems. I had no need to updated to firmwate rev 7.

The intel ports are better than the marvell, no question.
 
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