SSD Freezes in Win 7 Home Premium

[CharlieNJ1980]

I just finished a new build and have issues with the SSD. The SSD has my OS on it, and it constantly freezes and will not allow me to do anything. The freezes seem random and can happen within 1 to 20 mins. I have to shut the pc down manually and reboot. This is the first time I have used an SSD and am not sure what to do to fix this issue. I am using a Crucial M4 128gb, 2 HDD in RAID0, 3930k with Asrock x79 extreme6 mb, 32gb kingston hyperx 1600, gtx 670 gpu. I have tried reinstalling Win 7 a few times to no avail. Please help.

 

[rolli59]

Can be another issue, like bad memory! Try running windows from your HDD to see if persists.

 

[RetiredChief]

^ as rollie indicated, not always the SSD, could be memory problem, to check that I would download Prime95 and run it for a couple of hours - NOTE what your CPU core temps closely for the first 15->20 Minutes as this test both ram and cpu, and the stock intel HSF is NOT a top of the line performer, infact it's at the bottom of the totom pole.

Your SSD is On the first Intel SATA III (6) port and NOT on the 3rd party sata III port??

Also verify your SSD is installed correctly.
Download and run AS SSD (Do not need to run the benchmark). Upper left you should see the model and the firmware version. and just below that you should see:
1) driver. For your system should be iaSTor (msahci ok, but sligthly lower performance). What you DO NOT want to see is pcide = BAD
2) for partition alignment it should show " a value " and OK.

Also, did you disconnect your HDD when you installed windows on the SSD, If you didn't the system partition is on Your HHD most likely, can verify by right click on MyComputer, select manage, then select diskmanagement. Your SSD should be HDD0 and should show a small 100 mb partion, and the rest of the drive as C-drive

 

[CharlieNJ1980]

Ran Prime95 on blend for 9 hours, core temp recorded no more than 58C in a room that is roughly 75F, using Notura D14 cooler. No errors or warnings. SSD is def on first intel sata as per the mb for bootup drives. AS SSD shows iaStorA-ok, and 1024k-ok.
However, the system partition is on the RAID0 drives. Do I need to fix this, and if so how can I best go about that process? Oddly enought the pc has not froze since I wrote my initial post.

I used this tutorial http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/Solution-C300-Disk-Freeze-ups-in-Windows-7-solved-for-me/td-p/38766

and it seems to be working so far. Anything else I should check, or should I cross my fingers and hope I get no more freezes?

 

[RetiredChief]

Totally forgot about that as a possible "fix". Hopefully that will take care of it.

As to the System partition being on the Raid0 drive, that was a result of having it connected at the time you did the windows installation. How much of a problem that creates, I'm Not sure. But If you lose either HDD (in your raid0 array), or have to break the array you most likely will NOT be able to Boot to windows.

The fix is:
... To disconnect the two HDDs (leave Bios set to Raid) and reinstall windows, since no other HDD windows will put the System partition on the SSD. I'd probably Select custom and delet the partition on the SSD and let windows repartition it.

 

[mpisarek]

I just finished a new build and have issues with the SSD. The SSD has my OS on it, and it constantly freezes and will not allow me to do anything. The freezes seem random and can happen within 1 to 20 mins. I have to shut the pc down manually and reboot. This is the first time I have used an SSD and am not sure what to do to fix this issue. I am using a Crucial M4 128gb, 2 HDD in RAID0, 3930k with Asrock x79 extreme6 mb, 32gb kingston hyperx 1600, gtx 670 gpu. I have tried reinstalling Win 7 a few times to no avail. Please help.

I have been having the same issues, ironically happened while I was reading this thread

Interestingly this only started happening AFTER I switched over to AHCI from [ENHANCED] IDE. So to test this I rebooted my Win7 in safemode, uninstalled (from device manager) AHCI Intel Driver v. 11/11/2011 10.​8.​0.​1003. I then rebooted and changed from AHCI to [ENHANCED] IDE in my BIOS. Started Windows 7 NORMALLY, and let windows install the standard SATA IDE drivers v. 9.1.1.1016 - which are the latest from Intel....AND Voila, all works perfectly now. So I say there is a bug in the AHCI drivers from Intel causing issues on SOME Sata controllers...

 

[RetiredChief]

However, if using pcide as controller for an SSD, you will Find that if you open up AS SSD (don't need to run the Benchmark, Just open an look at upper left) you will find is shows pcide = BAD. SSD performance is reduced when operated using pcide. Also in this mode TRIM is Not passed.

I think you will find that it is not a bug in the iaSTor driver (intel's msahci equivalant), it a problem in your registry and would probably be fixed it you re-install windows correctly.

 

[CharlieNJ1980]

I've tested and stressed an retested for days now and can't get it to freeze. Hopefully it is fixed. Thank you all for your help on the matter. I'm not sure if this is related, but when I'm trying to transfer data using adobe premiere pro cs5 from my raid0 drives to my usb3 7200 external hdd, it goes very slow, 39mbs. Anyone know why that could be happening and how i can fix it?

 

[RetiredChief]

While I'm not sure what the "real life" transfer rate is:
Have to remember that the transfer rate is the sum of "read" throughput of the Internal drive and the "Write" throughput of the External USB drive and in practice would be less.

For two external drives, using USB2 -> Usb3 I get around 20->23 mb/s