Locks up during heavy reading, Force 3 120 GB

Hi, recently worsening problem here. I'm having a lockup issue with my SSD. It seems like reading certain files or reading large amounts of data (like copying my important files off the drive to other drives) it locks up. It started off months ago as a random lockup once or twice a few months apart and once wouldn't boot. I swapped cables, thought I solved it.

More recently I had a game save file go corrupt, then a certain level wouldn't load, the drive indicator light will light solid and the system will lock after about a minute. A few reboots and it worked again fine. Then it happened in the game during a mission. Then it happened when copying files. Then it happened with copying files again and again. I just ended up deleting the 'problem' files.

It works fine until I put some load against it, I haven't tried heavy writing. What do you suggest? I have another SSD on order, I plan to try to make an image and clone this one and send it in for RMA. Is there something I should try first? I cant figure out if there's a firmware update for it or not, I'm a little confused there. I downloaded the tool but it doesn't see my drive....but my board also doesn't support AHCI which the FAQ says needs to be enabled.

I need some help on this.

Thanks.

Run a ATTO benchmark and post a screenshot.

I'll do that this evening, but can I ask how that would help with diagnostics? I'm not arguing, I'm actually curious and want to learn how to be able to troubleshoot my own issues in the future.

The drive's performance feels fine, when it is working I'm able to transfer data to my RAID array as fast as the array can write, 150+MB/S. Booting is almost as fast as when the drive was new, I've picked up a few seconds as time has gone on but that may just be Win7 getting a little bloated.

ATTO benchmarks the drives performance.

If it locks-up during the benchmark there may be a problem with the drive.

If it shows slow performance results, A secure erase with Parted Magic will restore the drive performance.

If it shows normal results, It might be something else.

ATTO benchmarks the drives performance.

 

If it locks-up during the benchmark there may be a problem with the drive.

If it shows slow performance results, A secure erase with Parted Magic will restore the drive performance.

If it shows normal results, It might be something else.

Ran with the default options, version 2.47. It didn't lock up. I did it again with a 2GB total length. Speeds during the first pass were normal for me, peaking around 275 MB/S (SATA2). Writes around 200 MB/S. Second pass with 2GB length yielded the same results.

I'm going to assume it's normal for the firs few smaller reads/writes to be much lower than the larger chunks later in the test.

Forgot the screenshot, let me add that....

What else could cause an SSD to lock during reads? I've hard ZERO issues moving LARGE amounts of data (Hundreds of GB at a time) across my platter drives, but I try to pull off 2GB, 9GB, or 12GB of files and it gets part way in..then it locks up. Drive activity light stays on solid and the system stops responding after a minute or the next time it needs disk i/o.

I'm still going to move to the new SSD when it arrives, I just wanted to do some trouble shooting to see if this one needs RMA or what is going on with it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/huzudra/NewBitmapImage-6.png

That's after several benchmarks back to back, it slowed down a little, it was peaking just over 250 before, 275ish.

Can you check the drive's firmware by using CrystalDiskInfo.

Not sure what is really causing the issue, But a secure erase may help it.

Can you check the drive's firmware by using CrystalDiskInfo.

 

Not sure what is really causing the issue, But a secure erase may help it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/huzudra/NewBitmapImage-7.png

Wow, I had no idea that I've written/read that much! I wish I had those stats for my platter drives...I can only fathom the hundreds of TB read/written. Too bad it can't pull info from RAID arrays.

Can you run parted Magic and secure erase the drive then test it on another system, and I would suggest trying another cable if you have not already done so?

I currently cannot do the secure erase, but I will once I get an image of the drive saved and the new SSD installed. Last night, it ran perfectly fine while gaming (MekTek release of MW4), but I didn't try to move files around on it or off of it. I've been careful from the get-go to try to not to do lots of writing and keep it atleast 1/2 empty to preserve speed and lengthen it's life span. I tend to really hang on to hardware far too long...as evidenced by my water cooled 'Preshott' sitting in the corner. I will admit though that I have been sleeping the computer often, which I know dumps ram to the drive which probably isn't the best to be doing to the SSD.

I've tried another cable (known good, has been used for a while with another RAID0 array I broke apart).

It seemed like it for sure did always lock on one particular file when trying to read it, whether the game called it or I tried to copy it off to another disk. I can't tell which exact file but it was in a particular directory. I deleted the directory out of frustration, but then it did it with another directory in the same 'area' (on the desktop). I know that data is spread across an SSD in no particular order unlike a platter drive. If this were a platter drive I'd just assume I have a bad sector or two, run a thorough disk check from a bootable linux and see what's up, then try to allow Win7 to repair the damaged area or image, format, and try again. With an SSD I'm not sure. Is it possible to have a bad cell of memory that would cause a lock up on reading? I'm not intimately familiar with how the Sandforce controller and SSD's in general work inside.

Ok, doing some playing with it right now. Copying my 'Program Files (X86)' directory (all 12.8GB of it) to the RAID0 array, it's hung three times for about 30 seconds to one minute then came back. System just freezes up solid, no mouse movement even. Then, it's all fine again. Keeps copying after and completed successfully. All three times it locked on game files for Mektek release of MW4, hesp02.mw4, another file that I couldn't read the whole name of, and another .mw4 file.

Why would a drive hang on particular files only? I'll re-test later or tomorrow to see if it does it to those same files again. I forgot to have task manager up and running to see if the CPU usage spiked or remained constant when it hung. It just occurred to me...could my antivirus be causing this? I've been using the same product for years (AVG) with the same setting and have never had a problem like this before with it. I'm open to any possibility though, I'll explore into that further as well.

UPDATE:

Ok, I copied the directory with the above problem files from the RAID array to a single platter drive with no other changes to the system. No locking up. Locking up is ONLY when reading from the SSD and possibly only those files. I'll try to duplicate my results again later.

Ok, doing some playing with it right now. Copying my 'Program Files (X86)' directory (all 12.8GB of it) to the RAID0 array, it's hung three times for about 30 seconds to one minute then came back. System just freezes up solid, no mouse movement even. Then, it's all fine again. Keeps copying after and completed successfully. All three times it locked on game files for Mektek release of MW4, hesp02.mw4, another file that I couldn't read the whole name of, and another .mw4 file.

 

Why would a drive hang on particular files only? I'll re-test later or tomorrow to see if it does it to those same files again. I forgot to have task manager up and running to see if the CPU usage spiked or remained constant when it hung. It just occurred to me...could my antivirus be causing this? I've been using the same product for years (AVG) with the same setting and have never had a problem like this before with it. I'm open to any possibility though, I'll explore into that further as well.

 

UPDATE:

Ok, I copied the directory with the above problem files from the RAID array to a single platter drive with no other changes to the system. No locking up. Locking up is ONLY when reading from the SSD and possibly only those files. I'll try to duplicate my results again later.

Are you running a amd raid? I am having a similar issue running a raid 5 and when I go to copy large blocks of data (20gb) at a time it will lock on me and I will need to hard boot it.

When I am copying smaller bits of data (2gb) from the ssd to the raid it starts out going quick like 400mb/s then at about 3/4 done it drops to 15mb/s and raidxpert starts throwing "21:16:26, Task 30 timeout on disk (Port Number 1,Target ID 1) at LBA 0x0612800" errors. The port number is never the same.

Was wondering if you had similar issues. One of these days when I have time to mess around I was going to pull my SSD and see if i still get these running a HDD.

No, sorry, Nforce (680i Intel) RAID0 but only on two CaviarBlack 640's. I pull good numbers, but latency is high. Surprisingly stable considering the bad rap Nforce boards have had over the years.

I am open to the possibility that it's a 680i issue here, I do lack AHCI, which according to some means I'm not passing TRIM commands down BUT I read elsewhere (thread about Intel SSD) that it DOES pass TRIM if you use the correct Nforce specific driver which Win7 does NOT choose by default. Turns out, I haven't been using that driver. I'm switching to it right now.

Ah, so I'm an idiot. In my drowsy stupor I was looking at the IDE controller. My SATA is identified as SATA and has the correct Nvidia Nforce driver installed, so I assume it's passing along TRIM. I doubt TRIM is related to my problem.

Those ATTO results are pretty good for an Nvidia chipset. Most of them had SATA I speeds.

Thanks, 680i with the correct driver and good cables has always ran at SATA2 speed as specified.

When I first got the Corsair SSD I did have an issue of it running at SATA1 (even identifying as SATA1 by Win7) speed on ANY port I installed it on with the supplied cable (printed as a SATA3 on the ribbon). I switched to a SATA2 cable I had used before and it worked correctly, tested the supplied cable with other drives and they also performed at SATA1 spec. Got a bad cable with the SSD I guess. It happens. That's been resolved for over 11 months now, figured that out after about 3 days.

You have a the driver version?

It may help other users out there in the future that may have a NVIDIA 680i chipset.

You have a the driver version?

 

It may help other users out there in the future that may have a NVIDIA 680i chipset.

It's whatever is current on the Nvidia website, they haven't been updated since May of 2011 and I doubt they'll be updated anytime soon. :sigh!: