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Macbook freeze after sleep with Corsair F120


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Hi,

 

ever since after installing my brandnew F120 into my Macbook (15 inch late 2009) I am experiencing freezes (Spinning Ball of Death) after wakeups after sleep and hibernation. I am running Snow Leopard 10.6.4.

 

By asking Dr. Google I saw several references to other Corsairs (P-Series) and other SSDs creating these sorts of problems for others as well.

 

Do you have any clue as to what might be causing this or how I can assist in debugging this?

 

 

Moreover my 10.6.4 says "Trim Support: no" but I suspect this being a problem in Mac OSX.

 

Kapazität: 120,03 GB (120.034.123.776 Byte)

Modell: Corsair CSSD-F120GB2

Version: 1.0

 

 

Kind regards,

JP

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  • Corsair Employee

Was this a fresh install or did you image it from another spinning HDD?

And is there an update from Apple for that O.S.?

I would encourage you to check on the Apple forum for more help.

Also check with Apple for the latest Firmware for the Notebook.

 

And TRIM is only supported in Windows 7 Apples do not support TRIM at this time.

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SuperDuper image from a spinning disk. I doubt that this explains it though. Reading similar articles suggest that the problem persists after a fresh install.

 

I am aware that TRIM is not yet supported with Mac OSX. However that should not explain this problem should it?

 

No updates available so far.

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  • Corsair Employee

I have seen another user with a MAC and a Force SSD having this issue, we have reported the issue but no data to suggest it is an issue with the drive it self at this time.

 

However I would try a do a fresh Install and just save this image on another drive to test the problem.

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Hi,

 

as stated in my e-mail to you there is quite some evidence out in the net to indeed suggest it is a SF-1200 related problem:

 

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CMYOHY2FuDYJ:macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-SSD-OWC-Mercury_Extreme.html+mac+sandforce+freeze+hibernation&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de&client=safari

 

 

Moreover:

 

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18864/2

 

 

Both reference specific SF-1200 problems with Mac and sleep/hibernation. Moreover I took the time to super duper the drive to a hard disk. All stable. I did a quick fresh install and was able to reproduce the problem as well. So I would say it is a 99.9% of it being F120 related. :-) Sandforce should be able to assist here pretty easily since they should - according to the OWZ tester - be aware of the problem and adressed the issue already in April.

 

Regards,

JP

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Some more articles:

 

http://www.hardmac.com/news/2010/03/18/a-problem-with-deep-sleep-mode-for-sandforce-controllers

 

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1312/1/

 

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=642185

 

 

So please. Let's just for the sake of the argument assume that it is indeed a problem with sleep modes in the SandForce firmware. :-) Can you escalate this internally and/or SandForce?

 

 

Many thanks,

JP

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JP,

 

In early revisions of the FW(for F100 and F200 only) it did have an issue with Low Power Standby. But it was addressed by disabling the Low Power Standby Feature.

 

F100/F200- HW supports "Low Power Standby" but the feature was disabled due to at the time the FW had issues. We knowingly disabled it.

 

F60/F120/F240- HW supports "Low power standby" and FW had no issues through our testing with XP, Vista, and Win7. F120 is enabled for "Low power standby" with no known issues.

 

Also in System Preferences>>Energy Saver is the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" checked or unchecked?

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Hi,

 

thanks for the feedback. The option is checked. Here is what pmset -g says:

 

 

Active Profiles:

Battery Power -1*

AC Power -1

Currently in use:

halfdim 1

sms 1

hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage

gpuswitch 2

disksleep 5

sleep 15

hibernatemode 0

ttyskeepawake 1

displaysleep 5

acwake 0

lidwake 1

 

 

Since I have a spinning drive in the macbook as well I left the option checked so it sends that device to sleep. I assume that the "low power standby" is indeed a problem on the F120 as well. The same applied to F100 mainly on Macbooks and there not even on all. If you mainly tested the F120 with that option enabled on Windows machines I suspect you would not have seen this issue.

 

The symptoms are very much like what is reported on the F100 (or alike disks from other vendors). I there a faint chance of getting hands on a firmware with that option disabled? Once installed on my SSD I can tell you within 24 hours if this fixes the problem! :-)

 

Kind regards,

JP

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  • Corsair Employee

All of our F100/F200 Drives has that option disabled, I would try and disable it in the menu to test and see if that solves the issue, however the F120/F240 should not have any problems that we are aware of and Testing on MAC's is not done on our side, sorry! Apple does their own testing as far as I know but we are looking into this.

 

F100/F200- HW supports "Low Power Standby" but the feature was disabled due to at the time the FW had issues. We knowingly disabled it.

 

F60/F120/F240- HW supports "Low power standby" and FW had no issues through our testing with XP, Vista, and Win7. F120 is enabled for "Low power standby" with no known issues.

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All of our F100/F200 Drives has that option disabled,

 

You mean all your Macs with F100/F200 drives have that option in the energy preferences menu disabled? Just want to make sure I really do understand that. This does mean that no matter what, the additional traditional hard drive in my mac will keep spinning forever?

 

I set that option now and will let you know if that changes anything.

 

 

however the F120/F240 should not have any problems that we are aware of and Testing on MAC's is not done on our side, sorry! Apple does their own testing as far as I know but we are looking into this.

 

Again just trying to understand: This obviously is a problem as I am experiencing it several times a day. I personally would not expect any help from Apple as their argument will be that it is a drive problem they are not responsible for. So what I need to know is if Corsair will continue to solve the problem even without Apples direct support. If not, I need to ship back the device and get a non Sandforce drive. My question remains: Is there a possibility for swapping the device from Corsair (Force vs. Nova e.g.) with me paying a potential price difference?

 

Regards,

JP

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You have mentioned that you have two hard drives installed... Where is the OS installed? can you provide a screenshot of Serial-ATA device tree.

 

Also since your hibernatemode=0 that means when in sleep the temp file is stored in RAM not in the either HDD/SSD.

 

 

"Low power standby" is a feature on the SSD itself and is not controlled by the OS or System(in this case MAC). The MAC only initiates the standby/hibernation.

 

Once again, neither of the Force Series models should have issues in standby period.

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You have mentioned that you have two hard drives installed... Where is the OS installed? can you provide a screenshot of Serial-ATA device tree.

 

Will provide the screenshot later on. The OS is installed on the SSD.

 

Also since your hibernatemode=0 that means when in sleep the temp file is stored in RAM not in the either HDD/SSD.

 

I know but this seems irrelevant and hibernation modes do not change the behaviour. The problem is that after the macbook wakes up (from sleep) the SSD is simply not there anymore. And if the SSD is gone, the Volume is gone and if the volume is gone, the system goes down. :-)

 

 

"Low power standby" is a feature on the SSD itself and is not controlled by the OS or System(in this case MAC). The MAC only initiates the standby/hibernation.

 

Once again, neither of the Force Series models should have issues in standby period.

 

Well earlier you stated that "low power standby" with the F100 series did introduce problems which resulted in potential problems as described here. Hence you disabled it on the F100 firmware. However on the F120 the feature is enabled and you presume - due to successful testing on windows systems - that the F120 does not show this behaviour. I personally suspect that the F120 is suffering the same problems and you simply have not noticed them so far due to the problem manifesting primarily on macbooks (like the old F100 problem as well).

 

Regards,

JP

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In early revisions of the FW(for F100 and F200 only) it did have an issue with Low Power Standby. But it was addressed by disabling the Low Power Standby Feature.
Was that in internal tests only, or did any drives with those FWs reach market?
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Can you use hibernatemode 3/safe sleep and see if the issues occur?

 

Keep in mind take advantage of hibernation to save battery life and the biggest benefit of SSD is how fast it wakes from hibernation.

 

 

Will check during the day. But there should not be a big difference between 0 and 3. Both will put the notebook to sleep and sleep seems to be the problem (probably not hibernation).

 

Sure, hibernation is nice, however with 8GB RAM hibernation takes quite an amount of time, even with SSD.

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Was that in internal tests only, or did any drives with those FWs reach market?

 

I would not know. If this is the error that others reported back earlier this year it did happen on other vendors drives and that was solved with a new sandforce firmware (3.0.1 having the issue and later firmwares not). Not sure if this is the same problem. RAMGUY would need to comment.

 

Regards,

JP

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I'm using a unibody Macbook and also have 8GB with no issues..... Wakes up in seconds and even with Parallels still runnning with Windows 7.

 

Model Name: MacBook

Model Identifier: MacBook5,1

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo

Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz

Number Of Processors: 1

Total Number Of Cores: 2

L2 Cache: 3 MB

Memory: 8 GB

Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

Boot ROM Version: MB51.007D.B03

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Legend: With what hibernation mode? 0 or 3: Sure it only takes seconds because it is not going into hibernation. I will check with hibernation mode 1 (real hibernation) and report back how long things take.

 

However: That is still just a workaround since sleep mode should work without problems.

 

 

Regards,

JP

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Then you are using smart sleep not hibernation. With smart sleep you are putting the contents to hard disk when going to sleep. However, your macbook remains in sleep mode until the battery drains. If the battery is still ok during wakeup you will simply be back up as with normal sleep. If the battery is killed, then after reloading the notebook will come back on and do a hibernation wakeup.

 

So in 99% of the cases I suppose you are using sleep only and not hibernation. What is your setting for hard drives in the energy panel? And are you using a F120 or F100?

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Good to know! :-) Thanks.

 

I just e-mailed the requested screenshots to ramguy. Hope they reach you. Regarding the earlier sandforce problems OWZ drives were reported to have these problems but not on all Macbooks. So for whatever reason this does not happen everywhere meaning that the fact that it works for you does not automatically mean it should/must work for my setup.

 

 

Regards,

JP

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In early revisions of the FW(for F100 and F200 only) it did have an issue with Low Power Standby. But it was addressed by disabling the Low Power Standby Feature.
Was that in internal tests only, or did any drives with those FWs reach market?
I would not know.
I know, that's why the question was directed to Legend, the Corsair employee :)
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