akjohnston Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 Hi, I have a problem on my big Alienware laptop which seems to be related to the SSD, so I'm hoping someone here can help. Randomly, a couple of times a day on average, my hard disks just "lock" for about a minute. The symptoms are: Disk activity light stays ull on for about a minuteNo disk access is possible during that timeThere may be an error in the system event log "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort0." At the end of the lock-up the system may simply recover and continue without problems, or it may crash with a BSOD. This seems to be related to the SSD, as it started when I changed my primary drive to an SSD (the system was OK when on a traditional primary drive). However I have had the same problem with two different SSDs from two different sources, so it's not related to the specific disk or Corsair-specific. This is really annoying, as otherwise my system's very fast and reliable. It does seem to be triggered by two or more processes hitting the storage concurrently - it often happens when I'm doing something in a VM and on the host. On the other hand if I'm careful to execute big disk jobs such as compacting a VM with the system otherwise quiescent it's usually OK. Things I have already tried to improve matters include: Re-installing Windows from scratchTrying both Intel Rapid Storage Technology and Microsoft driversUpgrading the firmware of both SSD and motherboardSetting the BIOS to RAID or AHCI None of these makes any difference, although the problem does seem to be a bit worse with the Intel RST drivers and bit better with the Microsoft drivers. Please can anyone think of anything else I can try or check? Thanks Andrew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toasted Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 What Alienware model do you have? Have you tried disabling any power saving features for the drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akjohnston Posted January 23, 2013 Author Share Posted January 23, 2013 Hi, My machine is an Alienware M17xR3, with a Corsair SSD as disk 0, and a maxstor XT as second disk. I don't think I have any power saving settings for the disks, but I'll check. the problem isn't triggered by a timeout, as it can occur immediately after booting. Any other ideas? Thanks Andrew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toasted Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Check the drive connection. Is the drive loose? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akjohnston Posted February 5, 2013 Author Share Posted February 5, 2013 Hi, I've pulled both drives out and re-installed them, screwing everything down tightly. It looks like I've still had one error in the last three days, but I can't be sure. Any other ideas? Thanks Andrew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toasted Posted February 6, 2013 Share Posted February 6, 2013 Switching the drives? e.g. Move the Maxtor XT drive to where the SSD is plugged in and the SSD plugs where the Maxtor XT drive is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akjohnston Posted February 6, 2013 Author Share Posted February 6, 2013 Thanks. Good idea - I should have thought of that! Andrew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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