smithicks Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 I bought an Alienware M18R2 Ivy Bridge version in December 2012. It came with a 500GB Disk and Windows 8. All was fine with this disk. I swapped this with a Corsair GS 240GB and reinstalled windows using the Disks provided by Dell. I started to experience a lot of freezing, lasting about 30 seconds each time. This could be on boot or within Windows, completely random. I was using the very latest Intel RST drivers and left the BIOS unchanged in RAID mode. I had a look around here and decided the first course of action was to do a secure erase using parted magic and reinstall. Same craic, random freezes. Upon checking eventvwr the following disk events was logged quite regularly and coincided with the freezes; about a dozen or more; The IO operation at logical block address xxxxxx for Disk 0 was retried with one or two of these warnings for iaStorA in the middle of all the above; Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued I decided to have a play around with drivers and found a somewhat more stable driver for the Intel RST by simply going back one driver version. Its actually the one that came preloaded. I now don’t seem to have any freezes, but I do have the first error above reasonably regular; The IO operation at logical block address xxxxxx for Disk 0 was retried I decided to install ATTO and test the throughput of which I have attached here. Looking at others that have posted mine seems a little hairy towards the larger test toward the end. Whilst running the test 3 out of 4 times I would get the above error about a dozen or more times. I have to say in normal day to day running, right now on this driver I don’t seem to have any noticeable issues. Any advice greatly appreciated? Thanks… PS. Its noteworthy that the warning seems to appear on start-up, application installs etc more often. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithicks Posted February 8, 2013 Author Share Posted February 8, 2013 Apologies, please find the ATTO test results attached :roll: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turbonerfs101e Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 Hi smithicks First ove all, you SATA controller should be set to AHCI mod and not to raid and if ther more than 1 SATA conection as you have raid option, then your SSD should be plug in first SATA connector. Did you cheach for last bios upudate version A9? As it improve compatibility and stability ove system Did you cheach for las Chipset update Dell-Driver Recommended 2/8/2013 6.1.7601.28099, X04 Applies to: Realtek RTS5209 Card Reader, INTEL-Driver Recommended 2/8/2013 9.3.0.1019 App to: Intel HM77 Panther Point Chipset | Intel Panther Point HM77 Chipset, INTEL-Driver Recommended 2/8/2013 1.0.4.220, X07 Applies to: Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller Driver? Did you install last Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver v11.6.0.1030, X05? A driver serie 11.x.x.xxxx driver improve SSD compatibility Finaly did you update the last Network, video and System Utilities driver? All those donwload could be found on this websit http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/Product/alienware-m18x-r2 Hope this help Sincerly yours Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithicks Posted February 12, 2013 Author Share Posted February 12, 2013 Hi smithicks First ove all, you SATA controller should be set to AHCI mod and not to raid and if ther more than 1 SATA conection as you have raid option, then your SSD should be plug in first SATA connector. Did you cheach for last bios upudate version A9? As it improve compatibility and stability ove system Did you cheach for las Chipset update Dell-Driver Recommended 2/8/2013 6.1.7601.28099, X04 Applies to: Realtek RTS5209 Card Reader, INTEL-Driver Recommended 2/8/2013 9.3.0.1019 App to: Intel HM77 Panther Point Chipset | Intel Panther Point HM77 Chipset, INTEL-Driver Recommended 2/8/2013 1.0.4.220, X07 Applies to: Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller Driver? Did you install last Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver v11.6.0.1030, X05? A driver serie 11.x.x.xxxx driver improve SSD compatibility Finaly did you update the last Network, video and System Utilities driver? All those donwload could be found on this websit http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/Product/alienware-m18x-r2 Hope this help Sincerly yours I see this from previous posts all right. Im not sure that is the case. Could someone please confirm this? This is a new AHCI BIOS, Raid is merely an extension to AHCI. Out of curiosity I checked another alienware M18 shipped with a single SSD, it too is set to RAID (no issues obviously), and also made a call to Dell Enterprise, and according to them all Alienware M18R2 irrespective of Drive configuration will be shipped in RAID mode. My SSD is indeed plugged into Port 0. Yes indeed I am on BIOS Rev A9 No I havent installed the drivers uploaded on 8/02/2013, but will tonight. Interestingly the Intel RST driver that really gave me issues was version 11.7.1013 from the Intel Site. All other drivers are bang up to date. Just to add to the confusion, Ive now experienced two HDD lock-ups on boot that required a hard reboot since I posted my first post :[pouts: Can anyone say whether those benchmarks I posted look OK? Thanks for the reply Cheers, Smithicks... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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