Toxic Rain Posted April 22, 2012 Share Posted April 22, 2012 Hello, Last summer I purchased a 120Gb Force Series 3 SSD in hopes that it would be mechanically sound. I am only led to be let down time after time and I can't understand why that is, I have always stood behind corsair products but I do not know if I can do that any longer. What happens, the SSD will hang from time to time, whether it be when I am booting my computer and it will hang on the starting windows screen, or the occasional time when I am just using my computer for whatever. When the system hangs I can look at the hard drive activity light and it will be on solid (frozen). I have, updated the firmware on the SSD multiple times, I believe it is on 1.3 right now, and I have even updated my BIOS to its latest version, which included fixing an issue with the SATA III controller on my Sabertooth x58 motherboard. This did not fix any issues though. The SSD runs flawlessly on my SATA II ports. Besides the occasional hang, I am not impressed by this SSD, it is my first but the speed of it is not blowing me away by any means! When I first installed Windows 7 on it, I would not see the 'welcome' screen, after installing all drivers and that stuff I now see the 'welcome' screen for about 4-5 seconds, which is ridiculous :p I hope somebody here will have a solution and I'm sure somebody will you are all very intelligent people! Thanks a bunch for any advice or help you can give me I really do appreciate it :) Cheers, Eric :biggrin: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synthohol Posted April 22, 2012 Share Posted April 22, 2012 please run ATTO and post a screenshot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxic Rain Posted April 22, 2012 Author Share Posted April 22, 2012 Okay, here it is! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wired Posted April 22, 2012 Share Posted April 22, 2012 Update to firmware 1.3.3, disable your antivirus, and run ATTO again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxic Rain Posted April 22, 2012 Author Share Posted April 22, 2012 When I run the firmware updater as a administrator it does not even see the drive, if I remember correctly I had this issue before and I believe I had to put the drive on the Sata 2 port, does anyone know why this would happen? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
parsec Posted April 23, 2012 Share Posted April 23, 2012 The source of all you issues, including the firmware update problem, is the Marvell 9128 SATA controller. The firmware update will not work unless your SSD is connected to the Intel SATA controller. The Marvell chipset is not the boards primary SATA controller, the Intel chipset is. It's difficult to explain, but I doubt that any manufactures SSD FW update will work with the SSD connected to the Marvell controller. I've owned this board for going on two years now. Unfortunately, the Marvell 9128 chipset uses one PCI-E lane for it's connection to the rest of the PC, which is limited to 5Gb/s maximum bandwidth, not the full 6Gb/s of SATA III. That explains the less than optimal performance of your SSD. You'll never see more than 400MB/s read speed on the Marvell chipset, and it's IOPs performance is poor. The sequential read speed on the Marvell will be better than the Intel ICH10R SATA II chipset, but the 4K read and write speeds, IOPs, and performance at higher queue depths is better on the Intel chipset. As you've seen yourself, the Intel chipset is stable and trouble-free. The Marvell driver is also poor and is infamous for it's instability. I won't use it, I use the Windows 7 msahci driver instead, which improves the stability and performance, but a driver cannot compensate for the Marvell's limited bandwidth. Marvell has never confirmed that their AHCI/RAID driver will pass the TRIM command to a SSD. Changing to the msahci driver might help with your stability/freezing issues. I only use the Marvell chipset with storage drives, but not for the OS. Frankly, I don't trust the Marvell chipset. I have three SATA III SSDs in RAID 0 as the OS volume on the Intel chipset, which works perfectly. Yes, I rather use my SATA III SSDs on a SATA II controller, than gamble with the Marvell chipset. If you Google the Marvell chipset, you'll see why I don't trust it. Yes there was a BIOS update for our board that claimed to improve the Marvell's stability, but it was not a great improvement. I also own the SaberTooth P67 board, with the Intel SATA III chipset, and use SATA III SSDs for the OS drive. All my testing shows how superior the P67 chipset is to the Marvell, I get performance that equals the specs of the SSDs. Many owners of the SaberTooth X58 have been disappointed with the Marvell 9128 chipset, which was used on many mother boards, all with the same result. Sorry to say that you to are now a member of this club. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxic Rain Posted April 24, 2012 Author Share Posted April 24, 2012 Hello, I am not sure if I should upgrade to 1.3.3 I am seeing alot of people having issues with it! I just believe it is my Sata 3 (marvell) controller that is the problem. But I would still like to start from scratch so this is how I would do it right? 1) update firmware (if i so choose so) 2) clear BIOS 3) Secure Erase ssd (which should restore to original performance right?) 4) re-install windows 5) update BIOS Just double-checking the procedure! Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employee RAM GUY Posted April 25, 2012 Corsair Employee Share Posted April 25, 2012 I would just move the drive to the Intel controller and run ATTO again And you cannot update the Firm ware on the drive if you are booting the system from the drive you want to update. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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