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Intel 330 SSD 120GB Random Freezes And Hangs Issue

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

I have migrated Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit from old HDD to Intel 330 SSD 120GB, optimized and tuned it up in Intel Toolbox and while all was fine:

after a while occassionally I have started noticing 10-15 second freezes while drive LED being lit. Interestingly the operating system keeps working (mouse cursor animated) but responds very slow to actions, something like once in 3 minutes to mouse click. This has bothered me but I could wait until next available firmware fix, however in addition to freezes I have started getting hangs. They are just like freezes but SSD just keeps being hung while drive LED keeps being constantly lit.

Yesterday I resumed laptop from 8 hours sleep and did not log in Windows right-away but after 2 minutes I came back and saw that laptop restarted. Event Viewer shows this:

I have been using this drive for a week now on RAID enabled in BIOS and here are S.M.A.R.T details:

I have read that people suggest disabling DIPM and Intel Rapid Storage drives and switch to AHCI, but while freezes and hangs stop, they get BSODs. Would appreciate your replies and thoughts and Intel taking this issue more serious because as I use my laptop fro business purposes, this issue makes it harder and less reliable.

UPDATE:

I have more to report about freezing issue and captured a video today when freezing occured on Windows loading splash screen. Please read description about problem below the video:

Here is description just in case:

"SSD operates in RAID mode but not in RAID array since it is the only storage device in my system and it freezes occasionally all while system is working i.e animated windows, drag&drop, mouse cursor is animated and responds. Ceasing work immediately and waiting 1 minute seems to solve this but If starting doing a lot of actions that require storage device interactions, it makes freezing into constant freezing or at least freezing for a very long time. For example, as you can see in this video, when Windows was about to finish loading, suddenly disk activity LED turned on and keept being lit for a lot of time; over ~30 minutes to be more precise and I simply turned off laptop because waiting more seemed to be waiting for days.

However comparing both scenarios it seems in 1st scenario as freeze occurs, it makes SSD recovery from freeze very slow provided I immediately stop my work and don't have anything running. But digging further seemed as if interrupting SSD a little increases freeze delay. In 2nd scenario since I could not cease Windows loading, it made freeze duration too long, that after ~30 minutes I gave up and turned off laptop which by the way resulted in boot menu asking for CD with Windows Recovery and reported message below about failed boot record and/or non-responding disk if I remember correctly."

/message/166994# 166994 In this post, community member Henry tells that this freeze occurs when read is immediately followed by write and that increasing delay between operations could be the solution.

Thank you.

1 REPLY 1

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

Solution here: