C300 Disk Freeze-ups in Windows 7 [ Edited ]

[#1]

I installed a brand new C300 128GB 2.5" SSD into my Thinkpad X61s, and freshly installed Windows 7 Home 32bit.  Everything worked great, boot time decreased, and apps are noticeably zippier.  Photoshop launches in 2.5 seconds!

Since yesterday though, I noticed sometimes the application I'm using will hang up for as much as 40 seconds.  During the hang, the laptop's disk light is fully illuminated.  I can't click on anything on the app, it's like the app is waiting for the desk to be ready, and eventually will be after 30 or 40 seconds.  During the delay, I cannot launch any more programs or do anything that involves the disk.  When the disk light eventually goes off, the app goes back to full functionality, and Windows behaves fine as if nothing happened.

So far it happened in Google Chrome about 8 times, Firefox once, and Windows Explorer once.  I spend more time in Google Chrome than any other app, which is why I noticed it so much in that app.  Behavior occurred both on battery and on AC power.  I reboot the computer often, and have plenty of free physical RAM.

When it just happened again, I had the Windows Resource Monitor open.  I saw no disk activity whatsoever, and no CPU usage at all.  Task Manager showed 100% idle CPU time during that period.  Weird, why is the disk light fully illuminated but 0 Bytes/sec disk activity and 100% cpu idle??

Anyone have any thoughts?  Is this a Windows 7 thing?  An SSD thing?  A C300 problem?

System details.... I'm running firmware 0002 on the C300 128GB (model C300-CTFDDAC128MAG).  Swap/Paging File is fully disabled.  BIOS has AHCI enabled.  Windows Defragmentation is disabled.  TRIM is turned on in Windows.  System is a Lenovo Thinkpad X61s with Core 2 Duo L7500 1.6GHz, 4GB RAM (3GB usable), Windows 7 32bit with latest updates.  Antivirus software is AVG Antivirus obtained from free.avg.com.

Thanks in advance.

[#2]

Launch event viewer (in win7 start menu type eventvwr.exe), see if you are getting any critical events in the system log. I occasionally get event ID 41 kernel-power and it bugs me as it affects sandforce based drives too. Maybe a F/W fix will help or it could be the intel ahci drivers 9.6.0.1014. Other forums seem to think it's related to the TRIM feature.

[#3]

I am having an identical problem.

Error in Event Viewer is: Event ID:9 The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.

System is Windows 7 64-bit HP Envy 14. Firmware 0002, C300 256GB. Running NOD32 AV.

About the only thing we've got that's the same is the problem and the OS.

This is annoying as **bleep** and I'm about ready to RMA the drive if I can't figure out what the problem is.

[#4]

Since you mentioned the Intel drivers, I was wondering if either of you guys also tested the MS Default AHCI Driver  instead to see if it is indeed the Intel driver?

[#5]

Well, this time I got  a Blue Screen of Death during the latest thrashing episode.  Not good.

Looking at the Windows Event Viewer, I see a Kernel-power message when the "thrashing" occurred (disk light fully illuminated).  Event Viewer shows at 4:24:13pm a Critical level Kernel-Power message, EventID 41.  Another poster to this message thread had a different EventID, but similar "Kernel-Power" message.

When this "thrashing" started, I pressed WindowsKey-E to see if the Windows Explorer would come up, waited, waited (thinking it would eventually come up when the thrashing stops), 20 seconds into it, Blue Screen of Death.

And get this...  Upon reboot, after BIOS, it failed accessing the SSD.  Got this message:

ERROR

2100: HDD0 (Hard disk drive) Initialization error (1)

HDD light remained fully illuminated.

I powered down the laptop computer, powered back on, and I'm back in business.  For now.

I am happy to try other AHCI drivers.  Someone mentioned Microsoft's default AHCI drivers.  Isn't that what I'm already running with this freshly installed Windows 7 32bit?  How can I check the AHCI driver version?

UPDATE: Found the AHCI Driver info in the Device Manager under IDE/ATA Controllers.  Shows "Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller", properties says the driver manufacturer is Microsoft, driver date 6/21/2006, version 6.1.7600.16385.

Should I try another AHCI driver?

[#6]

Well, I'm using the Intel AHCI drivers with the same type of issues. I just updated to the newest revision and I'll see if that makes any difference...

I'm inclined to just RMA without changing anything else and see if that fixes the problem unless someone can point me in the direction of something else that might explain these issues.

[#7]

Looks like the freeze-up occurs not just with Kernel-Power messages.  Latest freeze-up just occurred while viewing a PDF file with Adobe Acrobat Viewer.  Afterward, Event Viewer showed a few "Service Control Manager" informational messages about the time of the freeze-up, one of an "Error" level with eventid 7009.

joshmcx, are you running a laptop like me, or desktop?  If the problem we share exists across multiple SSDs, Crucial and other brands, I doubt RMAing would help.  Could be a Crucial SSD issue, could be a Windows 7 issue.

One thing's for sure, when the SSD freezes, it's frozen hard.  Even after my blue screen of death, the disk was still frozen.

UPDATE: I think the Event Viewer is not helpful in figuring out the problem.  Another freeze-up, this time under Firefox, produced NO messages in the Event Viewer.

[#8]

Sounds like a BIOS or laptop issue with power features?   Not really sure guys, nor am I sure what you should do.

Wish I could help!

[#9]

I found the following URL, which someone claims it's a problem with JMicron chipsets.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=86779&start=0

According to wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JMicron , JMicron is found on some SSD drives and can cause a "stuttering" problem.  I know "Micron" is Crucial, but I don't know if JMicron has anything to do with Crucial.

At this point, if I cannot fix this problem with a driver or Windows config change, then I'm trying to determine if it's a hardware problem with the C300 which can be fixed with a future firmware update, with Thinkpad laptops, with many laptops in general, or a problem with many SSD's.

[#10]

jmicron made the controllers for the old generation 1 SSD's.  They stuttered because they had no pre-erase support such as trim or GC and no cache to let the OS carry on while it's erasing during writes.

The Crucial C300 is a 3rd generation SSD using a Marvell controller with 128mb cache and both Trim and GC.

Micron has nothing to do with jmicron.

In short... it's not the same problem.  I don't know what the problem is though.