Strange hang on Windows 7 P8P67 and Vertex 2 drive, drive seems to disapear

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egandt

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I have an ASUS P8P67 deluxe MB (version 3) and a Vertex 2 120GB drive, my problem is randomly it hangs for a period, it normally only lasts a minute or so, and running tasks continue, without issue, but starting new tasks fail, the cause seems to be that the executables can not be found, literally they do not exist. My best guess is that I loss connectivity or at least the ability to write to the SSD (Drive C:\ ) during this period and when access returns all is fine and anything I did responds instantly, but worst case is it does not return and I'm forced to reboot the system (hard by holding power this has only happened twice). I'm using the SATA6 port on the MB, but it also happened with the Marvell controller, and I'm already using the 4 Intel SATA3 ports on the MB.

Has anyone seen or heard of anything similar happening, is there any known issues between the SATA6 adapter and SSD drives?

Thanks,
ERIC
 
Yes, this seems to be a common issue with the Vertex 2 drives. If you are using current BIOS and firmware, your only option might be a RMA.
 
Hi egandt,

I have the same issue with one of my Adata S511 120G drives on my Gigabyte ga-z68x-ud5-b3 and am investigating it.

I have two of the drives in a RAID 0 and one of the drives will disappear. This causes windows to bluescreen and it cannot save the crash dump.

In my case I think the issue is a little worse as even once I reboot, the Intel RAID contoller still can't find the drive so I get a boot disk error. It takes resetting a few times before the RAID controller can find the drive again and start working - even turning off the computer and turning it on again doesn't make the drive reappear straight away.

This seems to happen at random but I would say it would occur on average every 5 hours regardless of if I am using the computer or it is sitting idle.

Exchanging the sata cables has had no effect.

I removed everything from the sata2 ports about an hour ago so now just have the Adata drives on the two internal sata3 ports to make sure the sata2 drives are not interfering or causing power issues.

I will keep you posted once I have eliminated a few more variables (or find a solution!) :)
 
I have the latest BIOS on both the MB and Drive, but am felling better that I'm not alone, in my case as I said it is mostly just annoying. I no longer think it is the drive, as I tried switching to an Intel SDD and I saw the exact same MO, just less pronounced (happens for less duration as far as I can tell), but it still happens.

ERIC
 
Just came back to find same crash occured with only the two SSDs connected so that has eliminated the other drives.

I read on an OCZ forum a moderator suggested turning S.M.A.R.T off in BIOS to someone else with the same issue but this doesn't seem to have worked for me.

I have sent a message to Adata tech support from their website so hopefully they can shed some light on what might be happening :)

From what I have found on google this seems to have happened to a few people with P67/Z68 chipsets and SATA3 drives.
 
Well I think it happens with SATA2 drives as well as the other SSD I tried was and Intel (generation 2 80GB Drive). I personally think it might be related to SP1 (since I never saw it before I reinstalled and updated to SP1), but I have no proof of that and my use of the system was limited at that time, so its just a guess.
 
egandt said:
Well I think it happens with SATA2 drives as well as the other SSD I tried was and Intel (generation 2 80GB Drive). I personally think it might be related to SP1 (since I never saw it before I reinstalled and updated to SP1), but I have no proof of that and my use of the system was limited at that time, so its just a guess.
Click to expand...

Read the OCZ forums, it is the drive, not windows.
 
egandt said:
I have the latest BIOS on both the MB and Drive, but am felling better that I'm not alone, in my case as I said it is mostly just annoying. I no longer think it is the drive, as I tried switching to an Intel SDD and I saw the exact same MO, just less pronounced (happens for less duration as far as I can tell), but it still happens.

ERIC
Click to expand...

Curious to know what's you're computer hardware specs and setup?
 
Specs:
P8P67 Deluxe
i7 2600K (at 4.6GHZ), happens even when not OC'ed
8GB 1600 RAM CAS 8-8-8-24-1
Promise 8650 RAID
5.56TB (6 1.5TB drives in RAID 6)
Vertex 2 120GB HD
Intel 80 SSD G2
150Gb Raptor
3x 10x Blu-Ray Burner's by Samsung
Windows 7 x64 SP1 (fully updated)
Fully updated BIOS 1850, and Intel ROS Drivers 10.6

ERIC
 
should not be I've used the same drive and controller on an i7 980x (ASUS) with both of these drives without issue, so its not a driver issue or the like, that would still point the the MB being the issue.

ERIC
 
Just an update...

Adata advised me they have a firmware update due by the end of the month that might help. Also the new RST 10.6.1022 seems to have reduced the crash to once every couple of days.

Have you had any luck with OCZ?
 
Heh Sandforce have released something on the controller for these types of SSD - http://www.sandforce.com/index.php?id=189

Apparently the issue is hard to track down. Seeing as I have two identical drives, one with the issue and one without, I get the impression they might be off the mark a bit with that statement about possible cable issues/interference. I can swap my cables and ports over but the dud drive still fails randomly.

Hopefully that firmware update does the trick - if it isn't fixed over the next week I will take up the stores offer to exchange it and hopefully get a working unit.
 
I have the same motherboard.... and Crucial SSD (120gb) and have a very similar issue. However, I also have a 1TB platter drive (western digital) and that one has also just "disappeared" once on me.

I think it's the RAID controllers on the board, I don't think it's the drives at all. When I was doing the Win7 x64 install I swapped the drives to various controllers (between the Intel 6gb/sec, Intel 3gb/sec, and Promise 3gb/sec controllers) and I could never quite get things to where I understood what was happening or why one of the drives wouldn't be found... it seemed totally random.

I did update the BIOS and firmware, that seemed to have no empirical effect on the condition.

I've read on Asus forums that the promise and intel controllers haven't always played well together, but I'm not entirely sure that's the cause either... just that others are having similar issues.

The drives both work fine in my other system, I am currently of the opinion that this has to do with the motherboard and/or SATA controllers on the mobo, and not the drives themselves. (fyi - my controllers are NOT in any raid mode.)

I'm subscribing to this thread to keep abreast of the situation... I'll post if I discover anything new. I just leave my machine running all the time as rebooting it makes me nervous that one of the drives will just not randomly show up on boot the next time.
 
Gigabyte have just released a beta bios update for my board:

F9B
- Improve OCZ PCIe SSD compatibility

Seems unlikely this will make a difference to the Sandforce 2281 sata3 drives but will give it a go tonight.

The Gigabyte board I am using seems to use a Marvell chip for external sata3 ports, so perhaps your Promise controller is not to blame...

Edit: Seems the Gigabyte update did not fix it but Adata have sent through new firmware today. I will try it out - if the firmware update fixes the issue I'm sure it will be filtering through other companies soon :)
 
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The new firmware from Adata seems to have fixed the issue and I am back up and running normally, as long as S.M.A.R.T is turned off in bios.

If SMART is enabled I sometimes get a SMART FAILED error next to the drive status on boot and Windows will freeze for about 20 seconds when there is a lot of disk activity (although it no longer BSODs).

I also flashed the same firmware to my other identical S511 that never had any issues and SMART still works as normal on it.

If new firmware has come out for your Sandforce 2200 OCZ drives then I would suggest trying that and making sure SMART is disabled in the bios if you still have issues.

Just for the record I had previously tried disabling SMART on the original firmware the drive shipped with and it made no difference to the issues with the drive, so you definitely need new firmware.


Update: The drive has started having issues again, froze twice yesterday and failed detection on start-up once. Intel RST software reports the disk as failed. Looks like I will return it afterall.
 
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