T61 & Intel X-25M 80G SSD - System Hang

[danf100]

I have a T61 (7659-A71) and have recently installed an Intel X-25M SSD after much reading a researching about SSDs. In all, the performance - especially on boot - is amazing, but I have it where every couple of days, I'll be working along and the hard drive light will go on solid and the whole machine will hang. The only way to get out of it is to hold the power button until the machine powers off. I had Intel swap the drive under warranty, but to no avail; it still happens with the new drive. If I use a "traditional" hard drive, it will run and run and never have this problem. I've upgraded to the latest and greatest drivers even from the Intel site directly, but nothing seems to help/fix this.

Help! Any suggestions/ideas?

[Marin85]

What OS do you have installed?

Vista -> Vista tweaks for SSDs

XP -> Partition alignment under XP

Hope this helps

Marin

[danf100]

Sorry, XP SP2; 4G RAM. I originally Ghosted my Hitachi HD to the Intel SSD and it works well, just for these annoying hangs. So far, haven't found any rhyme or reason to them.

[Marin85]

We posted in the same time See my edited post above.

[richk]

I'm not sure what I would be hoping for, but I would try to get more information by going into the BIOS under config/SATA, and change to "compatibility"

[Marin85]

I'm not sure what I would be hoping for, but I would try to get more information by going into the BIOS under config/SATA, and change to "compatibility"

Good point!

From OCZ "Configuring and setting up SSDs"

AHCI
AHCI is not official supported on OCZ SSDs and may under some circumstances affect performance,
specifically during windows installation. Enabling AHCI can result in higher performance in synthetic
benchmarks for SSDs and HDDs alike, but can cause hang-ups and intermittent freezes in SSDs since it
allows multiple access requests to compete for a drive that is not made to address re-ordering of
commands in the queue. We recommend AHCI is set to disabled in both Windows and in the BIOS.
Native Command Queuing greatly increases the performance of standard rotational drives but it has no
bearing on SSDs.

[jketzetera]

The recommended setting for the Intel drive is to enable AHCI as opposed to the OCZ drives.

There have been some reports of compatibility problems between the Intel X25-drives (M and E) and Thinkpads because of the crippled SATA speed on many Thinkpad models.

[bill bolton]

There have been some reports of compatibility problems between the Intel X25-drives (M and E) and Thinkpads because of the crippled SATA speed on many Thinkpad models.

Where specifically are these reports?

[danf100]

Yes! Curious about those reports, myself! Also, since the ThinkPads seem to ship from the factory with Samsung drives, do we know if they have the same issue(s)? If not, I'd be interested in swapping out with the new 128G Samsung FlashSSD drive.

[jketzetera]

See the following conversation between me and Tim at the Lenovo forums for one example from a user that reported stuttering with his Intel X25-M when running in his T60, while having no problems when he moved it to his desktop. He subsequently put in an MTRON SLC drive (rated at 60 IOPS) and experienced none of the problems that he had with his Intel drive. The MTRON drive is SATA-I, while the Intel is SATA-II.

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/mess ... 675#M28675

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/mess ... 678#M28678

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/mess ... 679#M28679

I have seen a few other reports regarding 60- and 61-series Thinkpads on different forums, where the users have complained about their X25 drives stalling and stuttering (sometimes up to 30 seconds). I will look around to see if I can find them again.

[bill bolton]

I have seen a few other reports

So, just one report on a X-25 which involves a T60 so far, but is inconclusive as to what the cause may have been!

[Marin85]

Since the OP has XP installed, I believe the partition alignment could solve his problem. It´s most definitely worth a try!

Marin

[kotovsky7]

it is either drive or laptop.

there is a good article on how to deal with intel's ssd 'hangs' and speed degradation here http://pcper.com/content_home.php?s=6
A lot of professional reviews and "good educational info"

Bill, I've also seen more of those reports - you want a bet that this Intel SSD was in Ultrabay adapter ?
T60's ICH7 inability to deal with a lot of IOPs while running pata and sata at the same time is even worse than ich8's.
thanks god they removed pata completely in ich9.
and it's all "marvel' chip" (not)
Lenovo's greed and lack of will to manufacture sata dvd-roms (since they had a bunch of old ones) and absence of desire to not let possible data corruption happen with their customer's data has led to the situation at hand.

[Marin85]

Lenovo's greed and lack of will to manufacture sata dvd-roms and absence of desire to not let possible data corruption happen
with their customer's data has led to the situation at hand.

That´s quite a hard statement...

[Daniel]

Kotovsky, on one hand, like you, I'm quite frustrated that there is no fix for the SATA problem. However, when you make statements like that, what you say elsewhere is much less credible as it just gets you labeled as a person who's only out to destroy Lenovo, rather than someone with a legitimate problem.

[kotovsky7]

Daniel , the "distruction" topic is on the "SATA-II failure to live up to specifications..?" thread - let's keep this one to the topic at hand .
I also have Intel's x-25 m and want to figure out why those "hangs" happen.

[jketzetera]

So, just one report on a X-25 which involves a T60 so far,

Don't get your knickers in a twist. I'll dig up some more for you.

EDIT: It turns out that one of the cases I recalled was here on Thinkpads.com. However, it is the same user that posted about his problems on notebookreview.com

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=68459

but is inconclusive as to what the cause may have been!

I cannot agree with you there.

Of all the disks he used in his T60, only the Intel X25-M exhibited poor performance and stuttering and stalling. When he moved the Intel X25-M to his desktop, it performed according to spec. Furthermore, a substantially slower SSD (the Mtron 3500, rated at only 60 IOPS) performed better than the X25-M and without a problem in the T60. The Mtron is a SATA-I unit and the Intel is a SATA-II unit.

[Marin85]

There has been recently a thread referring to an article about performance degradation of Intel X-25M SSDs over time. I don´t exclude the possibility that the Intel SSDs still have their problems. Hence I believe, as of now system hangs and similar problems should be carefully distinguished from the SATA interface issue...