Why do I get freezing with KingSpec 128GB SSD on X40

[kit]

Every so often, my machine temporarily freezes (unresponsive) with what appears to be high disk activity (the disk activity light is fully on). I've never experienced this with my old 40GB disk.

Has anyone experienced this? What is causing this and can it be fixed?

[sjthinkpader]

In My Computer, right click on the SSD and select Properties. In the General tab, uncheck the Indexing button.

[ThinkRob]

Has anyone experienced this? What is causing this and can it be fixed?

This is symptomatic of a poorly-designed controller, such as those from JMicron.

Sadly, there is no way to fix this (at best can only work around it) short of buying a drive with a properly-designed controller.

[kit]

@sjthinkpader: Thanks, I'll give that a try.

@ThinkRob: I forgot to say I'm running Win XP SP3

[ThinkRob]

@ThinkRob: I forgot to say I'm running Win XP SP3

If it's due to the controller choking on outstanding random IO, it doesn't matter what OS you're running.

Note: I'm not 100% sure that's the issue, but I do seem to recall reading that some of the KingSpec drives used JMicron controllers, and what you're describing is *exactly* the behavior that their junk controllers can cause.

[fastoy]

@sjthinkpader

In My Computer, right click on the SSD and select Properties. In the General tab, uncheck the Indexing button.

Wow! What a difference. Here are the HD Tune reports before and after changing this setting.

Before

http://www.flickr.com/photos/desotonet/4655291136/

After

http://www.flickr.com/photos/desotonet/4654673365/

This is a 32GB Kingspec SSD in a ThinkPad X40.

http://benmoore.blogspot.com/2009/11/kingspec-ssd.html

[sjthinkpader]

Like ThinkRob said, the JMicron controller in the KingSpec is choking on writes. Eliminating Indexing can reduce SSD writes.