Solid State Disks are currently a hot subject. More and more computers users are starting to add SSD drives to their systems. Some mainly for the OS with a HDD to accompany it for cheap storage, others have switched to SSD as their main storage. The SSD drives make their computers considerably faster as SSDs have no mechanical parts unlike HDDs which have spinning platters with a read/write head moving above it. Still, SSD is a relative new technology and when reading forums SSDs seem to suffer from a ‘freezing’ problem. When you google ‘SSD freeze’ you will be amazed about the amount of result. When it happens applications are not responding, the HDD acivity led remains lit but it’s possible to move the mouse. Even Also Apple users suffer from it and the Intel forums are full of people complaining about the issue.
From what we gather the issue seem to be mainly related to AHCI, a standard from Intel. This standard can be compared to the IDE standard used before on many HDD/ODD devices, but AHCI makes hot plugging and native command queuing possible. However there seems to be an issue with it and a commonly used fix is to disable it in the BIOS and use IDE instead. Some SSD vendors also released firmware updates which seem to fix it, but not all.
We would like to know if there are more users who suffer from this SSD freeze and if disabling AHCI helped for them. Please post if you have the problem or if you solved it, together we’ll fix this forever! We’ll continue to cover this subject as long as required.
8 Comments on SSD drives suffer from freezing problem – Let’s solve it!
I'd be interested in hearing thoughts from Dee. Especially if he has encountered this freeze issue on his SSDs...
My theory is that the freezing problem has to do with the connection between the SSD, AHCI, and the operating system. Running in IDE mode is a poor work around because it harms SSD performance and reliability.
TRIM doesn't require AHCI mode to operate, it will work equally well in IDE mode. TRIM only requires the complete ATA stack to pass the TRIM command down the line to the SSD. This starts at the operating system level. The OS needs to support TRIM, and that would be Win7 or later, and most new Linux Distributions.
There are many myths about TRIM requiring AHCI mode around the net. They are all myths, and I have analyser
traces to prove it.
The next stage is the SATA controller must support TRIM pass-through, I haven't heard of any SATA controller that doesn't.
The SATA driver must also support TRIM pass-through. All Intel SATA drivers support this in AHCI and IDE mode, and Intel Z77 RST drivers 11.5 and later support TRIM pass-through on RAID 0 arrays on the Intel Z77 chipset and Win7 at the moment, as is said to be working on the launch version of Win8.
Freezing SSDs, may not be the SSD or firmware, there are many open bugs still un-fixed in the SATA controller side of things, power management bugs in the chipset, and unstable SATA drivers and controller option ROMS.
I started with a 120gb crucial drive. After 8 months I decided it was too small and put it in my laptop. No freezes on the laptop either.
I know use an OCZ Agility 3 (240gb) and no freezes either.
Both SSD's have worked really well and are so much better then HDD's.
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Originally Posted by Dee
Just to clarify something here.
TRIM doesn't require AHCI mode to operate, it will work equally well in IDE mode. TRIM only requires the complete ATA stack to pass the TRIM command down the line to the SSD. This starts at the operating system level. The OS needs to support TRIM, and that would be Win7 or later, and most new Linux Distributions. There are many myths about TRIM requiring AHCI mode around the net. They are all myths, and I have analyser traces to prove it. The next stage is the SATA controller must support TRIM pass-through, I haven't heard of any SATA controller that doesn't. The SATA driver must also support TRIM pass-through. All Intel SATA drivers support this in AHCI and IDE mode, and Intel Z77 RST drivers 11.5 and later support TRIM pass-through on RAID 0 arrays on the Intel Z77 chipset and Win7 at the moment, as is said to be working on the launch version of Win8. |
Hmm, perhaps this is why Anandtech warned about potential freeze problems with hardware combinations when using a Sandforce-based SSD because kinks and bugs not totally worked out?
Dee, have you had any problems with freezing on any of the SSDs you have in your rig?
I have a couple of SATA3 SSDs that can just drop off the SATA2 controller on an AsRock Z68 chipset mobo, but I'm pretty sure that the SATA spec on that board lives to near the edge for comfort, and the SATA3 ports on the same mobo have no such problems. I also have an Asus Z77 mobo, which just seems to be very stable, and has no such problems.
There is a culture that has arisen over the last couple of years that wants to blame the SSD for ever single little problem they might run into, as if nothing else could possibly go wrong in a system.
That doesn't mean that SSDs have no problems, I just haven't encountered any, so far.
If you should run into a problem with an SSD, the first thing you should do is clear CMOS on the mobo, and allow the power management tables to be re-built in CMOS. That's always a good starting point, and from what I've seen tends to cure many instability problems. To rebuild the power management tables, you simply run the "Windows Experience Index" application, then reboot the PC.
Doing this will also make sure that Win7 for example, knows it's an SSD that is connected and not an HDD.
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