Suspect SSD in Rapid storage is faulty, what now?

[Slick Fork]

Hi there,

So today my computer started acting up. I get random freezes which require a hard reboot. Seems to run OK when it's running but the freeze happens with very little warning. Has happened 4 times today, twice while browsing the web, once while running Adobe lightroom, and once while feverishly making sure everything is backed up that can be backed up.

Windows Sysevent viewer doesn't show any problems. Twice, I've received a warning from the Intel Rapid Storage Technology program that "Volume on Controller 0, Port 1 has failed and please open application to investigate" but by the time I get that the computer is completely hung and I can only hit the power switch. Upon reboot I've discovered that the SSD used for acceleration is the drive on Port 1 (at least according to the IRST program).

On reboot, all drives show as healthy in disk manager and "normal" in IRST.

System Info:
Asus P8768V MB
Intel I5-2500k Processor at stock speeds
WD 1600AJS 1tb HDD (Caviar Black) accelerated by:
64GB Crucial M4 SSD as IRST drive
WD 1001FALS 150GB (Caviar Blue)
8gb RAM
Win7 x64 completely up to date.

Would really appreciate some advice, can I simply unaccelerate my platter drive, replace the SSD at some later point in time and reaccelerate? Would a faulty SSD in IRST cause these kind of hangups?

[VirtualLarry]

Originally Posted by Slick Fork

Would really appreciate some advice, can I simply unaccelerate my platter drive, replace the SSD at some later point in time and reaccelerate?

I think so. You left out what SSD it is that may be causing the problem. Care to share?

[Slick Fork]

Originally Posted by VirtualLarry

I think so. You left out what SSD it is that may be causing the problem. Care to share?

It's a Crucial M4, 64gb.

[VirtualLarry]

What's the firmware version on that SSD? Have you tried a different SATA cable?

[Slick Fork]

Haven't thought to try a different cable. Will do that right away and see if that makes a difference.

Not sure what the firmware is or how to check it, it's never shown up in the device manager and the intel program just lists it as RAID 0 and doesn't provide firmware like it does for the WD drive.

[Slick Fork]

Also, probably relevant but I'm not sure what it means; I downloaded the WD Lifeguard program and checked my caviar black drive with the quick test. It found no problems but the SMART data is listed as unavailable. Would the IRST setup mess with that or is that indicative of something wrong with the drive?

[VirtualLarry]

The smart data not available is probably due to IRST, and being configured as a RAID-0 of sorts.

The reason that I brought up the firmware, is that those m4 drives, if they have older firmware, have a problem of shutting down every hour, after 5000 hours of lifetime usage. Until you update the firmware.

[Slick Fork]

Ok, so disabling acceleration and setting the SSD to "available" in the IRST program shows that all my hard disks are listed as passing SMART in the WD lifeguard program. I ran the extended test on the smaller 150 gb hard drive and it passed and the quick test on both mechanical drives and they both passed. I did run the extended on my big drive but stupidly, I neglected to actually install the program (just ran it from the uncompressed file). It listed as passed but wouldn't give me a detailed readout. I'll run the extended test properly again tonight (3 hours, ugh)

Disabling acceleration also let me see the firmware on the crucial drive. It's 0009, I'm preparing to update the firmware shortly; some quick math coincidentally puts that drive very close to the 5000 hour mark so I'm REALLY hoping that's the problem.

Thank you very much for the help so far.

[Slick Fork]

Well, I updated the firmware successfully last night and have had the machine on for 5+ hours tonight after putting everything back to the way it was and have not had a problem yet (knock on wood)

Looks like I'm out of the woods, thanks again for the help