I have a really bad problem with a brand new SSD-based rig I bought from a fairly well-known guy on our Canadian buy/sell site, RFD. It is based on a Vertex 2 60 GB drive with the Sandforce controller. Here's the rest of the specs from Everest
Quadcore Intel Core i5 750, 2733 MHz
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3P (I'll find out if it's the Rev 2.0 shown here)
Vertex 2 SSD with Sandforce controller
4 GB G.Skill DDR3-1600 Eco 7-8-7-24
2 x ATI HD 5450 video cards
This could get long, so I apologize in advance.
This guy built me a rig a month back and when I got it, it immediately started showing me the BSOD. I told him and he took it back; he told me that he had to somehow tweak the RAM timings because he was trying a motherboard that wasn't strictly supposed to take the RAM he was using. This was a big shock to me as I never told him to save a few $$ by trying something like that. I told him before the build that stability was my #1 concern. So I get the new rig with the right mobo. No BSOD, but what immediately started happening is that the computer has these little 'mini hangs' where it just freezes up when I click on a GUI element or request a task. Never stays frozen, just hangs for 3-10 seconds. I see the little blue circle spinning. This can happen when closing a window, or when requesting some other task. It happens with multiple apps. It does not seem to me that it is happening only when I ask the SSD to access large amounts of data.
I asked the maker about this and he tried a bunch of different ploys. He asked me if Windows updater had run automatically (it had, once) and then he said that maybe that changed the drivers. He told me it might be the video card drivers. He told me that it might have something to do with something called "AHCI mode" which is how the drive is installed. He at first swore up and down that it was not the SSD, even though a couple of other tech guys I spoke to immediately said the SSD drives were known to do this. The builder at first said these Sandforce based Vertex drives did not have any problems, but then changed his tune, saying that he knew guys were having problems but he didnt have any with this drive. In the end, he sent me a one liner email saying 'RMA the drive'.
So that's it. I'm screwed. I spent about 10 hours getting the rig up and running, getting everything installed etc. This problem will not go away and it's very irritating. I spend my life on my main rig. A couple of notes
1. When I open Everest, and click on 'Memory', the Physical Memory utilization shows 54 percent or 1965 MB (right at the moment) with nothing running but a browser
2. I have Windows 7 and all the applications installed on the SSD and all my data on a separate conventional internal hard drive.
3. At one point the maker said to me 'just flash the motherboard'. I am not bad with general tech stuff but I would never want to start experimenting around with flashing motherboards on this unit. Most of what the guy was saying was over my head.
4. The other day, I put a CD-ROM into my drive in order to copy some files over to the new rig. There were about 12 files, most in the 50MB range. These were music books. I opened the drive and saw the files. I highlighted all of them and clicked 'copy'. Then I opened my D drive, where I am storing my data, created a folder and clicked inside it and right clicked and chose 'paste'. The process seemed to start, but showed that it was going to take 20 minutes. Then the time changed to 2 hours 15 minutes. After 10 minutes the time hadn't changed and the progress bar hadn't moved. I aborted, reopened the CD-ROM, and dragged and dropped each file individually. This worked fine.
I have since learned that there have been problems with these SSD drives. I am looking for an indication as to whether this symptom is indicative of a commonly known problem. At this point I would actually be happy to know that it's a known issue, even if it requires an RMA and reinstall of Windows, because the thought of spending 30 hours on the net trying to correspond with different guys and trying 10 different things doesn't appeal to me, when I paid this guy to give me a working rig.
Hopefully someone can help me sort this out. I will gladly answer any and all questions and get more information if it's required. Thanks in advance.
Quadcore Intel Core i5 750, 2733 MHz
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3P (I'll find out if it's the Rev 2.0 shown here)
Vertex 2 SSD with Sandforce controller
4 GB G.Skill DDR3-1600 Eco 7-8-7-24
2 x ATI HD 5450 video cards
This could get long, so I apologize in advance.
This guy built me a rig a month back and when I got it, it immediately started showing me the BSOD. I told him and he took it back; he told me that he had to somehow tweak the RAM timings because he was trying a motherboard that wasn't strictly supposed to take the RAM he was using. This was a big shock to me as I never told him to save a few $$ by trying something like that. I told him before the build that stability was my #1 concern. So I get the new rig with the right mobo. No BSOD, but what immediately started happening is that the computer has these little 'mini hangs' where it just freezes up when I click on a GUI element or request a task. Never stays frozen, just hangs for 3-10 seconds. I see the little blue circle spinning. This can happen when closing a window, or when requesting some other task. It happens with multiple apps. It does not seem to me that it is happening only when I ask the SSD to access large amounts of data.
I asked the maker about this and he tried a bunch of different ploys. He asked me if Windows updater had run automatically (it had, once) and then he said that maybe that changed the drivers. He told me it might be the video card drivers. He told me that it might have something to do with something called "AHCI mode" which is how the drive is installed. He at first swore up and down that it was not the SSD, even though a couple of other tech guys I spoke to immediately said the SSD drives were known to do this. The builder at first said these Sandforce based Vertex drives did not have any problems, but then changed his tune, saying that he knew guys were having problems but he didnt have any with this drive. In the end, he sent me a one liner email saying 'RMA the drive'.
So that's it. I'm screwed. I spent about 10 hours getting the rig up and running, getting everything installed etc. This problem will not go away and it's very irritating. I spend my life on my main rig. A couple of notes
1. When I open Everest, and click on 'Memory', the Physical Memory utilization shows 54 percent or 1965 MB (right at the moment) with nothing running but a browser
2. I have Windows 7 and all the applications installed on the SSD and all my data on a separate conventional internal hard drive.
3. At one point the maker said to me 'just flash the motherboard'. I am not bad with general tech stuff but I would never want to start experimenting around with flashing motherboards on this unit. Most of what the guy was saying was over my head.
4. The other day, I put a CD-ROM into my drive in order to copy some files over to the new rig. There were about 12 files, most in the 50MB range. These were music books. I opened the drive and saw the files. I highlighted all of them and clicked 'copy'. Then I opened my D drive, where I am storing my data, created a folder and clicked inside it and right clicked and chose 'paste'. The process seemed to start, but showed that it was going to take 20 minutes. Then the time changed to 2 hours 15 minutes. After 10 minutes the time hadn't changed and the progress bar hadn't moved. I aborted, reopened the CD-ROM, and dragged and dropped each file individually. This worked fine.
I have since learned that there have been problems with these SSD drives. I am looking for an indication as to whether this symptom is indicative of a commonly known problem. At this point I would actually be happy to know that it's a known issue, even if it requires an RMA and reinstall of Windows, because the thought of spending 30 hours on the net trying to correspond with different guys and trying 10 different things doesn't appeal to me, when I paid this guy to give me a working rig.
Hopefully someone can help me sort this out. I will gladly answer any and all questions and get more information if it's required. Thanks in advance.
Last edited:
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