Symptoms of SSD failure?

[Mr. Pedantic]

I have a Vertex 2 60GB, and I was just using it one morning, when it froze.

Something like this has happened before. I blamed it on my mechanical hard drives, since after a few seconds you could hear them spin up and everything would go back to normal. Well, I waited for 10 minutes and nothing happened. So I decided to reboot.

This started a whole series of agonizing reboots, testing different drives in different SATA slots, trying to boot off my SSD, trying to repair the Windows install on it, and trying to reformat and re-install. This is what I found:



The SSD works about half the time. The other half, BIOS hangs at trying to recognize the SSD for a few minutes, can't do it, and then returns a "Missing operating system" message when it tries to boot off a non-existent drive.

When it does gets recognized by BIOS, the SSD loads Windows through to right before the login screen is displayed. At this point it just goes black and stays black, for about an hour once

When I try boot off the Windows 7 DVD, it hangs at "Setup is Starting". I read around, and apparently that was because Windows couldn't recognize my hardware?

I have managed to get hold of another hard drive, and I've just restored Windows onto that. Is there anything that I should run, or is it safe to say that my SSD has now bought it?


EDIT: Something else I found. The system won't load Windows properly with the SSD plugged in, even if it's not designated in the boot sequence. It gets to the 4 blobs on black, then flickers to a BSOD and restarts. So I can't actually reformat it, I can't test it, I can't do anything with it, it seems. Except return it

 

[Puffnstuff]

Are you using the most current firmware on the ssd? If so and it still acts up contact ocz. OCZ recently released an updated fw that addressed several issues.

 

[MobiusPizza]

Not on the vertex 2 I don't think, check anyway.

This are typical symptoms with the sandforce drives. The only known solution is to RMA or perform a secure erase.

Mean while if you get it fixed somehow or replaced it, do those LPM registry hacks (http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-S...eze-ups-in-Windows-7-solved-for-me/td-p/38766) and disable link state power saving in power options>advanced in control panel. These are preventive measures so to minimise the chance of this problem re-surfacing.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Are you using the most current firmware on the ssd? If so and it still acts up contact ocz. OCZ recently released an updated fw that addressed several issues.

I was using the 1.34 firmware, I think. I'm pretty sure that's the latest for the Vertex 2.

Not on the vertex 2 I don't think, check anyway.

This are typical symptoms with the sandforce drives. The only known solution is to RMA or perform a secure erase.

Mean while if you get it fixed somehow or replaced it, do those LPM registry hacks (http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-S...eze-ups-in-Windows-7-solved-for-me/td-p/38766) and disable link state power saving in power options>advanced in control panel. These are preventive measures so to minimise the chance of this problem re-surfacing.

I'm returning it to the store where I bought it this morning. Curious, though, how this store only gives a 1-year warranty, while OCZ says its minimum warranty is for 3 years...

I just don't care enough about it to get it working again, properly. It's just an operating system on there, and it's backed up anyway. If I can get them to secure-erase it so that it starts working properly, then hooray. If they replace it, hooray. I just finished my last exam, I don't really want to do any thinking for a while.

But I've never heard of the LPM hack. I'll be sure to try it out when I get a working SSD again.

 

[groberts101]

Use the Linux tool from a USB stick to secure erase the SSD and update it to the current 1.35 firmware.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...tex-2-3-Agility2-3-Solid3-Revo-and-Ibis-SSD-s

just be sure the SSD is set to AHCI mode in the bios, is all.

If it still acts up?.. return or RMA it.

If you want to help make the issues far less common?.. do not sleep the drive with a power cut(S3/S4) as that's a very common denominator for panic locked drives and data corruption with those controllers.

 

[Elixer]

I have a Vertex 2 60GB, and I was just using it one morning, when it froze.

When it freezes, if you look at the SSD itself, there most likely is a red & green LED lit on the unit. This means the drive is panicking for whatever reason.
I have never been able to recover from that, it eventually means you will have to RMA it.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Yeah controller panic has to be undone by ocz. I had an adata that did it when it was two months old which is how I ended up with the ocz I'm using now.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I returned the drive and got a replacement this morning. Everything seems okay so far, I haven't had time yet to put Windows back onto it though.

 

[Emulex]

had one die on me today.

symptom: touch the bad sector, unit dies completely.

rebooted: smart imminent failure (lololol).

called intel - advance swap fedex arrives tomorrow (free). x25-m maybe i'll get a 320 in exchange!

 

[Puffnstuff]

Flash the drive to the most recent fw before you start reinstalling everything.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Flash the drive to the most recent fw before you start reinstalling everything.

Shit, forgot about that. I'll have to do that afterwards. Thanks for the reminder.

 

[SillyBit]

Stress testing it might not be a bad idea either. Before you get everything loaded up on it, run it through the paces with Iometer and stress the crap out of it for an hour or two. I use Iometer extensively for stress testing and load testing and would work great in your case.

Good Iometer Tutorial with video to get you started:
http://www.itechstorm.com/iometer-tutorial-introduction

 

[MobiusPizza]

Stress testing it might not be a bad idea either. Before you get everything loaded up on it, run it through the paces with Iometer and stress the crap out of it for an hour or two. I use Iometer extensively for stress testing and load testing and would work great in your case.

Good Iometer Tutorial with video to get you started:
http://www.itechstorm.com/iometer-tutorial-introduction

I don't recommend stress testing (or benchmarking too much) on a SSD
I don't know how Iometer works. If it writes too much within the hour, it marks a lot of flash as dirty and will degrade the performance, until SSD is idle for some time to recover.

 

[Emulex]

all of my ssd drives failed totally (all x25-m) - read a sector like boot, then no more response. dead. no smart predictive warnings at all. all replaced under warranty. all about 6-12 months old. the only other issue was sandforce panic but that is a junk implementation