Vertex 2 Pauses

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Have a brand new 32nm Vertex 2 120GB that I secure-wiped and installed Win7 on, running Intel's AHCI drivers (7.0.0.1013).
102GB allocated as a primary partition, the remaining 9.79GB is unallocated as a spare area.

I copied over my Team Fortress 2 folder (lots of small files) and the TF2 GCFs (large files), then created symbollic links back to the main Steam folder on my mechanical drive (1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3)

When run completely from the mechanical drive, TF2 loads a lot slower but plays fine. When run from the SSD however, I get frequent annoying pauses where the game just freezes for 3-6 seconds and the HDD access light is solid. It is definitely not a connection issue (already tested for this).

Anyone have any idea what's up? I'm running the stock 1.25 FW that came with the drive, haven't updated to the newly released 1.32 yet.

TIA!

 

[GrandPixel]

My guess is that 1.25 firmware is for 25nm drives only. Check into that.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

My guess is that 1.25 firmware is for 25nm drives only. Check into that.

Well, I actually bought the drive late last Nov, before the 25nm drives were out (IINM). Just didn't get around to installing it until about 2-3 weeks ago.

 

[adamantinepiggy]

Well current Intel AHCI drivers are up beyond the 10's version, so maybe see if a newer driver helps. There's also the good old standby MSAHCI driver which makes up for the tiny performance differences by being super compatible.

 

[groberts101]

first off, I would just put the entire folder on the SSD if most of the other data is already there anyways.

next thing would be to upgrade to 1.32 for reducing potential issues down the line(even if you haven't had any yet) as there are many fixes. One of the nicer ones I like(I haven't had issues either and rarely upgrade firmaware myself) is the ability to unfreeze drives for SE without the need to hotplug anymore. Also has RST 10 series compatibility now as well.

from there I would recommend allowing an overnight logoff idle for GC to do its thing effectively. Just be sure the advanced power options are set to never let the drive shutdown or it will be interupted.

If none of these work to reduce the issue(and I'm thinking the folder move to the SSD should help), then you may need to do another SE and reinstall with some tweaks to the game file locations to reduce the chance of this issue from reoccurring again.

Good Luck with it.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Thanks for the tip. My Steam folder is way too large to just move everything over wholesale unfortunately, so I only sym-linked my most frequently used games (TF2, L4D1, L4D2).

 

[groberts101]

yeah I kinda figured that and should have been more specific. You would just move the actual data that would be relevant to the specific game in question. I would imagine you have sub-folders for each individual game, right?

troubleshooting is often a PITA and the fact is (depending on the compexity of your install of course) at times it's actually faster and much more succesful to just wipe the controllers mapping(which gets rid of any potential Durawrite throttling algorithms as well) and start fresh. Nothing like a fresh controller/OS to baseline and troubleshoot from.

I've got my 6 drive arrays SE/reimage protocol down to near 10 minutes flat though, so it's easy for me to say that and YMMV.

FWIW, if you get another OS volume installed on HDD you can SE/reimage all in one go now. I just break my array and boot to the other OS array and do it all from there now. Toolbox is still not perfect, but it's much improved for sure. Good Luck with it.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

No worries, it'd be pretty painless to do since I always keep an up-to-date image of my clean Windows install on the mechanical drive.

So just boot up with the gparted disc, SE, boot up with TI 14 disc, restore, done

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I wanna say the drive is ??? maybe dying.. not sure.. let your computer idle overnight so garbage collection runs and see how things are then...

gl

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I wanna say the drive is ??? maybe dying.. not sure.. let your computer idle overnight so garbage collection runs and see how things are then...

God, I hope not. Just barely started using the damn thing :|

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

It was the first thing I noticed before my first Vertex LE died, and it died within 2 months of use (SF 1500 controller)

Just make sure you backup all your important data frequently, like I am.

Good Luck!