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Almost a month ago I bought Intel 330 128GB solid state drive, migrated my data with Intel branded limited-feature Acronis from old HDD to new SSD, optimized with Intel Toolbox and started using it. Occassionally I get close to 1 minute freezes while seeing operating system "beach balls" and animations still work, I can interact and click on something but nothing responds, nothing loads. Recently a couple of such freezes occurred in shorter amount of time in a row. I have noticed that if I stop interacting with laptop, the freeze lasts less time than if I was interacting with laptop.

But the bigger problem is when freeze just does not end and computer keeps being stuck unlil it is more than half hour and I run out of patience to keep waiting and feeling I need to restart the system because I am not getting anywhere. Such freeze happened while laptop was cold booting into Windows 7. This is when freeze hang occurred and I had to restart, only later to be greeted with Windows recovery screen stating something about faiure of boot sector and asking to insert Windows repair CD. But after I restarted, Windows booted successfully and all was well.

I have filmed video of freeze hang occurring in cold boot which you can see here (on video page look below for description):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b7MQlcDTUs

As I have mentioned in the beginning, the SSD is less than a month old but here is S.M.A.R.T statistics just in case (TRIM is enabled btw according to CrystalDiskInfo):

enter image description here

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I want to emphasize that this SSD is the only drive I have, yet it is working in RAID mode (it was enabled initially in BIOS by previous laptop's owner) on Intel Rapid Storage drivers. I am contemplating about switching to AHCI mode but want to be sure this won't cause data loss. Additionally, the stock firmware is the only firmware available currently, yet Intel does not respond to my posts in their community board.

If anyone here has this SSD model or generally has experience with SSD drives, I would love to know your thoughts.

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    I have had similar problems with crucial SSDs of various sizes under OSX Mountain Lion. It seems to me that the system is doing something in the background both windows and mac that use the HD and the rest of the system can't keep up maybe.?!?! Not sure really.
    – d4v3y0rk
    Oct 3, 2012 at 21:21
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    @DanielRHicks Nearly every time I've had that issue, it's been because the intel controller was misbehaving.
    – Darth Android
    Oct 3, 2012 at 21:24
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    I used to have freeze problems and periodic 7A blue screens until I nuked those Intel Rapid Storage drivers. Since then I've never noticed a freeze and blue screens are 1/10th as often.
    – Loren Pechtel
    Oct 3, 2012 at 22:21
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    @DarthAndroid You are correct. I also think this way and maybe firmware update needs to be developed, but I do not agree with what Daniel R Hicks replied. I never had such symptom previously and not at all as far as I can remember.
    – Boris_yo
    Oct 4, 2012 at 7:24
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    @Boris_yo Were I in your shoes, I'd image the drive and switch it to AHCI mode, and restore from the image if switching modes causes it to not work right (you'll also now have a backup). Intel's controllers can do some nice stuff (Hybrid caching), but mine has been very temperamental over the last 1.5yrs. I wouldn't use it as a raid controller unless I had to.
    – Darth Android
    Oct 4, 2012 at 14:09

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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+100

This could have to do with power management, trying to disable the SSD from time to time to spare some power which is probably not the best idea if it doesn't work out the way it should. I think this is because this was an improper installation (you cloned the data instead of reinstalling) and hence some setting is not set properly for your SSD, it could be that this is configurable in the power options but here's a more generic approach that has shown to work across various SSDs (mostly Crucial / OCZ) and even worked for the Intel 330 series in two foreign topics.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port0]
"LPM"=dword:00000000
"LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
"DIPM"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port1]
"LPM"=dword:00000000
"LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
"DIPM"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port2]
"LPM"=dword:00000000
"LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
"DIPM"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port3]
"LPM"=dword:00000000
"LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
"DIPM"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port4]
"LPM"=dword:00000000
"LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
"DIPM"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port5]
"LPM"=dword:00000000
"LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
"DIPM"=dword:00000000

Save this as a .reg file and execute it, then reboot so the driver loads it. Make sure you run the latest RST / AHCI drivers for these settings to be applied, and that you don't run the default MS drivers for that. Make also sure that any other drivers for your system are up-to-date...

When you are unsure, feel free to back-up HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters first.

Good luck!

Sources:

Reported fixed on Intel 330:

Reported fixed on other Intel SSDs:

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    It worked! So far after a few weeks not a single freeze! Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
    – Boris_yo
    Jan 4, 2013 at 14:09
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I've managed to eliminate similar problem by switching SATA controller from AHCI to IDE mode in boot setup.

It is not trivial - OS won't boot after the change. Check out this question: Change from IDE to AHCI after installing Windows 8

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  • But after changing to IDE your SSD will be equivalent to SATA-1 and below speed wise than it would be on AHCI so it defeats the purpose of SSD. You better use solution Tom Wijsman provided here or remove IRST drivers and set to AHCI mode unless you are left with no other solution. You SSD on IDE mode will still have way higher access times than HDD though.
    – Boris_yo
    Feb 7, 2013 at 15:45
  • Bullpucky. Only thisk AHCI mode brings to the table is hot swapping support and Native Command Queuing. Former is not essential, latter have nothing to do with SSDs.
    – Artem Tikhomirov
    Feb 12, 2013 at 8:13

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