Solved OCZ SSD freezes pc weekly, looking for alternate option

[OMNIOMEGA10]

I have currently a OCZ Vertex 3 as the primary drive. It freezes the pc at least once every week, with the HDD activity light staying on, Windows 7 x64 is frozen, and it requires a reboot to use the pc again. I know this because when I changed my primary drive from the WD Caviar Black to the OCZ Vertex 3, the weekly freezing began to appear.

I have my WD Caviar Black as my second drive at the moment. So I would like to know if the following configuration would stop the freezing, especially of the OS.

I buy a WD Velociraptor 300GB and install Windows 7 x64 on there, making it my primary drive for OS. Then I make the 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 my second drive (for some intense games and some performance specific programs such as Photoshop). Then the 750GB WD Caviar Black will be the third drive (for personal files storage and games that don't require high performance).

So in the event my SSD attempts to cause a freeze, will it bring the OS down with it, even if it's the second drive and the OS is not on there? If the SSD attempts to cause a freeze while I'm using a program from it, will I still be able to use Windows and restart my pc safely?

Tips and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

[Seven Eleven]

I think app will crash but OS will not. It will look like drive has been suddenly removed.
Which firmware version your Vertex has? Latest is 2.15.
With 2.11 mine was BSODing from every few days to few weeks on two different mobos. I was going mad for two months. Then 2.13 was released and i flashed it. It's been over a month and now everything is fine. Don't know about performance hit, though. And i will not flash to 2.15. Too risky with these sandforce drives.

Btw drivers are original that comes with OS and AHCI is enabled in BIOS. No registry tweaks.

 

[OMNIOMEGA10]

Thanks for the response. Mines firmware v2.06 but I don't have any other pc to flash it with. My motherboard also uses SATA 3Gb/s only. So if I change the OS drive, I'm hoping that I'll still have access to Windows in the event of the SSD causing a freeze occasionally. Can anyone confirm this with 2 drives from past experience? So the OCZ SSD would disappear if it caused a freeze. Interesting.

 

[Seven Eleven]

Thanks for the response. Mines firmware v2.06 but I don't have any other pc to flash it with. My motherboard also uses SATA 3Gb/s only. So if I change the OS drive, I'm hoping that I'll still have access to Windows in the event of the SSD causing a freeze occasionally. Can anyone confirm this with 2 drives from past experience? So the OCZ SSD would disappear if it caused a freeze. Interesting.

Mine BSODed with old motherboard's 3Gb/s controller and with new one's 6Gb/s too.
You can flash firmware with OCZ Linux tool from CD or flash drive.

Here is link to Vertex3, Agility3, Solid3 and Synapse caching drive support and discussion forum

Important links to any info on firmware, guides and tools you may need

That is OCZ forum and there are lots of threads with Vertex 3 drama
You can get some clues there and decide to try flashing or not.

I came to conclusion that main problem with Vertex freezing the OS is that drive's firmware decides randomly to go in sleep mode. So drive stops responding to OS requests and results in freeze/BSOD.

 

[OMNIOMEGA10]

Lol! Vertex 3 has large drama! I guess its a hit or miss for everyone. What I will try out is installing the OS on a Velociraptor when I get one. If my OS runs fine then that will be good, since I don't want the pc to freeze weekly. And when I'm using games from the SSD, they will just crash if the SSD "freezes". It'll give me the chance to reboot properly hopefully.

 

[OMNIOMEGA10]

The worst case scenario would be the SSD freezing the pc even when my OS is on the Velociraptor. Is there a chance this would happen? I'm still quite unsure if the freeze would affect the OS on a different drive...
@ seven eleven
Did you ever try making the SSD as the secondary drive to see how it reacts to the OS when it has an issue?

 

[Seven Eleven]

Did you ever try making the SSD as the secondary drive to see how it reacts to the OS when it has an issue?

No. Only time i connected it as second was when i flashed it for first time (from 2.06 to 2.11) under Windows, immediately after it i got it and it was unpacked. Then i reconnected it as first in place of old HDD and started installing OS etc... And then BSOD fun started

 

[OMNIOMEGA10]

Ah right, I'm surprised you flashed it before testing it. BSOD'ing must've been severe issues with the Vertex sandforce controller and firmware after (or perhaps before, though we don't know) the flash, since mine v2.06 just freezes weekly, which is more milder. From what I deduce, a BSOD would occur regardless of OS location, while a freeze usually happens when the OS and the drive its on doesn't cooperate anymore (with the exception of bad apps that freeze pcs anyway). Perhaps, the Velociraptor could be the good alternate option for the OS.

 

[Seven Eleven]

Yes, drive freezed completely on random: while idling, browsing, playing game... No pattern whatsoever.
That first flashing on my part was really dumb thing to do. Oh well... was thinking just like with mobos - new firmware = better. Lesson learned

Later after browsing OCZ forums i came to conclusion that most stable firmware was 2.09.
And one other thing is performance. Differs between firmwares. Haven't benchmarked mine. I see that it's MUCH faster than old HDD and that's all i need to know

 

[OMNIOMEGA10]

It appears the freezing issue seems to plague particularly the SandForce controller based drives (depending on the system build its used with), some scenarios being subtle, while others being significant. This seems to be dependant on the firmware, and in some scenarios, even flashing to the latest may still not fix the issues SandForce has with some system builds.

I have been checking out the 300GB Velociraptor's price, which was rather high for only a 15% performance increase over normal HDD's. In fact the price of that Velociraptor was mainly more than a 120GB SSD!

I was thinking of getting a 128GB Crucial M4 instead (hopefully having a firmware 0009). I have read in many debates that the M4 is very reliable, especially being a Marvel controller based SSD.

So I have a few questions again:
1. Can anyone tell me of any freezing or problems with the Crucial M4?
2. If I use the Crucial M4 as the OS drive, can I still use the OCZ Vertex 3 as a secondary drive? Or will the Vertex 3 still cause freezing to the OS?

The setup will be:
1. Crucial M4 (OS/programs drive)
2. OCZ Vertex 3 (Games drive) - has weekly issues
3. WD Caviar Black (Games/Storage drive)

Any suggestions?

 

[OMNIOMEGA10]

As an update, I have bought an Intel 510 SSD. That is now my OS drive, while my OCZ Vertex 3 is the games drive, and the WD Caviar Black is for storage/games. After doing further research comparisons across a few notable SSD brands, it appears the Intel is the most reliable out of the box and compatible with a large amount of system setups. So far the Intel 510 has been stable, alongside the not as reliable Vertex 3. Although it's not as fast as the Vertex 3, I'd definitely recommend it for those who don't want to update firmwares often, or for very solid stability/compatibility, especially for previous generation systems. Thanks to Seven Eleven for giving me some tips regarding firmware.

 

[Dazbutz]

I have a Ocz vertex3 and the thing freezes up some times, all i can do is restart the computer then it won't reboot as it can't find the Hd, so i have to power off totaly and restart, it's a pain the the ass, i get odd stutters to while playing games it's really annoying: / my firmware version is 2.06, will updateing to the latest version fix it?

 

[Seven Eleven]

Months ago i've updated to 2.13. And no crashes after that. So for me it works and i haven't and will not risk update to latest (2.15? or something newer?).

 

[essenbe]

I have 3 Crucial M4's installed on 2 computers. I have never had any problem with them freezing or BSODing. I'm quite happy with them. I really can't answer about the Vertex 3's as I don't use one. However, firmware updates are usually to correct known issues. You will have firmware updates with any SSD. But, my guess would be if the firmware or controller of the vertex does something to make it freeze, it will freeze whether an OS or not.

 

[Dazbutz]

Ok sorry if this question seems stupid, i'm not the best when it comes to computers. I have 2 hard drives the Ocz SSD and a normal hard drive i downloded the tools to update my SSD onto my normal drive as i have windows7 on there and i can use it to boot because updating the firmware is not supported when windows is running off the drive you are updating.
The problem is the update is failing as my SSD is set to "Drive0" and it says this on there website.."Drives must not appear as "Drive0" for updates. Please ensure update is not performed on a disk set to primary"
My question is can you tell me how i change this to do the update then i can change it back after i update the SSD, or is it to complicated to do for a novice?

 

[essenbe]

If you are asking how to not make it drive 0, simply change the data cable to another port. Then after the update change it back. The OS should be port 0. If you like, swap the data cables between your 2 hard drives to do the update, then switch them back. The only issue you may have, but probably won't, is to check the boot order in bios.

 

[Seven Eleven]

...or you can follow this guide and flash it without cable switching.

 

[DeaconFrost]

I have an Agility 3 that shipped with the latest 2.15 firmware, and it's been rock solid and stable for me.

 

[Dazbutz]

i changed the data cables over and yes indeed it changed the vertex SSD to drive1 and my normal Hd to drive0, but the update still fail's : /

 

[mpisarek]

Something to try

I have been having the same issues, ironically happened while I was reading this thread :fou:

Interestingly this only started happening AFTER I switched over to AHCI from [ENHANCED] IDE. So to test this I rebooted my Win7 in safemode, uninstalled (from device manager) AHCI Intel Driver v. 11/11/2011 10.​8.​0.​1003. I then rebooted and changed from AHCI to [ENHANCED] IDE in my BIOS. Started Windows 7 NORMALLY, and let windows install the standard SATA IDE drivers v. 9.1.1.1016 - which are the latest from Intel....AND Voila, all works perfectly now. So I say there is a bug in the AHCI drivers from Intel causing issues on SOME Sata controllers... :bounce: