Interesting SSD problem

Here's an interesting ( at least I think it is) problem with my G73. Used it for a day or 2, swapped out the primary HDD for a Crucial 128 GB SSD, did an anytime upgrade to Win 7 Ult, and started having GSOD's. I applied the various patches and solutions as listed on the forum. ( And a big Thank You to everyone that posted them, You Rock!).

It helped somewhat, but still would get inconsistent (random) GSODs, not seemingly temperature related. Used various monitoring apps, but never had a temp over 65c, but I could almost always cause a crash by running the asus screen saver.

Finally RMA'd it, ( and it was fast up here in Canada), and the report said they did the repaste, etc, ran furmark, and seemingly had no problems. They didn't roll it back to factory OS, as I said no to that. ( I had Ult on, so that shouldn't have made a difference).
Got it back, ran fine for 2 days, ( but it wasn't stressed ), and you guessed it, all over again.
Got pi$$ed off, replaced the Crucial 128 Sata 2 SSD with the original HDD, ( as this way I could say that it was all factory, nothing different) reloaded Win 7 Ult from scratch, loaded the drivers and apps from the DVD that came in the box, and low and behold, not a problem.

So I cloned the drive to the SSD, swapped the drives, ( with the attendent twiddling), and GSOD time again.

So I'm going to make a WAG and say it's the drive, or driver. But the drive runs fine in another box, ( unfortunatly not a G73), and every test I ran at it, shows no faults.

Has anyone else ever heard of a SSD punching out a system? Could it be that the SSD is just pulling down something? ( voltage? too much data through-put?)

I'll listen to all suggestions, and even attempt them. And keep people posted.

 

I have a Gskill Phoenix Pro 120gb and currently have no I have a Gskill Phoenix Pro 120gb and currently have no issues, but I had other problems initially (like the bios not seeing the drive). Did you do a fresh windows 7 install on the ssd originally? I see the second time you did it you cloned your 500gb drive. It is my understanding you don't want to clone ssds it order to sure the sectors are aligned, still that shouldn't cause your GSoD problem. I wish I had a good solution. Your best bet is to RmA the ssd, perhaps it is defective. I had to rma my first ssd because the bios wouldn't detect it. initially (like the bios not seeing the drive). Did you do a fresh windows 7 install on the ssd originally? I see the second time you did it you cloned your 500gb drive. It is my understanding you don't want to clone ssds it order to sure the sectors are aligned, still that shouldn't cause your GSoD problem. I wish I had a good solution. Your best bet is to RmA the ssd, perhaps it is defective. I had to rma my first ssd because the bios wouldn't detect it.

 

a friend of mine was having all kinds of issues with a crucial 128gb SSD in his G73JH as well.

he bought an intel 160GB SSD and no problems.

after a few days of testing we started getting unrecoverable read/write errors on the SSD (the crucial drive) using SpinRite. he's going to RMA the drive and we'll see what happens when it comes back. the drive wouldn't even let him install windows on his desktop PC, kept throwing errors while copying the install files. dropped another drive in it and all is well.

 

I did at one point do a clean install on the SSD, and it didn't affect anything. I will run spinrite on it and see what it says. ( I didn't think of it... my bad.)

I will RMA the drive if it shows anything... and, I'll order a new SSD ( suggestions?), and do a clean install on to it and see the results.

 

RDDASH - your problems seem similar to mine, with my G73JH. I replaced the original 500GB drives with the Momentus XT SSD hybrids within the first couple of weeks of owning my machine. I have had it for around 4-5 months now and have been spending an inordinate amount of time online searching for solutiuons to my video lag and audio stutter - I couldn't play any games and enjoy them because of this problem. Finally I was ready to RMA it and thought I had better get it back to stock condition before sending it in (didn't want to be told it was my problem for altering the equipment). Well, I did the same as you , replaced the original drives, formatted and did a fresh Win 7 install and loaded up the ASUS disk with drivers and bloatware - installed everything. When I booted it up it performed like it was meant to - games run fantastic and no other problems (including no keyboard lag)!! To test my theory on the Momentus XT's, I stuck them back in and did a fresh install of Windows along with the ASUS set of drivers and programs and I had the same audio/video problems again. I have to write my issues off to the hybrid drives - don't ask me why they caused this problem - it didn't make sense to me.

 

I am just tossing out a thought here with no facts but at what speed do most ssd's read and write at? If pci-e is limited to 3gb/s and a ssd sends data at a faster rate how might this cause errors in the system?

 

Sounds like a bus overload to me. Might be cause by to mana data on the whole pci-e bus (don't forget that other devices like USB, network card, ... could also sit on the same bus).
You could try the latest Intel RST drivers for the S-ATA part.
I also have a G73, but with a Supertalent Ultra ME 128GB SSD and have no issues.

pato

 

If the bus was overwhelmed due to bandwidth, then the drive would just take longer do process that data over the bus. It will queue the information and not just keep streaming it.

There are good chances the drives are bad. You know how many things can go wrong with an SSD drive? It could be a bad memory chip, firmware issue, and the actual controller.

A single SSD drive, in a non-raid configuration, will not saturate a PCI-E 3.0 lane.

 

Thanks to one and all for the help. I ran spinrite and it looks like the controller is flakey. Now, if Crucial could get their RMA system up and running, it seems that they are having 'issues' with it.
R