SF-1222 SSD don't play nice with T420

Just a heads up to anyone with a T420 (or similar laptop based on the same Intel chipset), the Sandforce SF-1222 based SSD drives do not like to play nice with our laptops. My specific model was A-Data S599 64gb that I paid $115 for off of Amazon.
Sandforce 1200 series chipset problems are pretty well documented on forums all over the web.
The specific problems that applied to my T420 were:
1) Does not resume from sleep, BSOD everytime I resume my T420 from sleep. The latest FW does not work, although A-Data claims that it is supposed to be the silver bullet for the sleep issue that is so well known about (it literally comes up as a Google Instant option it is posted so much).

2) Every now and then the BIOS shows a screen on boot-up that the primary disk isn't detected. Again, other users have mentioned this occurs occasionally with their Sandforce 1200 chipset SSDs. Serious? Unacceptable.

Now, the workarounds for problem #1 are to either fully shut down the computer when you're down each time. The rationale is obvious, boot-up is like 15 seconds and you're back into your fully functioning Win7 environment.
The other option, which I tried, is to select Hibernate on lid closure instead of Sleep. About 1 in 10 re-opening of the lid the computer would still hang. Not a great option.

Now, I purchased my Thinkpad T420 for the robustness of the software and hardware and 0% errors/downtime. With a Sandforce SSD, that just isn't guaranteed. Workarounds/being a beta-tester for Sandforce chipsets are not an option, nor should they be.

I returned the drive to Amazon for a full refund.

Intel X25 are said to be awesome, however they are just too pricey for me to justify so I'm back to spinning HDDs.

Oh well, Lenovo enhanced experience 2.0 gets me into Win7 from a cold boot quick enough, and resume from sleep is so fast I dont' mind the HDD. Lesson learned.

 

That is an pretty well-known A-Data problem, which is not specific to T420.

The latest FW is identical to the previous version. (Someone on the Internet ran md5sum on the two "different" versions, and it turns out that they have identical md5 hash values.) You will have to wait until the next FW from A-Data.

It would have been more accurate if you said "A-Data SF-1222 SSD don't play nice" in the title instead of "SF-1222 SSD don't play nice with T420". The problem affects only a subset of all SF-1222 drives (those made by A-Data), and it is not specific to T420.

 

Does this happen on cold boots or warm restarts? Let me guess, the latter.

 

To be honest you can't tell, some SSD's are really fickle and disappear or crash sporadically. I had a Corsair SSD that would just disappear regardless if it’s cold or warm boot. To this day they still haven’t found a solution to it via the forums, it's probably down to poor controller implementation in my opinion.

The Intel SSD may be pricey but I have to say, you get what you paid for in terms of reliability and performance. Unlike the Corsair I had, the Intel didn’t mess around with games of "hide and seek" and performed just as expected from day 1. It was a great investment and didn’t regret getting it, so much so I’m pretty much sold for the Intel Elmcrest as my next SSD!

 

actually that happens on every SD controller, dont matter which brand. Ive got a corsair and it still happens, some with OCZ happens, some with mushkins happens....

 

http://www.adata.com.tw/upload/downloadfile/ADATA_S599_Firmware_Upgrade_Tool_V1.0.zip

Latest firmware. My Microcenter 64G which is same SSD as your has no problem with my T410.

 

Both.

It actually affects every SSD made with SF-1222. The forums out there are full of complaints by people who have SSDs made with this chipset from various manufacturers.

I'm happy for you. Unfortunately the latest FW doesn't work for everyone.

Just wanted to post this as a warning for future T420 owners who want the SF-1222 based SSD.

 

Hrm I have 2 SF based drives, haven't had an issue. Maybe just bad luck? Does it have the same issue on other laptops?

 

Guess I should go with Intel and Samsung SSD, when I decide to get a SSD.

 

do any of you get hang ups when there is heavy read and write?

 

Beats the heck out of me. Don't have the free time to beta test other computers with it.
I read enough complaints of this exact issue on other forums, Newegg, Amazon, etc to decide it wasn't worth the effort.

 

Just got my T420 the other week, haven't really used it much yet still using the trusty T61 till it sells on ebay. But I was originally planning on upgrading to an ssd but it's so hard to know which one to pick that I may just get a nice 7200rpm drive till prices drop more and some clear leaders emerge.

 

Intel SSD seem to be one of the most stable of the lot. Although they are slower and more expensive than the competition, I haven't heard any major issue about their SSD.

 

For what its worth, my Kingston V+ 128GB SSDNow works great. Its got the lowest idle power consumption, but goes high when writing, out of any SSD on the market. I installed it and have had zero problems in my T420.

I was going to buy an Intel SSD, which is the best way to go, but the deal on this one was too good to pass up.

 

IME, they're only significantly slower in synthetic benchmarks.

SandForce controllers use compression and de-duplication to reduce writes -- the side effect of this is that they perform marvelously in synthetic benchmarks where they're writing easily-compressed zeros or somesuch. When you compare their performance to Intel's drives on datasets that aren't easily compressed, you'll find that Intel is quite competitive indeed.

The X25-M is no longer the leader of the pack, as it has capped sequential speeds -- but the 320 (which is based on the same controller) does not, and it holds its own against many of the "performance" drives. This is quite impressive, since the controller is basically the same silicon as it was in the X25 series!

I'm heavily biased against SandForce as I had two SF-1200-based drives die in a very short period of time, and I'm a fan of Intel's SSDs since I've had two of them in service for quite some time. The oldest of the two X25s that I have was purchased as soon as they were released, and has been in what must be a half-dozen laptops at this point -- all with no problems whatsoever.

 

but... but... synthetic benchmarks are so important!

one of my 160GB X25-M G2 drives started acting weird after 6 months of use in my thinkstation.   it made it to 1.7 TB worth of writes and developed a bad block.   no data was lost though.   secure erasing it with the intel SSD toolbox brought it back to life but i decided to send it in for warranty anyway.

because i could still read my data (which was backed up elsewhere anyway), i have no problem placing intel's drives in the 'reliable' category.   i'll be buying more of them... that's for sure.