Upgraded my Z1290X to dual 256GB Crucial C300, Strange reboot problem

I recently purchased two 256GB Crucial C300 drives and put them in my Z1290X, the install was easy and they worked flawlessly for a day.... The thing is that sometimes one of them is not detected when I restart the computer. If I keep restarting with Ctrl+Alt+Del after getting the "Operating System Not Found" message it will work after a couple more restarts. It has not happened when cold booting the computer. It happens in Speed Mode and in Stamina Mode with the ViDock plugged in. It is really strange. I never had this problem with the Toshiba drives. I am a bit concerned as this is my work machine, could this be a sign that one of the drives is about to fail? Or is it something else. I though it was random but it seems like maybe it is not. One important thing to not. I know it is not seeing on drive because when it doesn't boot it shows the Intel RAID screen with only one drive for a few seconds. Perhaps I should reset my BIOS back to the defaults? I am installing RST now, I didn't have it before, maybe that will tell me something. I need to reboot to try it, I am curious to see if a soft reboot causes it every time. Another thing to note is that I did a clean install yesterday and I must have rebooted 30 times, I didn't have a problem until earlier this evening.

 

did you check the SMART? also you might want to rule out one by one so, disconnect all of your addons such as vdock mouse keyboard all thing in USB just boot laptop alone then start putting everything one by one to check what is cause the problem. and go from there.

 

Similar/Same issue reported on Crucial forum here by a couple people.

EDIT: Also on NBR here.

 

So other people have the same problem... but there is no known solution. The Intel drives seem to be unavailable. I originally wanted two 160GB X18 and one 600GB X25... but where can I get them?

EDIT: looks like the X18s are back on sale at newegg

 

Is there an option for a pre-detect delay in the RAID controller?

 

Perhaps it would help to update the drive's firmwares first. Did you check the ribbon cable for proper fit?

 

I have 2xC300 in JBOD mode on my Z11. They working prefect about 1,5 months. Try to update a FW to 007 Ver. and chek the ribbon cable

 

The FW is 007, I'll open it back up and check the cable but I am pretty sure that is not the issue.

 

You have a faulty drive, I had the same issue with one of my C300's on my desktop. I had a RAID0 C300 setup as my Steam drive, when coming out of sleep sometimes, RST would tell me my array failed, and I always had the same drive missing. If I simply unplugged and replugged the power cable, it would come back to life. If i rebooted, it would remain in failed status. If I power down completely and turn it back on, everything worked just fine with no data corruption or anything missing. I ended up RMA'ing the faulty drive.

The C300's in my Z on the other hand, have been bullet proof. Havne't had the problem I had on my desktop C300's, which surprised me since my Z sleeps far more often than my desktop.

Under power management, have you tried telling your drives to never sleep and see if there's any improvement?

 

Great, I bought these second hand, I wonder if I'll be able to get a replacement.

Also I wonder how I can easily figure out which drive is the problem

I ran a full verify with RST and it took a while and reported no problems

 

Could you return the C300s and swap them for another set? It's a pain but better than losing a work machine.

 

our warranty is void since the only way we can get them in our Z is to crack open the cases

 

CC, do you have the opportunity to test the drives on another computer? Image them first, break up RAID and try them each one connected single with AHCI mode enabled. Please tell me the results. I am not sure the C300 really is the issue here, rather controller/driver stuff.

I am currently doing some *secret* RST hacking which tries to address this and other things. (To become public after finishing the testing phase, hope this weekend)

 

I use two Intel x-25s in RAID 0. I have that issue occasionally. Each time I would be logged in, the OS stops responding. It never BSODs. I suspect it's a controller issue.

 

Well I can put them back together, I don't know how they are going to tell that I opened them.

I still have the 2X Toshiba drives, so I can put those back in. Or I can just switch to ACHI mode. But what am I looking for?

I have the 1.8">2.5" converters. I could plug them into the Silicon Image PCI controller on my ancient PIII server.

I think the best experiment would be to just install only one in the Z in ACHI mode and install windows, see if it messes up... then try the other one the same way. That could take a while though and it would only prove which one is broken.

That sounds good, but I don't have an issue with RST do I? it is a warm reboot issue at the BIOS level. Cold boot hasn't failed me yet.

Just to be clear, I am not loosing a connection to either drive when the OS is running, I am having a warm reboot issue where it doesn't detect one drive some of the time.


EDIT: I disabled the Write cache in RST and I've rebooted several times since then with no issue. Maybe the cache is related to one of the drives not starting properly on a warm reboot? more like because of the cache it hasn't stopped properly? I am reaching here, I don't know much about how it works, I am a software guy.

 

Drive caching? Weird. I'm not sure this is supposed to be the solution.

In AHCI mode you can make sure ONLY the drive is broken or not. In RAID mode, we encounter a large chain of other possible issues which makes diagnosis harder. Running 1 SSD at a time makes it easy to identify which drive is the problem. Create an Image to speed up the process with the second drive. My estimate is both should be working ok.
Testing procedure:
Make a backup, break up raid. Unplug one SSD and set to AHCI mode. Install
Windoze and drivers, do your actual testing. Perhaps you can provocate the issue by using a bootable flashdrive for testing, so you dont need to install everything. Image to the other drive and test that one. IIRC, AHCI mode doesnt work for multiple drives connected, since it is activated on the HDD Z's only.

Actually this is a pretty similar apporach as described above. You just replace the controller. Its an alternative test to the above. I think at least it's worth a try if you got the drives taken out of the Z already.

RST plays a role both on BIOS level (until INT13h is taken over by the driver) and OS level.

 

Any luck with this? Agreed that SSDs are darned fast, but maybe the RAID controller is even faster.

 

Don't get what you mean with "pre-detect delay in the RAID controller".

 

I don't Know I'll have to look

It is not, I added a scheduled task to reboot the computer on startup, I left it running like that for a while and eventually it had a bad boot where one of the drives was not detected.

ACHI works fine for more than one drive, I had my OEM Toshiba drives set up this way for quite some time when I ran a dual boot of Win7 and an unmentionable OS that we are not allowed to discuss here.

Win7 was on one SSD and the other hush hush OS was on the other SSD. ACHI was a requirement for this other OS that I am not talking about.

The drives are in the Z but I can easily drop the factory array back in, I didn't reformat it.

 

Then it was the IDE setting that required a bunch of BIOS hack users to open up their Z's and disconnect the SSDs because their Z's crashed at the VAIO splash screen, right?

Side note: My avatar tells what I am thinking about hush hush OSes

 

Yea I never tried IDE mode but I did get it stuck and non bootable a couple of times in ACHI mode. Homers fruit ran really well on the Z FWIW.

 

Had a similar problem a while back and it turned out to be a bad drive. Had to RMA it. Contact Crucial and see what they say. Mine was new but I didn't have a receipt but they still replaced it with a refurbished drive. Works like a champ.

 

They didn't ask for a receipt or where I bought it from either. Just the serial number of the drive was enough. They'll make you go thru some BS trouble shooting, but just play along and call again the next day, you'll get an RMA.

 

Ok, that is good, now for the more painful process of trying to figure out which drive it is

 

I bet it's the Z.

 

why do you think that? I never had this problem with the Toshiba drives.

 

The Toshiba drives don't have a micron / sandforce controller that often cause issues with the series-5 chipsets under certain conditions.

 

Funny, the SC line just got a BIOS update recently to resolve this issue Though it doesn't have RAID SSD...

 

What controller do the Intel drives have? And where can I get them.

 

IIRC, the 2nd gen intel drives use a Intel controller <-- I might be really wrong here, but the newer Intel drive (510) and the M4/C400 by Crucial share the same Marvell controller

where to get drives: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...scription=1.8" ssd&name=Intel&Order=BESTMATCH

 

The 320/310 still use Intel controllers, but that's it. I don't remember much about future drives, however.

 

These drives seem to go in and out of stock on newegg pretty fast, I looked there twice yesterday and one time they were in stock then they were sold out, now they are back.

 

Quick question from someone in awe of this tech-tosterone . Is there any reason, other than the challenge, to go through all of this vs. buying a 512GB Z1 on eBay or Sony Outlet? Or are there other advantages I'm not aware of in adding the SSD capacity this way? I'm assuming the two 256GB SSDs had to cost around $1,000 which, if you sold your Z1290 before the "transplant" you could have scored a primo 512GB Signature for about a a grand on top of the resale value of your 1290, right?

 

I suppose you are right, but you are missing a couple of things. I bought my Z brand new with the intention of upgrading it later. I don't want to sell it and buy a used one that may have other issues. The aftermarket drives from Crucial and Intel are considerably faster than the Samsung or Toshiba drives that Sony puts in the Z. My WEI disk score went up from 6.4 to 6.9 when I replaced the Toshiba drives with the Crucial drives.

I have decided to return the Crucial drives and I've ordered two brand new Intel X18 160GB drives. They are a little smaller but they should be about the same speed and hopefully they won't have the issue that the Crucial drives do.

 

That's perfectly understandable; I figured it was either that or the diy-er in you. Btw, did you mean your WEI disk score went from 7.4 to 7.9, not 6? I hope so, because if your OEM SSDs were only scoring 6.4 and the Crucials were only scoring 6.9, you've got some other problem (mine are 7.4 and 7.6 with OEM 128GB and 384GB).

Good luck. Do report back.

 

Yes I meant 7.9
I am pretty psyched to see how the Intel drives perform. They should be pretty great, 320GB is not too shabby either. I plan to put a 600GB SSD in the ODD caddy whenever I can find one, the Intel drives are scarce.

 

I got my Intel X18s drives today, does anyone know where I can find that thread about using the X18 drives in the Z1, more specifically how to strip the casings off of them, there was a post about aftermarket drives a while back.

EDIT: I found the link with google http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/511578-how-replace-ssd-vaio-vpcz11-vpcz12-non-sony-ssd.html
but it still doesn't help with the stripping of the X18
if anyone has experience stripping the X18, please help

 

beaups is the only one i can remember off the top of my head that's done it. PM him if he doesn't catch the thread

 

^I just tore them apart with a small flat had screwdriver. I pried along the long edge of the casing.

 

Thanks guys
+rep for beaups

I didn't want to just go crazy with nearly $1K worth of drives, drives which besides being expensive are nearly impossible to buy.

 

So I got the Intel X18 drives removed from their casings and installed them in the Z1... holy crap they are fast. They seem faster than the Crucial C300 drives, probably the random reads/writes. Windows 7 Ultimate installed in less than 10 minutes. I accidentally hibernated the computer and it went down and came back up so fast that hibernation might be a viable option now.

I am quite pleased with the Intel drives, now if only I could find a place that has the 600GB X25 in stock...

Oh yea, and I have NOT had the strange reboot problem with the Intel drives, I am hoping that I don't see that problem, it was very annoying.

 

Why so hard to buy? All the HP 12" Elitebooks used them for several years. Have they discontinued them? Also, as I recall, they were about $300 for the 160GB drives, which ain't bad at less than$2/GB.

Awesome job CC! When you say "fast," can you be more specific with benchmarks - just so the rest of us can drool with envy? Also, once you got the X18 casings off, was there any trick to physically installing them or to Raid stripe them?

 

I got the last two X18 at NewEgg, they come back in stock for a day or less every so often. As for the 600GB X25 I have not seen it in stock for about 3 weeks. I check regularly.

Show me a link where there is a 600GB X25 that is actually in stock and I will be happy.

I did a quick benchmark with Crystal Disk Mark x64

Toshiba 64GB x2 RAID0


Intel 160GB x2 RAID0


The benchmarks are not super impressive... but it is the usage that really shines. Windows 7 Ultimate fully installed in 10 minutes from a USB stick. The entire clean install process took me only a couple of hours. This is with all updates and service packs and a bunch of big programs.
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate
SQL Server 2008 R2
Office 2010 Pro Plus

It just feels faster to use, I know that is subjective but how else can I explain it?
The C300s were pretty damn fast also, IIRC they bench better than dual Intel, but I don't care that much about benchmarks, I care about how it runs.

As far as installation, they fit nicely, no metal was touching anything and there is no room to move so I didn't tape anything. The C300s were a tighter fit, I really had to jam them in there.
Setting up RAID was cake, I just enabled the "Show RAID Options" in the BIOS and hig "Ctr+I" at the intel screen, then it is a simple wizard to create the array. I chose a 128K stripe because that is the way it was with the Toshiba drives, but I am interested in knowing more about what the best stripe size is. I remember using 64K many years ago with a HDD based RAID0 in a desktop.

 

Nice work. I've always been blown away by the CrystalDM results others report, with random reads in the 600s and writes near 400. I know my Samsung 128X3 are extremely fast and I can't really imagine faster software load, boot up or installation times making much of a difference. I can spare a few extra nanoseconds in my life. This said, I would really like to take a spin on Beaups' 900mb/s Z2.

 

I want a Z2, BUT I can't find one with the exact configuration that I want... Except @ conics for crazy money.

 

I wonder if Sony will bring the gold to the US after the current promotion expires.

 

I want:
Gold
1080P
WWAN
512GB SSD
8GB RAM

I don't know why that is unreasonable.

 

Unless I end up waiting for IB & Z22/3, that's what I want with LTE WWAN.

Doesn't seem unreasonable at all.

 

Going way OT, CC, how are you doing with the floods?

 

I didn't really notice much except that the roads are all covered with silt.

From what I hear from people and have seen on youtube... it is pretty bad.
A lot of bridges, homes, and roads were completely destroyed.

Where I live the water was a full twenty feet over normal.

Many sewage treatment plants flooded, the farms down river lost all their crops. I think six people died in the state, which is a pretty big number in VT, there are only half a million people in the whole state.