Z series pausing sometimes for extended periods of time

Hi all,

My Z-series seems to occasionally freeze once in a while. I'm trying to figure out if this is due to lack of TRIM/GC and if I should reinstall Windows, or if this is something that I can resolve otherwise.

I have the 4x64GB SSD model in RAID0. OS was installed about 7 months ago. Indexing is on (need it for Outlook). No other optimizations done to Windows 7 (I didn't turn off any other services, etc.). 8GB of RAM.

Any help welcome... thanks very much!

-pN

 

For how long? A couple of hours or a couple of seconds. If it's seconds then it's part of the charm of a Z. Like a British car leaking oil. You'll grow to love it.

 

Couple of seconds. It only sort of started recently, though. Do I assume it's TRIM-related and the only way is to break the RAID, rebuild and re-install?

 

Not going to help. I've reinstalled et al a couple of times and I've never noticed a difference. Also, there is no TRIM with a RAID config on the Z unless it's something new.

 

I started a thread about this a while ago. Mine does exactly the same - 'pauses' for a few seconds, then just carries on going. I notice it mostly halfway through webpages being loaded. In annoys me a bit, and I don't think there's a solution.

 

Happens to me too, started after a few months of use. No solution that I can find. Only happens about once a week as of now.

 

Does this happen in stamina mode?

 

No, speed or stamina. It doesn't matter which one is on.

 

I've had this happen in stamina mode, where the mouse pointer and the entire laptop just freezes for a second and then resumes. Other then that it works fine and is crazy fast as ever.

 

Really odd, that has never happened to me. It did happen with my old VGN-Z, maybe 8 months after purchase but I assumed it was maybe spyware, or something bogging it down. I never got a chance to reformat and reinstall the OS though.

 

Interesting. I'm running kubuntu linux 10.10 and am experiencing this after a resume. I thought this was some sort of odd kernel bug but hearing this happens on windows too is very interesting. I have noticed this is considerably more frequent (exclusively?) an issue when there is a usb device (keyboard/mouse) present. I believe that this problem only exists after a suspend/resume cycle for me. (vpcz133gx/b)

 

I can concur that, at least for me, it also seemed to be a USB issue. A couple of times, my wireless mouse would begin to stutter (sub-second pauses, but enough to be noticeable). Unplugging/plugging-in the wireless receiver made the mouse smooth again.

I discovered it was the mouse because the trackpad was still smooth when the mouse was stuttering. I don't know if it was after hibernate and/or sleep, but it's possible. I saw the stuttering issue very rarely (maybe once every 2-3 months), and I probably sleep/hibernate my laptop with about the same frequency.

-Peter

 

I am also getting this stutter after recently acquiring a new Z1390 CTO. I agree that this may be a usb issue as I use a MS usb wireless mouse, but then again, it could be anything. I've read somewhere that someone had mentioned this is the nature of having ssd but I really don't agree as I also own a MBP with an ssd HD and I don't get any stuttering at all.

When I first received the unit, there was no stuttering at all until I decided to reinstall by using the recovery discs. I did the usual erase, deleted the raid, create a new raid, installed everything to a factory state, then noticed the stuttering immediately. It may have been a coincidence though. I've only had the unit for a week.

mokeiko

 

I don't have this problem. Or at least not yet!!
For those of you that see this problem, please have the Windows Task Manager on the screen or at least active in the background showing the Performance/CPU Usage/graphs. When it stutters, can you tell me is it when it's at 100% CPU Usage or doing nothing?? Thanks

 

Same situation here, VPCZ116 after about 8 months of use
2~5 times a week 1 or 2 second pause!

 

I wonder if its the SSD's garbage collection, does anyone know what type it uses? Or is this to infrequent to be an SSD stuttering issue?

 

if you get one pause per day of 1.5 seconds over a 3 year life of the product that's 27 minutes of total pauses. I believe we've already lost this battle by spending more than 27 minutes trying to resolve it

 

Depends what you're doing i guess. I dont think it's the SSD's garbage collection(which is a proprietary Samsung one we assume) because i get this small pause too, but I'm not accessing the disk, just regular surfing etc.

I think i remember reading it was possibly an intel IGP driver issue? I'm not even sure it was related to this so ignore me...

However, the usb connected mice/keyboard issue sounds probable... i remember there was a discussion about usb suspend/etc or something like that.

 

"Just regular surfing" is one of the hardest tasks you can subject an SSD to. The reason is that every element you request gets indexed in a database, which causes a barrage of tiny random writes. This is the weak point of SSDs, and a major cause of write amplification stutters.
There are ways to reduce this problem for some browsers (google "firefox ssd writes"), but not get completely around it, unless you forgo major functionality of the browser (persistent cookies, history, cache) or switch to a medium that doesn't have the random-write weakness of SSDs.

 

I had this on a Vaio Z without a HDD not SSD, so it's not the SSD (assuming its the same problem). I only seem to get it on Stamina (not Speed) mode, so it might (for me) be an intel graphics driver problem.

 

Ahh, then i stand corrected. However, i do notice that the random freezes aren't freeze and resume, but rather freeze and jump forward. This could point to a graphics issue possibly? Would a stutter of the SSD cause the entire screen to freeze? i guess if someone had resource manager running while they experienced the freeze could possibly analyze the I/O's on the disk...

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/481033-vaio-z-random-freezes-stutters-2.html

Answer is in above link posted by myself, it is one of the windows updates that triggers it, I reinstalled mine to see if it still does it, it didn't for quite a while until I updated a last batch of updates. Don't know which one triggered it but it is bloody annoying.