Event ID 129 and HDD short freeze driving me nuts

Alright, i have waited for months before opening a new topic as i have tried every possible solution i could find on google and tech forums, nothing worked. I have been having this issue since i bought the laptop, initially i didn't consider it much, but since it makes some of my games to hang up i can't ignore it anymore.

Basically whenever i play some games such as Assassin Creed Black Flag IV, GTA San Andreas, GTA Online (only online has ever done this to me, single player works fine for what i know) and Payday 2 my HDD decides to act up and hang up for 30 seconds or more, i can see it disappearing from the task manager and then coming back once the error is gone.
Event Viewer gives me this warning: Event ID 129, iaStorA “Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0"

What i have tried so far:

- Uninstalled Intel Rapid Storage application and let windows use its driver, hangs continued.
- Ran sfc /scannow and chkdsk, nothing had to be fixed for the second.
- Installed a more recent version of the ACHI driver
- Disabled Intel Link Power Management
- Disabled HIPM+DIPM power management settings for the hard drive and set it to Active
- Set the drive to not turn off into power management settings

There are some games that i have played alot during last months that never gave me this issue, Rainbow Six Siege and Saints Row IV are two of them. GTA IV, PUBG, GRID Autosport, ETS2, Warframe and ATS run fine too.
I also thought it could've been the antivirus but i doubt so because the error only happens in some workloads (aka when i play some games) and also when i had windows defender i faced this issue.

This is what CrystalDisk has to say about my HDD



The hard disk temps are fine, i also ran HDTune to see if it would any error but it did not.

My SSD works just fine, it's just the HDD acting weird for some reason. I do not get this type of hangup when i render my sony vegas projects to the HDD or when i use files that are on the hard disk. Everything works fine except when i play some games hence why i think it's not hardware related and it may be something i have missed/windows is ****ing up.
I would like to avoid a format, multiple people didn't solve it even with a clean install so i don't know...i would appreciate your feedback.


PS: Could anyone tell me how to install the ACHI controller driver manually? I want to remove that bloated Intel Rapid Storage to see if it's causing issues (i have disabled it but who knows..).
I also forgot to mention this https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com...i-reset-to-device-deviceraidport0-was-issued/ , i have done what was suggested here but now i suspect that MSI Dragon Center might interfer when i change settings to the balanced profile and use the Comfort mode at same time. I will try to leave the option "Power Options" in MSI Dragon Center SHift mode and report back.

 

I forgot to say that i've reverted the intel rapid storage driver to the one suggested by MSI so it's 14.7.0.1000 and it still happens

 

Whom is the maker of the HDD and Model and how old is it? What are your controller settings is it set to RAID or ACHI? What is the UEFI version? You need to provide more info here for anyone to start to know where to look. I never liked 3rd software to diagnosis problem when no one can figure where to start here.

 

The model is right there on the picture i have posted above, it's an Hitachi drive, widely used in MSI laptops from what i have seen, i got the laptop exactly one year ago so it's only 1 year old.
It's set in ACHI and this is the BIOS info. I have already updated my BIOS if that's you're going to suggest, and the issue is still there.



The only reason i went on 3rd software to check if the drive had any damaged sector is because it was my last shot. I have ran chkdsk twice and sfc /scannow so many times that i got tired of it.

 

Do you mind sharing which SSD you're using?

 

it's a toshiba THNSNJ128G8NY

Spoiler

 

Check for newer FW update for that Toshiba drive at MSI or Dell.
Try this driver only version of IRST, https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...loadmirror.intel.com/26865/eng/f6flpy-x64.zip
Disable Hybrid shutdown as well.

 

MSI support website hasn't firmware updates for the drives. What's the hybrid shutdown? Some setting in windows?
I have already disabled their crappy fast startup.
Btw the games that give me issues are on the HDD, SSD runs fine.

About the driver i've read on some other forum that it's suggested to stick with the branch supported by the manufacturer, in my case the 14.x, do you know if it's possible to find the drivers only version of that or extract it somehow?

 

I feel MSI updated IRST ROM, GOP driver, MEI FW, microcodes etc, so IRST 15.x will be supported.

 

I will try the 15.x branch again then.

 

If you install the Intel Chipset Drivers with the -overall command, it will overwrite the IRST Driver and reinstall the AHCI driver

 

It never happened to me. I don't think skylake IRST driver is included.
Even on my pentium machine it didn't install anything.
I did have a intel 3 series board that needed AHCI/IDE intelide.inf or something.

 

If one installed the IRST driver on his machine even though he's not in RAID mode, if you then install an updated Intel Chipset Driver via the -overall command, it overwrites the IRST Driver and reinstalls the latest AHCI Driver.

 

Never happened to me when I used 10.1.1.42 couple of months ago with overall cmd line switch.

 

I have been asked to disable Intel Link Power Management which i already have done in past, the issue comes back but i think it may be some windows task causing this..

 

scratch this, it's still happening and noany task was going on, i was just playing rainbow six siege. Any help? I have updated the IRST driver to 15.9.0.1015.
Ah, this time the game didn't freeze, probably it was short.

@Phoenix that procedure doesn't work for me, could you explain it again?

Also, is it possible to get the INF version of these SATA Controller drivers? I would like to stick with MSI version but there is always the software in bundle..

 

Well i know i'm kinda alone here but i have been trying to fix it still, the other day i had another event 129 but no game freeze (it was Rainbow Six Siege again, apparently this game doesn't freeze like others do), i only lost the audio for some time which is a pain in the ass.
I have disabled Fast Boot in BIOS now, i'm not sure if it's of any help but i will try anything before going for a format which i'm already planning to do soon.