My SSD Hard Disk freezes intermittently.

Same issue. I have a early 2008 macbook pro so I can’t turn off the power saving thingy. 

Sandisk 120GB with latest firmware (201). Problems started a few weeks after installing it and have been occuring ever since. 

I have exactly same symptom as lewrossi and BCinc and I also own MacBook Pro late 2008 model with Lion installed.

  • Here is my setting in detail
  • MacBook Pro 15" (late 2008)
  • SanDisk Extreme 120 GB with R201 Firmware 
  • 8GB RAM
  • Lion 10.7.4
  • Use Optibay for an old HDD as secondary HDD
  • Trim is ON by Trim Enabler

I also wiped out everything and removed “Recover HD” and installed Snow Leopard but it also shows occational freezes so it’s not OS issue.  

It worked greatly for 1st day, and fine with several reboots but it seems it gets worse (and symptom started) after hit “hibernate mode” (over 70 min sleep).  

Cleaning cache by Onyx, Recreating Spotlight Index, Safeboot, PRAM clear, and I tried so many tips and tricks but none worked.  

Does anyone have any clue how to avoid this freeze, or improve the performance of this SSD?  Do we have a new firmware soon?

Or, since we have 3 people with MacBook Pro 2008 models have this problem, does that something to do with Mac Hardware issue?

For those with issues on a 2008 Mac, there is a known issue of incompatibility with nVidia chipsets and Sandforce based drives. This may be the reason you are seeing this. You could try disabling sleep hard drive under power settings to see if this makes a difference - especially when you say these issues started for you after hibernation.

Thanks donka for your tip.  As of taking your advice, avoid using nVidia graphic card, my MacBook Pro late 2008 is back alive with lighting fast speed! :laughing:

This is what I did to avoid those “occasional freezes” and it does NOT even require clean install (sweet!)

  • Go to System Preferences > Energy Saver > Select “Better battery life” from the selection of [Graphics:] at the top.  This should be disabiling nVidia graphic card and using onboard GPU instead
  • Also, DO NOT Connect SECONDARY MONITOR!!  I was using mini-display port to connect Apple Cinema display as 2nd monitor.  It works ok a while, but eventually, this occasional freezes come back.  

With this settings, my MBP2008 boots within 4 gear spins and everything seems working great!  It’s been nealy 40 hours since the new settings, 4 reboots, 3 hibernations, my MBP still works great.

BTW, I still keep the setting of “Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible” to trigger hibernate.  Yes, it takes about 20-30 seconds to come back from deep sleep but occational sleep does not happen with this setting.

This may or may not work for other MacBook Pro late 2008 models, but it sure fixed my issue.  I’ll look more into those secondary monitor issue if that really causes occational freezes.

Extra:  Other settings I performed

  • Disable chache for Safari 

  • Spotlight only against Mail

  • Disable “noatime” 

  • Safeboot and Verify Disk (no error) 

  • PRAM Reset (it did not fix the problem before “Better Battery life” was set)

Cool. I also disabled the hibernation file which means going to sleep or waking up is instant as the system is not writing the 8GB file (size of RAM) each time.

donka, I don’t against that idea but it will cause losing data if my MBP runs out of battery completely (and I occationally do while using it outside for visiting my clients) :cry: 

I better stick with hibernation enabled but people who is connected with power cable 24/7, it’s good idea to disable it for faster wake up and not waste size of sleepimage file which is size of RAM you have on MBP  :smiley:

Yip, it all depends on how you use your MBP. With auto save you theoretically should not lose any work if you did run out of battery power but having the extra backup of the hibernation file offers more security and peace of mind.

Extreme 120 installed in my ASUS G73JH with Win 7, freeze intermittently especially running “Create AAC version” audio in Itune and VOIP dialling. It just freeze and hang my whole system without error or blue screen. Force start to resume my system, I’ve done all your advise in the forums but problem still persist.

@drlucky wrote:

for the ones still getting intermitent freezing. have you all tried disableing HIPM? below is a link that explains how.

 

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/177819-ahci-link-power-management-enable-hipm-dipm.html

Tried it, no luck :frowning:

is sandisk support even reading this?

Too bad there is no such setting or icon in my system preferences. I see have two sliders ‘computer sleep’ and ‘display sleep’, however no icons. 

Also, I wonder if disabling the nVidia doesn’t affect performances? I regularly use it for editing video so I need all the power I can get. 

Another thing is the SSD started making strange sisling noises, kinda like old hard drives did after a while. 

Thanks!

Hi Guys,

I’m getting the same issue here. The system worked fine for about a week and then just started stalling for a minute at a time, then runnng ok, then stalling again. 

System details are

Win 7

Sandisk extreme 240gb ssd with firmware R201

running in IDE (will check with AHCI when i get the chance)

Gigabyte P55-US3L (rev2.0) with latest firmware

AMD 6850 Graphics card (not Nvidia as people have suggested that might cause issues)

8GB ram

Trim is enabled, defrag is disabled.

Note that the system works flawlessly off a hard disk, it’s only when booted from the SSD that there is an issue.

Hi Guys,

I’ve just tried updating the Intel SATA drivers to the latest version. It’s only been up for 20 mins since doing it, but I haven’t had a stall yet so fingers crossed

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect?iid=dc_iduu

might be worth a go?

Ok, that’s a no, still stalling. Hopefully someone from Sandisk will respond to my case, either that or I’ll send it back.

@padders wrote:

Ok, that’s a no, still stalling. Hopefully someone from Sandisk will respond to my case, either that or I’ll send it back.

This is a user’s forum. While there are a couple SanDisk people that stop in occasionally, this is not an official tech support forum. If you want a personal response, I suggest you contact SanDisk directly:

http://www.sandisk.com/about-sandisk/contact-us?utm_source=ContactUs&utm_medium=Hyperlink&utm_campaign=HomePageTracking

Hi Tapeworm, Yeah I raised a case with them yesterday, that’s what I meant. Just thought I’d feed back on what I’d said in case anyone else had some input :slight_smile:

Think I might have sorted it… (and I’m a tad embarrassed too :flushed:). I had a nose inside to check some details for the case and I noticed the cable from the psu to the drive was obstructing a fan. In my haste to get the SSD up and running I’d not tidied the cables properly. Since clearing that up, things seem to have been ok, it’s been up for over 3 hours with no problems at all. I guess the hard disks can cope with a hotter temperature which is why they still worked. Certainly explains why the problems got worse over time when my pc was left on.

If people need to find out the temps of the hard drives then a good app is SpeedFan, my ssd is now running at a nice 27 degrees! 

Oh and i might add, i got a fairly swift response from Sandisk with loads of detailed questions which was a very good response so it’s definitely worth raising a case if you have issues :slight_smile:

I’m remiss in not responding sooner but disabling HIPM completely cured the problem with the Sandforce controller for me.  

It’s been a few weeks since I made the change and my SSD hasn’t frozen once since then.  Before it used to freeze with the drive light on solid for about a minute roughly once an hour.  Now life is sweet.

I’d recommend trying this first for anyone who has any issues with SSDs hanging, freezing or stuttering with a Sandforce 2281 controller.

Thanks DrLucky.

PS.  Note that I had tried everything prior to the HIPM cure including all updated BIOSes for the SSD, but nothing else worked.  Updated BIOSes were useless.

For now this seems to help. I carried out all the steps and no freezes till the moment.

Good luck

http://blog.alutam.com/2012/04/01/optimizing-macos-x-lion-for-ssd/

It seemed like it worked for a while, but the freezes are back…