Intermittent Disk Lock-Up on Alienware M17xR3

Question

Hi,I have a problem on my big Alienware laptop which seems to be related to the SSD, so I'm hoping someone here can help.Randomly, a couple of times a day on average, my hard disks just 'lock' for about a minute. The symptoms are: Disk activity light stays ull on for about a minute No disk access is possible during that time There may be an error in the system event log 'The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort0.' At the end of the lock-up the system may simply recover and continue without problems, or it may crash with a BSOD.This seems to be related to the SSD, as it started when I changed my primary drive to an SSD (the system was OK when on a traditional primary drive). However I have had the same problem with two different SSDs from two different sources, so it's not related to the specific disk or Corsair-specific.This is really annoying, as otherwise my system's very fast and reliable. It does seem to be triggered by two or more processes hitting the storage concurrently - it often happens when I'm doing something in a VM and on the host. On the other hand if I'm careful to execute big disk jobs such as compacting a VM with the system otherwise quiescent it's usually OK. Things I have already tried to improve matters include: Re-installing Windows from scratch Trying both Intel Rapid Storage Technology and Microsoft drivers Upgrading the firmware of both SSD and motherboard Setting the BIOS to RAID or AHCI None of these makes any difference, although the problem does seem to be a bit worse with the Intel RST drivers and bit better with the Microsoft drivers.Please can anyone think of anything else I can try or check?ThanksAndrew

andrewkjohnston · Answer

Hi,

I cross-posted the above from the Corsair forums. I've just realised it needs a bit more detail about my system in this context.

My laptop is an M17xR3 running Windows 7-64. It has 2 disks: a Corsair 240GB SSD, and a Maxstor XT 500GB. The problem started when I upgraded the standard primary disk to an SSD. I have performed the same upgrade on three other laptops without any problem, so the problem is specific to the Alienware platform.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Thanks

Andrew

Alienware-Karen · Answer

Hello andrewkjohnston, I suggest that you test the SSD, you can run a PSA test or in to windows you can try with HD tune.

andrewkjohnston · Answer

Hi Karen,

Thanks. I've just run an ePSA test - a basic test of the whole system, plus a thorough one hour test of the SSD. No problems reported.

This is in line with my suspicion that it's a software/firmware/config problem rather than a hardware fault on the SSD.

Anything else I can check/try?

Thanks

Andrew

Alienware-Karen · Answer

Were you able to run the HD tune tool? If you haven't run it and send me an screen shot with the benchmark result.

andrewkjohnston · Answer

You don't seem to have got the first screenshot. Here it is:

andrewkjohnston · Answer

Hi Karen,

Thanks. Sorry I haven't got back sooner but I was checking a suggestion from another forum about re-mounting the disk and I've been seeing if that works.

Here are the screenshots from HDTune, first the benchmark for the primary SSD. (The dip was where I switched to another app to close it):

The others are the info and health screens for the two disks. Apart from one unknown tag on the Maxstor disk this looks pretty healthy:

0361.disks.jpg

Any ideas?

Thanks

Andrew

Alienware-Karen · Answer

andrewkjohnston Send me a PM with your service tag, phone number, and the link to this thread, I will review your case.

21b · Answer

Your right the issue is with your

ssd it has know issues when used in the primary bay.

Remove it from the primary bay to the secondary bay. Basically your just swapping bays Go into bios and change it from raid to ahci

then go to boot order and move the 2nd hd to the top of the list restart and reinstall windows and the resources drivers and your set do not install the free fall sensor

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Intermittent Disk Lock-Up on Alienware M17xR3

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