New SSD, defective?

[Ceiyne]

I just got a new Intel X25-M 120GB SSD to throw into the PC I built for FFXIV, to be my boot/FFXIV drive. Everything seemed to be fine... benchmarks showed I was getting the expected performance and when running around cities the "hard drive lag" was gone.

But alas all good things must pass. I started getting big freezes when going into menus... not all menus, and not all the time, but frequent enough to be very noticeable. It would hang for 30-60 seconds or more before displaying the prompts. I ran more tests, including all of Intel's SSD tests in their "toolbox", and everything came back fine.

I also tried FFXI and I had similar experiences with random hangs for 30-60 seconds.

Does anyone have any suggestions, or does this just sound like a defective drive?

When I installed the SSD I used Intel's drive copy software to move my entire OS over, and I enabled AHCI by editing the registry, in case that makes a difference. I may try a fresh install to see if that changes anything.

OS: Windows 7
Mobo: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R, rev 2.0, latest bios (beta)
CPU: Intel I7-970
Video: EVGA GTX 480
RAM: 6GB
SSD installed to Intel SATA port with AHCI enabled in BIOS and Windows 7

[jmc]

General rule of thumb, if your going to create a new boot drive.... do a fresh install of the OS.

I know (like you said) its possible to run windows after copying boot files to the new hard drive. I just have never heard anything positive about it when gaming

[winterwinter]

that's true for sure.

[Ceiyne]

Well, I'm gonna try the fresh install route this morning, see how it goes. If I still have the freezes, I guess I'll assume it's defective and RMA it.

[CoronA1979]

If you are going to do a clean install you should probably use something like HDDERASE to restore the drive to factory configuration. If you don't you will basically be degrading the drive even further by just deleting what's on it and reinstalling windows.

However, yes rule of thumb is do a clean install w/ AHCI already set.

[Ceiyne]

I did the fresh install of Windows 7 yesterday, with AHCI set ahead of time. I didn't use any special utility to erase the hard drive, but I killed the partition and re-created it so I think I accomplished the same goal. I've been running for about 24 hours without any problems whatsoever. Lesson learned, never do the drive copy of Windows.

[jmc]

I did the fresh install of Windows 7 yesterday, with AHCI set ahead of time. I didn't use any special utility to erase the hard drive, but I killed the partition and re-created it so I think I accomplished the same goal. I've been running for about 24 hours without any problems whatsoever. Lesson learned, never do the drive copy of Windows.

Glad everything worked out for you.

Enjoy the ssd