SSD slow to power on?

[Demo24]

I recently upgraded to a Crucial M4 128gb, and then went through firmware upgrade. Windows did seem to have a slight problem (corrupted files) when I updated to the latest firmware, 0009, however otherwise it seems to be working ok. Performance is a bit low as I cloned the drive.


Anyway it seems that sometimes (and i dont know if its more frequent on 0009 firmware or not) when I start the computer, the drive simply fails to show up. I often put the computer to sleep (although my mobo has always been incredibly slow about this) and with this SSD it frequently fails to boot back up properly. Forces me to reboot 2 times in order to delete restoration and continue. When I power on as it goes through post sometimes the drive simply doesn't show, but on a reboot it shows up again and I can boot into windows.


Any ideas on what is going on? Is it my drive or perhaps my mobo really should be RMA'd?


core i5 750
Gigabyte p55a-ud4p
4gb Kingston memory

 

[Termie]

I had some slow boot problems on both my system and another system I built up. I'd say the first culprit is the fact that you cloned the OS drive. I know it was easier, but it was costly in terms of performance, including boot up. The system on which I did an in place upgrade has been wonky from the start, specifically in regard to boot times. It functions fine otherwise.

For my system, I think I tried a few tweaks to get my SSD to boot faster (Intel SSD optimizer, which doesn't apply to you, and strangely, trying different VGA drivers, which might if you're on a Radeon).

Anyway, I don't think you'll be able to get all the bugs worked out unless you do a clean install, unfortunately. As for the sleep problems, it could be specific to your drive, although I haven't heard of that problem with the M4 specifically.

I seriously doubt it has anything to do with your motherboard (you are in AHCI mode, correct?).

 

[Demo24]

Thing is this isn't so much about the performance of the SSD, so much as it not showing up during POST. For example if the comp is off, when I power it on the SSD simply doesn't appear in the post dialogue, when I reboot it because it can't find an OS drive, the SSD then reappears in the POST lines and the comp works normally. Thus this appears to be happening when I am waking it from sleep.

 

[Termie]

Thing is this isn't so much about the performance of the SSD, so much as it not showing up during POST. For example if the comp is off, when I power it on the SSD simply doesn't appear in the post dialogue, when I reboot it because it can't find an OS drive, the SSD then reappears in the POST lines and the comp works normally. Thus this appears to be happening when I am waking it from sleep.

I still think some of these problems are related to cloning. But as for sleep, a number of SSDs are known to have sleep problems. In fact, the OCZ drive I have was known to have that problem, and it just so happens I've disabled sleep on it since I don't need that for an HTPC, but it was something that I was concerned about initially.

You might want to get on the Crucial forums to check out what others are saying. As for the failure to be seen at POST, I wonder if it has something to do with the SATA port you plugged it into - almost seems like it's taking a while to pick up on the fact that you have an SSD. Try switching that around a bit (like using SATA 0 or SATA 1 for the SSD). I'm not convinced that the same problem as the failure to wake.

 

[Demo24]

This comp has always been incredibly slow to wake up from sleep. I built my mom a similar i5 system and it will wake up in less than 5 secs with a normal HDD. Mine can easily take 30-45 secs on a HDD. So I had 2 assumptions either my old samsung or my mobo. Now I believe it's just my mobo, and since it works fine all the other time I've never bothered to rma it.


I did move my SSD to another sata3 port, this one appears to be the master so perhaps this will help. I'll have to wait and see. Today it did decide to show up during post before I moved it.

 

[Termie]

This comp has always been incredibly slow to wake up from sleep. I built my mom a similar i5 system and it will wake up in less than 5 secs with a normal HDD. Mine can easily take 30-45 secs on a HDD. So I had 2 assumptions either my old samsung or my mobo. Now I believe it's just my mobo, and since it works fine all the other time I've never bothered to rma it.


I did move my SSD to another sata3 port, this one appears to be the master so perhaps this will help. I'll have to wait and see. Today it did decide to show up during post before I moved it.

It could also be a borked Windows installation. Sounds like you had the exact same problem with your HDD, which you cloned. It could certainly be the motherboard, but I guess I'd probably reinstall Windows before RMA'ing a motherboard - just my preference on which is more of a pain.

 

[Demo24]

Yeah, I if I have time this weekend I might succumb and do a fresh install.

However in googling I did find this thread which seems to be quite similar to my problems. I'm going to try this and see if it works for now. New install won't be installing any of these utilities!

http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php?topic=4234.0

 

[DaveElls]

I just picked up a m4-128 as well, I updated to 0009 straight away. I'm having a similar issue. I don't use sleep, however the drive has failed to POST quite a few times.

I'm not so sure if it's the drive or not. What motherboard do you have and which controller (if it has more than one) are you using?
I have a ga-p55a-ud3 with a marvell 9128 controller. I put the drive on the intel controller and let it POST several times and it worked every time.
I also updated the firmware of the 9128 controller and so far it has POST'd ~8 times without an issue.
I'll continue to test it a bit more, but I'm thinking it was the controller not the drive.

 

[DaveElls]

Demo if you're still checking this updating the controller firmware seems to have solved my problem with the drive not POSTing, it's possible the controller was failing during it's initialization. I'm guessing the same thing could happen coming out of sleep.
Although updating the firmware is sort of at your own risk. I unplugged all my sata drives when I did this just to be safe.

http://www.station-drivers.com/page/marvell.htm
I used the one dated 04/03/11. Although this did slow down my seq read speeds by ~10m/s

 

[Demo24]

I believe the ud4p runs the marvell 9128 as well. Thanks for the info I might give that a shot and see what happens. Lately I've just been shutting down and then powering it on, takes a bit longer but faster than trying to deal a failed resume, and it's been posting pretty consistently so far. However I do have to keep something running to prevent it from going to sleep.