Problematic SSD or problematic user

I bought a Crucial MX100 and used it as my primary drive in a homebuilt
PC, that at the time was Windows 7. During the upgrade between Win8 &
8.1, something went very wrong and drive became unusable and it would
not boot. I remove it from the PC and just now decided to give it
another go, however I've faced a number of issues, so maybe someone
could tell me if I should just throw it in the trash bucket.

The first thing I did was used Crucial's Executive Storage tool to
"sanitize" the drive as they call it. BTW, on evaluation, the drive
shows as healthy in their diags. In Win 10, I initialize and activate
the partition that I've created as a simple volume. Now I use EaseUS
Todo(paid version) cloning to clone the hard drive to SSD. I optimize
for SSD, but decline sector by sector backup because I have declined
Win10 AU.

For some, reason and software customer support hasn't explained why
their program created a 160GB, (yes, I said GB) recovery partition on my
512GB drive. I fix the settings in BIOS, to AHCI, ID the drive as Solid
State and change the Boot Priority after plugging the the drive into
SATA3, channel 0. Drive Boots and then after 10 mins or so freezes. I
also tried IDE for giggles, but got the same result. I also tried
plugging the drive into the SSATA port chan0 with the same result.

Drive is still useless. So, I try Macrium Reflect Free and I am able to
manage the partitions more effectively and the space more economically.
I use the same procedure in BIOS and my PC won't recognize the drive at
all and the message I get is "Reboot and select the proper boot device",
yada, yada yada.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get this drive to
work. Crucial forum recommended that I try a partitioning tool to fix
the huge recovery partition but made no suggestion as to the freezing. I
did that with the same result, no boot and if it does my PC freezes.

I think I refuse to reconfigure my PC for a drive. My WD 1TB Black works
just fine, but I did love the SSD when it was working. Am I wasting my
time or is there something else that's simple I could try? Thanks.

D.

On 11/11/2016 6:09 AM, DMP wrote:
I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get this drive to
work. Crucial forum recommended that I try a partitioning tool to fix
the huge recovery partition but made no suggestion as to the freezing. I
did that with the same result, no boot and if it does my PC freezes.

I think I refuse to reconfigure my PC for a drive. My WD 1TB Black works
just fine, but I did love the SSD when it was working. Am I wasting my
time or is there something else that's simple I could try? Thanks.

I had a similar problem with my Corsair Force 3 SSD from a couple of
years ago. It would intermittently freeze too. But the freezing wasn't
permanent, it would last for about 10 seconds, and then it would resume,
but it was annoying as hell as you couldn't do anything on the computer
while it was frozen. I went on the Corsair forums and found there were
other people experiencing the same problem, and that they had a
workaround and later a firmware upgrade that fixed it. The workaround
involved turning off a power-saving mode on the SSD implemented in the
Windows' driver properties. That fixed it completely.

See if you can work your way around the Crucial forum and see if others
are having sporadic freezing problems.

Yousuf Khan

On 11/11/2016 10:06 AM, Yousuf Khan wrote:


I had a similar problem with my Corsair Force 3 SSD from a couple of
years ago. It would intermittently freeze too. But the freezing wasn't
permanent, it would last for about 10 seconds, and then it would resume,
but it was annoying as hell as you couldn't do anything on the computer
while it was frozen. I went on the Corsair forums and found there were
other people experiencing the same problem, and that they had a
workaround and later a firmware upgrade that fixed it. The workaround
involved turning off a power-saving mode on the SSD implemented in the
Windows' driver properties. That fixed it completely.

See if you can work your way around the Crucial forum and see if others
are having sporadic freezing problems.

Yousuf Khan


I managed to get the SSD up and running using IDE instead of AHCI; I had
monitored to Crucial forums and this freezing was a problem for many
users. Some folks never got it fixed after reconfiguring everything
known to man including CMOS fix, updating chipset and motherboard
drivers, the whole ball of wax...but if this drive worked in Win7 for
me, it should work in 10.I have the updated firmware and there are no
other drivers for this model.

I've searched everywhere that I could think of to find how to turn power
saving mode off on the drive itself in properties, in device manager,
etc., but haven't been able to locate such a thing. If you could share
this info, I'd appreciate it. Google searches got me into dev kits and
registry edits. It seems that I'm getting there and perhaps the power
saving mode thing is the answer. Please advise. Thanks.

D.

On 11/11/2016 11:39 AM, DMP wrote:
I managed to get the SSD up and running using IDE instead of AHCI; I had
monitored to Crucial forums and this freezing was a problem for many
users. Some folks never got it fixed after reconfiguring everything
known to man including CMOS fix, updating chipset and motherboard
drivers, the whole ball of wax...but if this drive worked in Win7 for
me, it should work in 10.I have the updated firmware and there are no
other drivers for this model.

I think I tried IDE mode on my drive too at one point, and it worked.
But the reason it worked was because in IDE this particular power-saving
mode doesn't exist, so it never gets turned on, like it does on SATA
mode. SATA is basically the next generation of IDE. Obviously, when
running in IDE mode, the absolute speeds available would be limited as
the higher speed modes wouldn't be available to an earlier standard.

I've searched everywhere that I could think of to find how to turn power
saving mode off on the drive itself in properties, in device manager,
etc., but haven't been able to locate such a thing. If you could share
this info, I'd appreciate it. Google searches got me into dev kits and
registry edits. It seems that I'm getting there and perhaps the power
saving mode thing is the answer. Please advise. Thanks.

Yeah, there won't be any new drivers available as the SATA drivers are
just bog standard Microsoft-supplied drivers. No manufacturer provides
separate SATA drivers, as they are included with Windows already.

On the Corsair forum, they came up with this workaround solution, I
don't know if it will work on your Crucial drive. It was also something
that I did under Windows 7, so I don't know if it's relevant to Windows
10, so you take your chances.

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showpost...4&postcount=30

The solution involves setting a registry value first, which will unhide
a hidden advanced option under the Power Management Control Panel.
Here's the registry setting:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Power\PowerSettings\0012ee47-9041-4b5d-9b77-535fba8b1442\0b2d69d7-a2a1-449c-9680-f91c70521c60\Attributes"=dword:00000002

Then you go into Power Management and do this:

Powercfg.cpl now shows 'AHCI Link Power Management - HIPM/DIPM = Active'
(a setting that was previously not available).

Yousuf Khan

On 11/19/2016 11:34 AM, Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 11/11/2016 11:39 AM, DMP wrote:
I managed to get the SSD up and running using IDE instead of AHCI; I had
monitored to Crucial forums and this freezing was a problem for many
users. Some folks never got it fixed after reconfiguring everything
known to man including CMOS fix, updating chipset and motherboard
drivers, the whole ball of wax...but if this drive worked in Win7 for
me, it should work in 10.I have the updated firmware and there are no
other drivers for this model.

I think I tried IDE mode on my drive too at one point, and it worked.
But the reason it worked was because in IDE this particular power-saving
mode doesn't exist, so it never gets turned on, like it does on SATA
mode. SATA is basically the next generation of IDE. Obviously, when
running in IDE mode, the absolute speeds available would be limited as
the higher speed modes wouldn't be available to an earlier standard.

I've searched everywhere that I could think of to find how to turn power
saving mode off on the drive itself in properties, in device manager,
etc., but haven't been able to locate such a thing. If you could share
this info, I'd appreciate it. Google searches got me into dev kits and
registry edits. It seems that I'm getting there and perhaps the power
saving mode thing is the answer. Please advise. Thanks.

Yeah, there won't be any new drivers available as the SATA drivers are
just bog standard Microsoft-supplied drivers. No manufacturer provides
separate SATA drivers, as they are included with Windows already.

On the Corsair forum, they came up with this workaround solution, I
don't know if it will work on your Crucial drive. It was also something
that I did under Windows 7, so I don't know if it's relevant to Windows
10, so you take your chances.

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showpost...4&postcount=30

The solution involves setting a registry value first, which will unhide
a hidden advanced option under the Power Management Control Panel.
Here's the registry setting:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Power\PowerSettings\0012ee47-9041-4b5d-9b77-535fba8b1442\0b2d69d7-a2a1-449c-9680-f91c70521c60\Attributes"=dword:00000002


Then you go into Power Management and do this:

Powercfg.cpl now shows 'AHCI Link Power Management - HIPM/DIPM = Active'
(a setting that was previously not available).

Yousuf Khan

Thank you so much.....It would probably be wise to ask someone on the
Crucial site if this reg edit will work for me before applying it.

Appreciate the help.

On 11/19/2016 2:25 PM, DMP wrote:
Thank you so much.....It would probably be wise to ask someone on the
Crucial site if this reg edit will work for me before applying it.

Appreciate the help.

The regedit change won't make changes to the behaviour of the system, it
just unhides some options on a power management driver property page.

Yousuf Khan

On 11/22/2016 6:10 PM, Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 11/19/2016 2:25 PM, DMP wrote:
Thank you so much.....It would probably be wise to ask someone on the
Crucial site if this reg edit will work for me before applying it.

Appreciate the help.

The regedit change won't make changes to the behaviour of the system, it
just unhides some options on a power management driver property page.

Yousuf Khan

Thank you, again.