gskill falcon freezes

[topherd]

I recently bought the gskill falcon 250gb. Im using it in a unibody macbook. It works great most of the time, but it does occasionaly freeze. I use my macbook for a few hours a day, and I get about one freeze per day. The freeze usually last about 2-4 minutes, the GUI is totally unrepsonive. It does unfreeze in about 4 minutes and things are back to normal.

I do not get any sleep/wake problems others on the web have reported.

I have firmware ver. 1370. Do you think i have a defective drive? Should I get an RMA?

Any suggestions???

[Tradesman]

Are the freezes totally random, or are you doing the same or similar things when they occur, i.e. downloading files or surfing the internet or possibly at a time when your virus program starts a scan or scheduled background tasks, etc

Also have you looked at the various tweaks available for SSDs, I realize GSkill doesn't really advocate tweaks, since they don't really have much effect on the synthetic benchmark programs they test with, but in real world, every day computing, they most certainly do make a difference.

[topherd]

Ok, here some more info... Because of the iffy performance Ive been worried about losing data. So I decided to backup everything on the gskill drive. While cloning my drive to an external harddrive, I notice the freezes more frequently. I checked the system logs and Im getting the following error:

kernel DISK I/O error


Does this mean I have a defective drive?

[topherd]

@tradesman- as far as i know the freezes are random. It freezing more frequently while i am currently backing up my data. Also, the tweaks you mention in your other post arent of any help as im using OSX and not vista/xp.

Do you think that I have a bad drive? I am getting DISK I/O errors in the system.log....

[Tradesman]

Good possibility, when your backing up your data is it from or to the SSD. Either would seriously degrade performance, if it's from the SSD, then it's non-stop reads (a fairly good performance hit) if your backing things up to the SSD, it's a very heavy hit, since write operations are the bain of SSDs. Also depending on the backup software or way of backing up, there's a good possibility of randow small writes to the SSD in the course of the backup (temp files, etc) Might try running the backups at a time you aren't physically computing (i.e. at dinner/sleeping or something. Same might be good for Virus scans (if you even need them)....
I'm not up on OSX....for a number of years I was doing Windows, NT, OS2, MAC, Unix and Netware, it got to be to much, now I just stick with the various flavors of Windows and a little Unix (which I'm phasing out also)

[Tradesman]

Almost forgot, if I remember right, the OCZ forums have some tweaks for OSX

[GSKILL TECH]

We are going to send or bring this item to Apple. We are not sure there is any problem with OSX at this point. We should have result very soon. and we will also ask them if there is any tweak they can recommend us. thank you

[Tradesman]

Do the freezes ever occur when you are running but one application? It may simply be the same problems that they had before with the drives running the jmicron controller(s), multi-tasking is/was a big problem. After the original MLC models had these problems, they released the Titan series which was suppose to eliminate the stuttering, etc, but which would still bog down and/or freeze when multi-tasking.

Disk I/O errors are disturbing, have you considered reformatting or RMA?

There have been problems identified with OS X and GSkill SSDs, in reviews at NewEgg and recently here where GSkill has said they would get with the OS X folks, but I've never seen any updates with the results of these talks.

Probably a stupid suggestion, but have you checked any of the OS X/unibody forums?

I'm toying with the idea of getting a Falcon, but after bad experiences with the initial MLC drives and then the Titans, I've pretty much been sticking with OCZ SSDs for builds, out of 6 drives only had a problem with one, a 60GB Apex (stuttering, was a bad drive, worked with for 2 days) and was well taken care of with an upgrade to a 120GB (flawless and smokin')

If I think or find anything of help, I'll post soonest

[G.SKILL]

Ok, here some more info... Because of the iffy performance Ive been worried about losing data. So I decided to backup everything on the gskill drive. While cloning my drive to an external harddrive, I notice the freezes more frequently. I checked the system logs and Im getting the following error:

kernel DISK I/O error


Does this mean I have a defective drive?

we've asked apple store to test our Falcon on unibody MACBOOK/ MACBOOK PRO and they said there is no such issue
so, possibly, it should be an individual case
you could send back to us or your local reseller for another replacement

and as for the sleep issue, apple technician said it should be memory incompatible issue, not SSD
once they change to some brands memory, the sleep issue seemed solved
thanks


G.S

[topherd]

hi gskill, thanks... based on what ive heard from other people I think i do have a defective drive and would like to get it exchanged. if I do the exchange with you, what is the usual turnaround time to get the replacement? Im in the US, does the exchange happen with your US address or do i ship to and receive the replacement from Taiwan?

BTW, thanks for being so responsive....

[GSKILL TECH]

turnaround time is about 5 to 7 business days. all you need to do is go to our website and download the rma request form. you fill out the form and email back to rma@gskill.com . once we receive it, we will issue you a rma number and you can mail it back to our USA RMA and support center.

[topherd]

for anyone interested, the firmware update fixed my freezing problem.

[G.SKILL]

thanks for your sharing


G.S

[John566]

Which firmare fixed your problem? I just RMA'd a Falcon 128 that would cause lockups on my new 13" MacBook Pro. I'd get about 2 a day where the computer would freeze but the cursor would still move. Even if left for hours it never seemed to work again without forcing a shutdown. I tried updating to the just released firmware but neither of my 2 Vista64 PCs with SATA would work the updater - device manager saw it just fine. G.Skill support said to RMA it. I'm anxious to see if the new one has this problem.

[microking4u]

I thought I read somewhere that Apple was limiting their SATA II ports to SATA I operation on certain models. Not sure if this is the case with your model, but this could possibly be the issue. I have a similar problem on a Lenovo T61P and it is doing the same thing with random lockups.
I wish there was a way for the firmware to negotiate Sata speed and work accordingly. GSkill can you make a request to the Indilinx controller company to put this into the next firmware revision?

Thanks!