Resolved SSD troubles MBP 2011

bb426 · Aug 15, 2011

Kingston's HyperX 120 GB SSD looked pretty mouthwatering to me so I had to try it...

UPS delivered it at 9 this morning along with an Optibay and I started working on it as soon as I got it out of the box. I didn't have a stupid torx screwdriver so I have to wait tomorrow to take the Superdrive out...

Anyways, SSD installed. Lion installed (slowly for some reason).

Now I boot up and all I'm getting are random hangs and freezes pretty frequently, and they last up to a minute (yikes, it's really annoying!). I'm guessing this is what it was doing while installing Lion...

Spinning beach balls galore whenever I see it's indexing. Even while typing things I'm getting it. I watch Activity Monitor and notice that while it's hanging, there's no read/write activity (which is typically what to expect). When I try to install Xcode it is literally unusable for a good 20 minutes till it's done.

I've done all the goodie optimizations for SSDs (turn on TRIM, get rid of hibernate, disable SMS, turn off spin down HDD, etc), no love. I was so frustrated this morning, you should see my email to Kingston.

Although to troubleshoot (and make sure it's not the SDD), I installed Windows 7 through Bootcamp. IT'S BLAZING FAST, just a crazy change over what I was experiencing with OS X! No problems at all, no hangs whatsoever. So I guess I point the finger at Lion for now? Or maybe a much needed firmware update from Kingston?

I've emailed Kingston this morning but haven't gotten anything back yet, and nobody wants to respond to me on the Apple forums (typical), and so I turn to Macrumors

Any discussion is much welcome

MacBook Pro 15" 2011 2.0 GHz, Lion and latest (two) updates.

Minhthien · Aug 15, 2011

bb426 said:
Kingston's HyperX 120 GB SSD looked pretty mouthwatering to me so I had to try it...

UPS delivered it at 9 this morning along with an Optibay and I started working on it as soon as I got it out of the box. I didn't have a stupid torx screwdriver so I have to wait tomorrow to take the Superdrive out...

Anyways, SSD installed. Lion installed (slowly for some reason).

Now I boot up and all I'm getting are random hangs and freezes pretty frequently, and they last up to a minute (yikes, it's really annoying!). I'm guessing this is what it was doing while installing Lion...

Spinning beach balls galore whenever I see it's indexing. Even while typing things I'm getting it. I watch Activity Monitor and notice that while it's hanging, there's no read/write activity (which is typically what to expect). When I try to install Xcode it is literally unusable for a good 20 minutes till it's done.

I've done all the goodie optimizations for SSDs (turn on TRIM, get rid of hibernate, disable SMS, turn off spin down HDD, etc), no love. I was so frustrated this morning, you should see my email to Kingston.

Although to troubleshoot (and make sure it's not the SDD), I installed Windows 7 through Bootcamp. IT'S BLAZING FAST, just a crazy change over what I was experiencing with OS X! No problems at all, no hangs whatsoever. So I guess I point the finger at Lion for now? Or maybe a much needed firmware update from Kingston?

I've emailed Kingston this morning but haven't gotten anything back yet, and nobody wants to respond to me on the Apple forums (typical), and so I turn to Macrumors Any discussion is much welcome

MacBook Pro 15" 2011 2.0 GHz, Lion and latest (two) updates.

I wouldn't blame 100% on lion! I got exactly same mbp but I installed Intel 320 120bg with FRESH lion installed and no beach ball! Kingston looks pretty good but its too new and havent heard much about it. Maybe kingston need a firmware update?

bb426 · Aug 15, 2011

Minhthien said:
I wouldn't blame 100% on lion! I got exactly same mbp but I installed Intel 320 120bg with FRESH lion installed and no beach ball! Kingston looks pretty good but its too new and havent heard much about it. Maybe kingston need a firmware update?

I hope you're right... Hopefully I will get some results once Kingston decides to respond to me, maybe with an unreleased firmware update or something. That happened with the Seagate MomentusXT drive I have right now (people were experiencing the same exact issues as I'm having with my SSD, and Seagate distributed the SD26 firmware to certain cases, but they haven't even officially released it yet).

And this IS a CLEAN install of Lion... I hate upgrading OS's ha, far too many resulting problems from my experiences! As I said Windows 7 works flawlessly with the SSD on my MBP, but not so much Lion. What I've noticed after using it for a few hours is that it gets to a point after so much data has been written/read, like say about a gigabyte total read and written, that the beach ball appears for about 30 seconds, then everything works fine until another gigabyte or so is read and/or written. It's weird but that's what I've gotten out of it so far.

Also since this is a Sandforce controller with this SSD, I've looked around and seen that TRIM isn't recommended to use in the OS... but it's not clear on whether or not that's true, because on Kingston's own site they state that it's compatible with TRIM. Enable or not?

Blue Sun · Aug 16, 2011

bb426 said:
I hope you're right... Hopefully I will get some results once Kingston decides to respond to me, maybe with an unreleased firmware update or something. That happened with the Seagate MomentusXT drive I have right now (people were experiencing the same exact issues as I'm having with my SSD, and Seagate distributed the SD26 firmware to certain cases, but they haven't even officially released it yet).

And this IS a CLEAN install of Lion... I hate upgrading OS's ha, far too many resulting problems from my experiences! As I said Windows 7 works flawlessly with the SSD on my MBP, but not so much Lion. What I've noticed after using it for a few hours is that it gets to a point after so much data has been written/read, like say about a gigabyte total read and written, that the beach ball appears for about 30 seconds, then everything works fine until another gigabyte or so is read and/or written. It's weird but that's what I've gotten out of it so far.

Also since this is a Sandforce controller with this SSD, I've looked around and seen that TRIM isn't recommended to use in the OS... but it's not clear on whether or not that's true, because on Kingston's own site they state that it's compatible with TRIM. Enable or not?

Turn TRIM off. Sandforce controlled SSD's have Garbage Collection, so TRIM isn't required.

It sounds as if you were having trouble at the install level. Maybe reinstall with another boot disk/USB key (i.e make another one). The USB boot method is the way to go IMO.

bb426 · Aug 16, 2011

I might just wait to see what Kingston says first...

Personally I don't think the problem could be limited to the install because I used the same install medium (8 GB USB ftw!) for my other hard drive and it works just fine. Also seeing that tons of other people are having the same problem, I don't think a faulty install is really the problem, especially since it was clean (although I am not ruling it out however).

It could be an issue with the MBP, maybe needs a firmware update. Maybe an issue with Lion, needs an update to fix the issues with SSD's. Maybe the SSD needs a firmware update (my mind is leaning towards this as the solution). If Kingston doesn't do anything (or blames Apple), I know for sure who I'm calling next! :apple:

The only thing I'm worried about is what to tell them on the phone. I have Applecare and I don't want to void it just for adding a hard drive. I didn't damage the inside, I've replaced HDD's hundreds of times, I know what I'm doing, it's not hard. I'm definitely not mentioning that I'm putting in the Optibay today though.

awer25 · Aug 16, 2011

You didn't void your warranty by swapping the hard drive, but Apple may just blame the SSD and be done.

Did you use the TRIM enabler? If so, that's your problem. Sandforce doesn't need TRIM and the enabler screws with the SSD causing lots of hangs.

bb426 · Aug 16, 2011

awer25 said:
You didn't void your warranty by swapping the hard drive, but Apple may just blame the SSD and be done.

Did you use the TRIM enabler? If so, that's your problem. Sandforce doesn't need TRIM and the enabler screws with the SSD causing lots of hangs.

Awesome to hear that it doesn't void it, and that's actually the least I expect them to say lol.

And no, I did not use the TRIM enabler because I didn't want to replace my extensions. Instead, I used a different method here:

http://digitaldj.net/2011/07/21/trim-enabler-for-lion/

However, the problems I'm having were happening before I enabled TRIM. I enabled TRIM because I figured it would help. I might disable it again seeing the posts above.

However, isn't the SSD based garbage collection more inefficient than TRIM? I know having TRIM on when there's GC is dumb. But why include GC when OS's are starting to adopt TRIM?

Kingston explicitly says here:

http://www.kingston.com/ukroot/ssd/hyperx.asp

"Supports S.M.A.R.T., TRIM and Garbage Collection"

awer25 · Aug 16, 2011

Definitely remove the TRIM enabler - even though you say the problems happened before, the enablers all cause issues with Sandforce drives (and the issues are exactly what you're having - random hangs and freezes). Remove it first, and see if it helps.

soundguy15 · Aug 16, 2011

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

Is the SSD SATA 3 or SATA 2? If it's SATA 3 it could be a problem with the SATA Controler on your 15" MBP. If so you could try shielding the SATA cable with some foil or buy the shielding kit from OWC.

bb426 · Aug 16, 2011

soundguy15 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

Is the SSD SATA 3 or SATA 2? If it's SATA 3 and you have a 15" MBP then it could be a problem with the SATA Controler. If so you could try shielding the SATA cable with some foil or buy the shielding kit from OWC.

I will remove the TRIM enabler and see what goes down. Thanks!

And it's SATA III for sure, but I heard that the the battery cable issues only affect the 17"... am I right?

soundguy15 · Aug 16, 2011

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

It's mainly the 17" but there are some cases with the 15" (although it's less common). But I just read the part that windows is working fine(I somehow missed that part) so I'm probably wrong.

bb426 · Aug 16, 2011

Yep, Windows 7 works no problem, and TRIM is enabled on the Windows side as well... I am disabling TRIM on OS X as we speak.

Update:

So after having disabled TRIM, I rebooted and Spotlight started its damn indexing again and I couldn't use my Mac because the mouse cursor wouldn't even move for a good 30 seconds. Things are seemingly freezing up more than normal.

soundguy15 · Aug 16, 2011

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

Read this: http://poller.se/2010/08/optimizing-mac-os-x-for-ssd-drives/

It gives some good tips to optimize your Mac for a SSD.

awer25 · Aug 16, 2011

bb426 said:
Yep, Windows 7 works no problem, and TRIM is enabled on the Windows side as well... I am disabling TRIM on OS X as we speak.

Update:

So after having disabled TRIM, I rebooted and Spotlight started its damn indexing again and I couldn't use my Mac because the mouse cursor wouldn't even move for a good 30 seconds. Things are seemingly freezing up more than normal.

Give the indexing time to finish - that will slow down the computer regardless.

bb426 · Aug 16, 2011

awer25 said:
Give the indexing time to finish - that will slow down the computer regardless.

Yah I know about the indexing, it doesn't really do much it just takes a few minutes then it's done. Thanks for the links and references.

I walked through support with an Apple advisor, and did everything, then reinstalled Lion. After reinstalling, I'm still seeing the same thing. He told me to take it to a Genius, so I suppose that's what I'm gonna do after Kingston finally emails me back.

What sucks is I got school in a week, and I still gotta put in the Optibay... I definitely don't want to do that before my Genius visit...

IMO, it's a software thing. It's either because Lion's still in .0 stage or it's something that Apple just hasn't addressed yet. Or it's Kingston's problem. But until I get more answers, I'm not taking my Mac to a Genius yet. I'm installing my Optibay

(then I'll remove it right before I take it in)

bb426 · Aug 16, 2011

10.7.1 was released today and I expected some more fixes than it had....

I reinstalled Lion too from the Recovery HD, no change in behavior.

So I'm still having the same problems, and Kingston still hasn't emailed me back. I'm currently on my newly installed Optibay with my previous hard drive... setup is nice! It works great. Had to screw around with the DVD frameworks to get the now external (internal) optical drive to work with DVD player.

Anyways, even while I'm on the other HDD, it is still giving me problems when I'm trying to read and write off of the SSD... it freezes up!

Although not nearly as bad, it still hangs up Lion on my HDD, especially while Time Machine is backing up the SSD (since the SSD takes hours to even transfer a gigabyte of data to my backup) from my HDD to my backup. So it seems to me that I might as well not even bother with time machine and my SSD.

So far my SSD experience has been a major bummer except for Windows 7 on it. I was not expecting a Microsoft win

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Journaling is enabled on the SSD? I've seen people bring that up, but I never really thought about it... I'm pretty much down to these facts:

It's not the SSD; it's either OS X, MBP firmware, or the SSD firmware
It isn't because TRIM is enabled/disabled
SSD optimization or no SSD optimization, neither helps the hangs
The same behavior occurs when being accessed from Lion on another HD

I'm getting down to the wire here. The more I test and stuff, the more I'm wearing down this SSD with all these writes and rewrites. What I might end up doing is just unmount the SSD and only use my HDD in the Optibay.

UPDATE:

I can confirm that disabling Journaling does nothing. Lol.

bb426 · Aug 17, 2011

So I finally get an email from Kingston and they say that they've received a lot of emails with the same problem that I'm having, and they said that it doesn't have to do with the hard drive, it's Lion. There are no firmware updates anytime soon.

They gladly asked if I wanted to exchange it (saying it probably wouldn't do anything for me), but I declined. No point.

Guess I will be waiting for Apple's magic fix, or a Genius visit. Though as soon as they get that screwdriver out I'm taking it back, don't want them to see that Optibay haha.

Sam2lucky13 · Aug 17, 2011

try installing lion from a usb drive over disc..made all the difference for me and ill my bugs are gone.

bb426 · Aug 17, 2011

I did that, I made a bootable USB with Lion on it and installed it. I also installed it from another hard drive with the Install OS X App, and then I also reinstalled it from the Recovery HD (per the advise of the Apple Advisor I called).

I'm hesitant to install anything anymore in fear of unnecessarily wearing down the SSD! It would be great if it WAS just a bad install or something, but after doing it three times with different sources and methods there's no way the install went bad each time... right?

bb426 · Aug 18, 2011

So today I took my MBP to a Genius.

As soon as he asked if it was a third party drive, he said he wouldn't bother looking at it, which is pretty much what I expected. He basically told me it was the hard drive. This is what he tells me:

"Third party hard drives, ESPECIALLY SATA III and SSD drives (third party) are always having problems. I've had a ton of people talk to me with the same issues you're having and I can't really do anything about it because we don't support them. All I can tell you to do is return it, or wait for an update from the manufacturer (Kingston. Who told me to take it to Apple because it's an Apple problem.) or Apple."

Then he goes on telling me how great the Apple SSD's are and how they "just work" because they're "made for the hardware. They're so fast." Pshhh I was about ready to tell him I'm not buying another Mac just to get an Apple SSD dude. But he was pretty chill otherwise.

I had to actually ask him to run a test on it to make sure that everything WAS working right (i.e. the Logic Board/RAM etc? Why would I bring it in and have you tell me that and not at least confirm the Mac works right?).

Then I asked him about the SATA III issues with the MBP 15" and 17" that everybody's talking about, such as there only being 3 gigabit speeds in the Optical Bay. He says that it's supposed to be only up to 3 gigabit speed in the Optical bay, and he said that all optical drives in MBP's shipping today only go up to 3 gigabit speeds even the 13". He seemed pretty certain about that even when I told him about people claiming dual 6 gigabit speeds.... so either people have modified something in their Mac or are lying about it, or there's a bug and it's only 3 gigabit.

So after all of this, I guess I will be waiting for a magical update from someone (Kingston or Apple... whoever comes first.) Until then, is there any way to possibly let someone from Apple know this? Other than a Genius of course because that does no good?

awer25 · Aug 18, 2011

bb426 said:
So today I took my MBP to a Genius.

As soon as he asked if it was a third party drive, he said he wouldn't bother looking at it, which is pretty much what I expected. He basically told me it was the hard drive. This is what he tells me:

"Third party hard drives, ESPECIALLY SATA III and SSD drives (third party) are always having problems. I've had a ton of people talk to me with the same issues you're having and I can't really do anything about it because we don't support them. All I can tell you to do is return it, or wait for an update from the manufacturer (Kingston. Who told me to take it to Apple because it's an Apple problem.) or Apple."

Then he goes on telling me how great the Apple SSD's are and how they "just work" because they're "made for the hardware. They're so fast." Pshhh I was about ready to tell him I'm not buying another Mac just to get an Apple SSD dude. But he was pretty chill otherwise.

I had to actually ask him to run a test on it to make sure that everything WAS working right (i.e. the Logic Board/RAM etc? Why would I bring it in and have you tell me that and not at least confirm the Mac works right?).

Then I asked him about the SATA III issues with the MBP 15" and 17" that everybody's talking about, such as there only being 3 gigabit speeds in the Optical Bay. He says that it's supposed to be only up to 3 gigabit speed in the Optical bay, and he said that all optical drives in MBP's shipping today only go up to 3 gigabit speeds even the 13". He seemed pretty certain about that even when I told him about people claiming dual 6 gigabit speeds.... so either people have modified something in their Mac or are lying about it, or there's a bug and it's only 3 gigabit.

So after all of this, I guess I will be waiting for a magical update from someone (Kingston or Apple... whoever comes first.) Until then, is there any way to possibly let someone from Apple know this? Other than a Genius of course because that does no good?

First, you have to wade through the market-speak. Apple SSDs are just rebranded Toshiba SSDs. They aren't anything special or "made for Apple". They are SATA2 drives, which are more mature and possibly less problematic than SATA3 drives. Pretty much any SATA2 drive would have the same reliability.

As for the optical bay, some 15" and 17" models came with 6g ports and some had 3g ports. Mine has 6g ports on both the HDD spot and the ODD spot - nothing was modified, it just came that way.

bb426 · Aug 18, 2011

awer25 said:
First, you have to wade through the market-speak. Apple SSDs are just rebranded Toshiba SSDs. They aren't anything special or "made for Apple". They are SATA2 drives, which are more mature and possibly less problematic than SATA3 drives. Pretty much any SATA2 drive would have the same reliability.

Definitely, I know about that. That's the only thing I hate about Apple... they praise the name they make for their components, yet underneath it all it's not worth the :apple:

they stick on it. I don't mean to diss Apple's quality, of course. I love :apple:

. I just don't like a lot of their methods and marketing.

awer25 said:
As for the optical bay, some 15" and 17" models came with 6g ports and some had 3g ports. Mine has 6g ports on both the HDD spot and the ODD spot - nothing was modified, it just came that way.

I didn't say I didn't believe that, I've seen it for myself (two of my friends, in fact, both ended up with 15" MBP's with dual 6 gigabit bays. Lucky a** bas*****. What're the chances?).

And that's another thing the guy said, and I understand, that SATA II drives certainly are more stable. It's just that now that SATA III is "SUPPORTED" by the hardware and that more hardware is becoming more prevalent, it's about time that we start moving forward with more support, I'd say.

awer25 · Aug 18, 2011

bb426 said:
And that's another thing the guy said, and I understand, that SATA II drives certainly are more stable. It's just that now that SATA III is "SUPPORTED" by the hardware and that more hardware is becoming more prevalent, it's about time that we start moving forward with more support, I'd say.

FWIW, I've been using a Vertex 3 since it was released in April and haven't had a single problem (as have many other people). Problem-free SATAIII SSDs do exist

bb426 · Aug 18, 2011

Oh trust me, I don't have a doubt that there are problem free SSD's

I wish I was you, really. This has really blown my whole week out of proportion trying to figure this out. I have school next week

I just want to know what the heck the problem is with the ones that don't work! Whether it is the SSD, the software, the firmware, or the computer. It doesn't help when both companies from both manufacturers blame each other.

bb426 · Aug 18, 2011

GUYS. I think I'm onto something.

I've been sitting here with console open, just watching it while I'm doing normal tasks and such. EVERY TIME my Mac freezes, I get this message in console after it unfreezes:

8/18/11 9:52:19.093 PM SystemUIServer: FCUserCanLogin [93] -- _FCMIGUserCanLogin failed with error 268451843.

Almost always followed by:

8/18/11 9:52:45.000 PM kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero

Right after it unfreezes, it displays that as well. Here's what came up most recently:

8/18/11 9:52:45.000 PM kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero
8/18/11 9:52:53.000 PM kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero
8/18/11 9:55:02.000 PM kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero

This is what's weird though, it's happening almost every minute in this time span:

8/18/11 9:49:19.096 PM SystemUIServer: FCUserCanLogin [93] -- _FCMIGUserCanLogin failed with error 268451843.
8/18/11 9:50:19.096 PM SystemUIServer: FCUserCanLogin [93] -- _FCMIGUserCanLogin failed with error 268451843.
8/18/11 9:51:03.000 PM kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero
8/18/11 9:51:19.095 PM SystemUIServer: FCUserCanLogin [93] -- _FCMIGUserCanLogin failed with error 268451843.
8/18/11 9:51:45.000 PM kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero
8/18/11 9:52:19.093 PM SystemUIServer: FCUserCanLogin [93] -- _FCMIGUserCanLogin failed with error 268451843.
8/18/11 9:52:45.000 PM kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero
8/18/11 9:52:45.000 PM kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero
8/18/11 9:52:53.000 PM kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero
8/18/11 9:55:02.000 PM kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero

IDEAS?? Whatever is happening here is what happens when it freezes. I feel closer to an answer.....

Resolved SSD troubles MBP 2011

macrumors 6502

macrumors 6502

macrumors 6502

macrumors 6502a

macrumors 6502

macrumors 65816

macrumors 6502

macrumors 65816

macrumors member

macrumors 6502

macrumors member

macrumors 6502

macrumors member

macrumors 65816

macrumors 6502

macrumors 6502

macrumors 6502

macrumors 6502

macrumors 6502

macrumors 6502

macrumors 65816

macrumors 6502

macrumors 65816

macrumors 6502

macrumors 6502

Our Staff