System hard freezes followed by not recognizing SSD (boot) drive

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CodeNameSly

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Dec 9, 2008
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I've had an recurrent issue recently (as described in title). Basically, the system will become completely unresponsive (no ability to interact with it at all), but not necessarily frozen. For example, I might be running a game off the SSD which will freeze but the music I have playing off my HDD will keep playing just fine. However I can't CTRL + ALT + DEL or CTRL + SHIFT + ESC to kill any processes. I have to hard reboot/power cycle from the case. On startup, the SSD may not be recognized. So far I've been lucky enough to power cycle and have it come back up as an option after a couple tries, but I'm worried this may not always happen.

So:
1) Is there anything I can do to stop this behavior?
2) If yes, would this just be a short-term solution to a SSD that is going to end up failing me in the medium-term?

The SSD is only a few months old. I've already replaced it once due to this issue, so am wondering if these drives are just bad, don't play well with my other components, or if I might have set things up incorrectly.

My specs are:

Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 LGA 1155
CPU: Intel Core I5-3570K
Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 2 x 4GB
SSD: Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe 240 GB
HDD: Western Digital Black 1TB 7200RPM

Any help would be very much appreciated. Please let me know if there's any additional information I could provide.

EDIT: I should note that I am running the latest firmware from Mushkin already.
 
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Dereck47

Dereck47

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Jan 20, 2011
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1.) Make sure your motherboard is on its latest BIOS version 2.90.
2.) Your motherboard has 4 SATA 3 (6Gb/s) ports. Make sure that your SSD is connected to one of the 2 Intel 6Gb/s ports (SATA3_0 or SATA3_1) in AHCI mode, not the ASMedia 6Gb/s ports. See page 13 of your motherboard manual for the location of the ports.
3.) Install Intel’s latest AHCI drivers. https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=22271
 
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CodeNameSly

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Dec 9, 2008
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Thanks, Dereck47.



1.) Good call. It was not updated, but I've changed that.
2.) Double-checked, but it and my HDD are on SATA3_0 and SATA3_1. Should I move my HDD to one of the other ports?
3.) Done.

Hopefully that will help... time will tell.
 
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Dereck47

Dereck47

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Your HDD is ok where it is.

A lot of times when you update your BIOS firmware, your BIOS settings revert to their default settings. So since you've just updated your BIOS double-check that your Intel 6Gb/s SATA ports are still in AHCI mode.
 
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CodeNameSly

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Yeah, the BIOS settings reverted, but both drives are still in AHCI mode.
 
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