I think I finally figured out why my Samsung 840 (EVO) SSD locks into a frozen state (including enhanced instructions for fix)

[Proteus Cell]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1667364/ssd-frozen-state-fix.html

Thought I had figured it out before that it was RAID formatting or partitioning that was causing this but I started from scratch yet again and never once let RAID touch this drive.

Everything went well but was still having some unrelated issues with my copy of windows 7 I was installing with so I was going to redo it and wanted to secure erase the drive to make it like new again but to do so I had to boot to my old back up OS on my HD.

This last install I did completely in AHCI to get everything set up then switched it to IDE so I could run raid on my other sata channels ...still receiving good responsiveness and benchmarks however somewhat slower but my random reads took a dump according to Sam Magic ...my 4k reads on AS SSD.

So now when viewing the drive from my secondary operating system it shows as frozen and secure will go to 20% and then says to unplug the drive. So I unplugged it but left it that way for like 20min before plugging it back in and now it still only goes to 20%(wait a min before trying to run erase again) ...last time i had to do this twice to get it to erase. Was trying to determine this time if that is necessary again... but I think if you let the drive fully discharge it doesn't reset it? So I unplugged it again and ran erase again this time it paused at 20% but then went to 40% before telling me to disconnect it again ...which I did not do. Now running erase a second time it pauses at 40% and then completes the erase! Drive is now unfrozen and reset to factory defaults!

If anyone else is experience similar difficulties unfreezing their 840s there is hope... don't RMA it just yet!

Could this be caused when an OS installed drive is seen by an OS on a secondary drive? ...or could it be the result of switching modes between AHCI and IDE? ...only I don't think the drive will show as frozen if Sam Magic secure erase is run from the installed OS?(can anyone confirm this?) If I hadn't just performed the erase I would switch back over to see if it did display the same msg. *bangs head*

 

[Proteus Cell]

Ok... so fresh install. AHCI only on all drives. Haven't switched any drive modes at all.

Everything looks great. I boot from my secondary HDD OS and low and behold it says my SSD is frozen!!! I switch back to the SSD OS and that tag is no longer displayed ...and drive works flawlessly.

This whole frozen thing (at least in my case) seems to be perfectly normal operation that prevents formatting or partitioning your 840 SSD... (didn't try formatting/partitioning it while frozen so not sure if it is possible or not ...but it wouldn't make any kind of sense why they would do this otherwise)

One would think Samsung would have more information as to what causes this and exactly what "frozen" means... maybe after they get a ton of RMAs for drives that aren't really broken they will eventually tell us?

 

[TheSpiral01]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1667364/ssd-frozen-state-fix.html

Thought I had figured it out before that it was RAID formatting or partitioning that was causing this but I started from scratch yet again and never once let RAID touch this drive.

Everything went well but was still having some unrelated issues with my copy of windows 7 I was installing with so I was going to redo it and wanted to secure erase the drive to make it like new again but to do so I had to boot to my old back up OS on my HD.

This last install I did completely in AHCI to get everything set up then switched it to IDE so I could run raid on my other sata channels ...still receiving good responsiveness and benchmarks however somewhat slower but my random reads took a dump according to Sam Magic ...my 4k reads on AS SSD.

So now when viewing the drive from my secondary operating system it shows as frozen and secure will go to 20% and then says to unplug the drive. So I unplugged it but left it that way for like 20min before plugging it back in and now it still only goes to 20%(wait a min before trying to run erase again) ...last time i had to do this twice to get it to erase. Was trying to determine this time if that is necessary again... but I think if you let the drive fully discharge it doesn't reset it? So I unplugged it again and ran erase again this time it paused at 20% but then went to 40% before telling me to disconnect it again ...which I did not do. Now running erase a second time it pauses at 40% and then completes the erase! Drive is now unfrozen and reset to factory defaults!

If anyone else is experience similar difficulties unfreezing their 840s there is hope... don't RMA it just yet!

Could this be caused when an OS installed drive is seen by an OS on a secondary drive? ...or could it be the result of switching modes between AHCI and IDE? ...only I don't think the drive will show as frozen if Sam Magic secure erase is run from the installed OS?(can anyone confirm this?) If I hadn't just performed the erase I would switch back over to see if it did display the same msg. *bangs head*

Thank you so much for writing all of that information. Months later and it has helped me out. I'm new to SSD's and was wondering the steps to secure erase. I recently purchased the 840 EVO from Samsung and just weeks later decided to up grade my mother. Low and behold, I needed to erase the SSD in order to reinstall Windows 7x64 with the new mobo.

I followed your steps to the T, except, I went into windows administrative tools to delete the partition first, then I followed your steps. I had the exact same issue as you with windows saying "frozen" and when I unplugged the SSD, the erase program would stop at twenty%. I unplugged the SSD and re-plugged it with out waiting more time then it took to unplug it, wa-la, it went to 100% and now I'm ready for the new motherboard. Thanks again.

In addition, Samsung really needs to step up their game with these way to simple explanations, this technology is new and we, the end users, need more informed data so we know what is happening, why it's happening and a clear answer on what to do about it. Here's hoping they do this in the future.

Take care and happy PCing