I had decided against a Sandforce-based SSD until I read AnandTech's article :

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5508/intel-ssd-520-review-cherryville-brings-reliability-to-sandforce

A pretty good all-round review, and what stood out for me were :
"...although Cherryville performs very similarly to other SF-2281 drives, it should be more reliable."
"The BSOD is Back, but Not on Intel"
"Switching to Cherryville caused Brian's BSODs to go away."
"Whatever Intel has done with the 520's firmware seems to have fixed problems that still remain in the general SF-2281 firmware."

So I went ahead and bought the 120GB Intel 520, and after a few teething troubles (see http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18382467) got everything working tickety-boo. And then on Day 8 (just after I could DSR the drive) I get the dreaded F4 BSOD, where the drive "disappears" after a restart and needs a cold-boot to be seen by the BIOS. Argh!

This was the first time I had left the system running overnight. I was FTP'ing vast amounts of data (not pr0n!), and the log showed incomplete files, so the crash happened before the FTP client finished, although I've no idea what sleep state the system was in. The files were being written to a non-OS drive, so the SSD boot drive could have been shut-down/suspended/etc.

I've googled "SSD F4 BSOD" which returns millions of results, but only a handful for Intel drives. I'm using the latest BIOS/firmware/IRST, so I'm somewhat surprised by this "vintage" problem (although it's only occurred once), and I have better things to do than spend days trying to recreate it. Is it too early to start worrying?

NB Any pointers on where to find and how to interpret crashdumps/logs would be useful. Cheers.

Even thought its a known problem, are you sure it couldn't be a coincidence? Which motherboard are you using and which sata port is it attached to.
It might also be worth trying different sata/power cables.

What does Intel's SSD Toolbox say about the drive?

Kotu said:

Even thought its a known problem, are you sure it couldn't be a coincidence? Which motherboard are you using and which sata port is it attached to.
It might also be worth trying different sata/power cables.

Click to expand...

I'm on my second SATA cable (see link in first post) which gives me the full read/write speeds, so I assume is good. I'm using SATA_0 (Intel 6gbps) on a Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H (B3 but not Gen3).

I can't see how it's a coincidence that I get the same code (0x000000F4) and symptoms (SSD not recognised in BIOS until cold boot) that are widely reported with other SF-2281 drives.

Arthur17 said:

What does Intel's SSD Toolbox say about the drive?

Click to expand...

Nothing that I can decipher! Everything's normal, except that Power Cycle Count = Unsafe Shutdown Count, a "little niggle" affecting all 520's.

sorry about the repeat questions, it would be easier to follow if you just keep all the problems in the same thread though.

Only 2 things I can think of are a BIOS update since this updates the raid bios as well sometimes and/or newer chipset drivers.

Kotu said:

Only 2 things I can think of are a BIOS update since this updates the raid bios as well sometimes and/or newer chipset drivers.

Click to expand...

AFAIK system is up-to-date - BIOS is latest and Intel Update Utility is happy with everything installed.


Perhaps I panicked as I got the F4 BSOD the first time I left the PC running overnight. It hasn't happened again, and I've left it idling/FTPing most nights, so fingers crossed...

BSOD and dodgy SATA cable aside, it's an awesome piece of kit. I can't see me going back to HDDs, so I hope I don't have to RMA this baby.

Upgraded my Intel x25 160 to a 520 240. Completely painless installation and migration. No issues.