Patriot WildFire 120GB: Random freeze, Sudden reset, BSOD

[Patriot_Ben]

Hi all,
I'm getting these BSODs pretty regularly about 1 a day. The system is almost always idle or doing updates. In order to get the drive to show up again I have to remove the AC power and the battery otherwise the BIOS hangs and eventually tells me I don't have an OS drive installed. If I put the spinning hard drive back in, with the same partition(s) I never get a BSOD. This laptop is a sandy bridge 2nd gen i7 with the Mobile Intel HM65 Express chipset. I had the latest intel drivers and based on what I read here I uninstalled those and went with the MS default drivers. I bought the drive about a month ago and it came with an older firmware so I updated it to 3.3.2 before installing it into the laptop. Does anyone have any further suggestions? Even though I got a good deal on this drive it isn't a good deal if it doesn't work reliably and at this point I don't think Tiger would give me a refund.

Thanks,

Does your laptop have an option for AHCI? If so, make sure that the drive is running in AHCI mode.

[mbeifuss]

It doesn't have an option for that setting but according to Device Mangler I have an AHCI Serial ATA controller.

[Patriot_Ben]

It doesn't have an option for that setting but according to Device Mangler I have an AHCI Serial ATA controller.

At this point, since the drive is up to date, we would recommend a replacement under warranty. To Initiate an RMA or items relating to warranty, please visit this link here and under ‘troubleshooting’ select your product from the dropdown box and fill out the info (look at the bottom for ‘start a technical case’):
http://www.patriotmemory.com/support/techSupportp.jsp

(This link will get your name and contact info into our Support/RMA Portal database. You will then be given a user id and password where you can make replies to your Support/RMA case. Please make a note that you already spoke to a rep regarding your issue. Furthermore afterwards, feel free to login to reply or simply await for the case to be escalated to RMA with further instructions. To escalate the case to rma, please indicate that you’ve spoken to a rep already).

[mbeifuss]

Well so far since switching away from the Intel SATA drivers to the Microsoft drivers I haven't had a BSOD and it has been 3 days now. Still too soon to say that it won't happen again, but it is encouraging. However the MS driver setup is a little slower on the WEI index score at 7.8. Maybe it would be useful to see what the difference is between those two drivers. I'm going to let it go for about a week and see what happens. Then I will try installing the Intel drivers again and see what happens then. I'll keep you posted.

[1mic]

Back again and amazed how the BSOD and freezing is happening more frequently.
This SSD is driving me crazy, I guess I must be crazy going from a PERFECTLY working Vertex2 to the wildfire.
Completely new setup and formatted the wildfire, not even a full day and I'm getting BSOD.
my new specs:
i7 2600k
asus p8p67 (b3 revision)
gts 250 (because gtx 580 crapped out, maybe from all the BSOD this drive was giving)

Also I've been trying to update the firmware but the updater cant even find the drive.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Patriot_Ben]

Back again and amazed how the BSOD and freezing is happening more frequently.
This SSD is driving me crazy, I guess I must be crazy going from a PERFECTLY working Vertex2 to the wildfire.
Completely new setup and formatted the wildfire, not even a full day and I'm getting BSOD.
my new specs:
i7 2600k
asus p8p67 (b3 revision)
gts 250 (because gtx 580 crapped out, maybe from all the BSOD this drive was giving)

Also I've been trying to update the firmware but the updater cant even find the drive.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Do you also have a 120GB Wildfire?

Can you make sure that the drive is in AHCI? To debug the fw flash can you try other sata ports? When opening up the fw software, make sure you have admin rights (right click run as admin).

What firmware version are you on now? Can you make sure to have all of the latest drivers updated?

[1mic]

Ok updated the firmware, after a quick look around people have been suggesting to NOT use the marvel sata III port, so I'm using the Intel Sata III port (p8p67). Thats what it took to update drive as well and everything is smooth so far.

[Patriot_Ben]

Ok updated the firmware, after a quick look around people have been suggesting to NOT use the marvel sata III port, so I'm using the Intel Sata III port (p8p67). Thats what it took to update drive as well and everything is smooth so far.

Yes that is correct. The Marvell Ports might give you some issues. I'm glad you got it up and running so far. Let me know if you have any further questions.

[PetroOmg]

I'm having problems with Patriot Wildfire 240GB, I'm also certain that Wildfire is causing those problems, as before I had Corsair Force 3 120GB as my primary boot (never had BSOD), but now I switched to Wildfire, and I get BSOD few times a day. Also the problem is that I have Asus Sabertooth x58 motherboard, and I have Marvell controller and I if I even try to switch it to AHCI I cant either launch my installed Windows or install Windows again without BSOD's. If you guys have any suggestions what I should do, I'm welcoming those with open arms.


EDIT:
Now that I think of it, you guys should make a list of recommended motherboards and maybe a list of incompatible motherboards.

EDIT2:
I also have updated Wildfire firmware with the latest.

EDIT3:
All these Blue Screens actually broke my Asus Xonar sound card, this makes me slightly mad. I have decided to buy new motherboard, processor and apparently now a new soundcard. I'm considering Sabertooth X79 motherboard as it has Intel controller, I would like to know if this does indeed work with Patriot Wildfire?

EDIT4:
PHEW! Problem with sound card was actually loose connector, caused by all the plugging and unplugging. So all I need to get is new motherboard and processor.

[mbeifuss]

I'm having BSODs with this SSD. I have an HP DV7-61xx series computer with this as the boot drive. I don't use the computer all that much and it seems that when ever I use it I will get a BSOD within an hour or so. I have updated the firmware to 3.3.2 and I have updated the BIOS on the computer and reinstalled windows but the problem persists. I nearly $500 for this drive which has given me nothing but problems. I bought it 3 months ago and have been holding on for a firmware that actually fixes the problem, would it be possible to return this to Patriot for a refund? I have the receipt from TigerDirect.