I have a Shuttle Intel G31 + ICH7 (base -- not M/R etc) system. I just bought an OCZ Vertex 3 120gb [VTX3-25SAT3-120G] which includes the Sandforce 2218 firmware.

The ICH7 does not support AHCI. I understand that this can be a problem. What I don't understand, is if it's necessary to have the proper performance of this drive. I know that without AHCI I may get a limited read/write speed -- this is fine. What my concern is, is the constant freezing/hangs I'm getting with Windows 7 on any disk activity. The 'Highest Active Time' flip-flops from 0 to 100% every minute or so regardless of large or small files.

EDIT: The threads/processes with the highest response time is the kernel.

I've been reading about other people with Shuttle SG31G2s, and they seem to be using SSDs no problem. Is this the controller's fault? The fact that I do not have AHCI enabled? It makes sense to me that if this SSD requires AHCI features that it would cause Windows to hang, but I would like to fully determine my situation before returning things/reformatting.

To initially have my drive recognise the SSD at all, I had to change the BIOS option to Force Gen II instead of Auto for the SATA controller. I then installed Windows with no problem. There were no errors in the event log related to disk usage, but watching the perfmon I could see the highest active time and the processes (usually pagefile.sys being written to, or chrome/firefox caching) which was correlated to the hanging.

So now what I need answered is: should I be returning this SSD and getting one with a different controller, or returning the SSD all-together as it will never work out and I will continue to get these hangs.

Posts I've read:

Windows 7 New SSD SATA AHCI? -- suggests to use AHCI

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2189868 -- Sandforce issues

Windows 7 freezes with SSD -- and attached posts

Why does my Windows 7 PC / SSD drive keep freezing? -- this is not the controller I have, but still a related issue.

Windows 7 hangs after longer inactivity of user -- also tried messing with power settings with no luck. It was already set to 'Never' for turning off HDDs.