X240 freezes, bluescreens, doesn't recognize SSD

Question

As the Lenovo Phone Support was not able to help me I'll try my luck here.
My newly purchased X240 (20AMS20C00) is sadly having some issues:
- 2-3 times a day the machine just freezes mid-usage. If I was watching video the problem announces itself by playing the last few seconds of audio again and again. At first the system seems to keep responding but the more buttons I click or programs I try to start, the more unresponsive it gets until its completely frozen. --> Feels like a hard drive issue to me
- Sometimes (today 3 times in a very short timespan) the laptop freezes and then shows a bluescreen "CRITICAL PROCESS DIED). Then it restarts and doesn't recognize the hard drive. Sadly I forgot the exact error message. After a few restarts it boots again.
Here's my configuration:
Windows 8.1 with all updates installed
All drivers up to date
BIOS/UEFI: GIET69WW (2.19 ) according to Lenovo Solution Center
Also, directly after purchasing the machine I replaced the internal hard drive with a Crucial M500 SSD which is running the most recent firmware.
I also did update the BIOS via System Update. Before that I didn't experience any of these problems. But as I updated it on the first day I just might not have noticed. According to the release notes of the BIOS update it was supposed to fix exactly the kind of problems I have now.
A complete system scan with the Solution Center showed everything to be ok.
What else can I do? It's very frustrating because aside from all this I am very satisfied with the laptop, but if I have to worry that it might freeze in the middle of writing an important text it's completely unusable.

Answer 1

I have possibly similar symptoms. I replaced the HDD in my X240 (20ALCT01WW) with a Samsung 840 Pro SSD. I use full disk encryption with Debian Jessie, but I've also run Fedora 20 and some live CDs. After a few hours of usage the filesystem will switch to read-only and dmesg will report a ton of SATA-related errors, incluing a medium error and unrecovered read errors.
[   56.082629] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [descriptor]
[   56.082632] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex):
[   56.082633]         72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00
[   56.082639]         00 00 00 00
[   56.082641] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 
[   56.082643] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed
[   56.082644] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB:
[   56.082645] Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[   56.082650] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 0
[   56.082652] Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 0
[   56.082660] ata1: EH complete
[   56.086399] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[   56.086402] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008
[   56.086404] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED
[   56.086408] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in
         res 41/40:08:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F>
[   56.086410] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[   56.086411] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
[   56.086931] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[   56.086937] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled sense code
[   56.086939] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 
[   56.086940] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[   56.086941] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 
[   56.086942] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [descriptor]
[   56.086945] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex):
[   56.086946]         72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00
[   56.086952]         00 00 00 00
[   56.086954] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 
[   56.086956] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed
This would necesssitate powering the computer off and on. After about three times my SSD got corrupted in some way, and was completely unreadable by the laptop, including in Fedora and some other Linux Live CDs.
I figured it was a problem with the drive, so I submitted a warranty claim to Amazon and replaced it. After three hours of usage the same symptoms reappeared. I put the SSD in another computer and the partition table was corrupt, but the drive could be accessed (more than the X240 could do after the error manifested).
I believe this is a problem with the SATA controller or some other low-level hardware on the X240 (perhaps the CPU's hardware encryption module, as I was doing FDE?). I find it very unlikely that two SSDs failed with only a few hours of usage.