ThinkPad X270 PCIe SSD (NVMe) refusing to wake up from low-power state

[brainshave]

Hi, first time posting and I'd like to report a serious issue rendering the new X270 critically unstable.

There's an issue with the SSD after it enters low power D3 state. After it happens, the drive (or controller) refuses to wake up. Entering D3 seems to be due to relative inactivity. Also, upgrading BIOS to 1.09 doesn't help. I can get this couple of times a day so it makes the X270 unreliable for work.

This is triggering regardless of having power adapter plugged in or unplugged and it seems only related to the drive going to sleep. One time I got BSOD on Windows was when I was copying files between two external HDDs (so the internal drive wasn't busy).

On Windows this results with BSOD saying it can't save core dump because of memory or drive error.

Linux is little more informative about what happens and the system doesn't die straight away because it caches quite a lot of the data read from the drive (that excessive caching is also why the drive is likely to go to sleep more often).

For last couple of days I was running with dmesg -wH in the background. The drive always fails the same way:

[Mar21 01:31] nvme 0000:04:00.0: controller is down; will reset: CSTS=0xffffffff, PCI_STATUS=0xffff
[  +0.040507] nvme 0000:04:00.0: Refused to change power state, currently in D3
[  +0.000298] nvme nvme0: Removing after probe failure status: -19
[  +0.000025] nvme0n1: detected capacity change from 256060514304 to 0
(some ext4 failure errors because of the above follows until)
[  +0.000002] EXT4-fs (dm-0): Remounting filesystem read-only
(after which I get more fs errors (expected)

The drive I have is:

04:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Toshiba America Info Systems Device 0115 (rev 01) (prog-if 02 [NVM Express])
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device 0001

This issue seems to have been experienced previously for some recent Lenovo systems and fixed with BIOS upgrade, for example T460s had this issue and it was reported that it was fixed with BIOS upgrade from 1.15 to 1.20. As I mentioned above, upgrading to 1.09 on X270 doesn't help.

I'm wondering if anyone else is experiencing similar issue. Somebody has already reported on reddit so I'm not alone.

[someotherguy]

Can you please check what firmware version is on the drive?

One way to do this is to download the firmware update utility here:  http://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/LAPTOPS-AND-NETBOOKS/THINKPAD-P-SERIES-LAPTOPS/THINKPAD-P...

Unzip, then run fwwinsd.exe

It will tell you the drive model and firmware, please provide that information.  Thanks!

[brainshave]

Ah, sorry my bad, forgot to include that info. I was able to get the relevant info on Linux: (I removed Windows but I still have the recovery in case I really need to run something on Windows)

Model: THNSF5256GPUK TOSHIBA

Firmware: 51025KLA

There doesn't seem to be firmware update utility for my model (X270) yet so I take it there are no patches for my model available. (The provided link was for P50 so I assume it was only to check the firmware version.)

[someotherguy]

Yes, the P50 link was only so that you could check the drive model number and firmware version.  You have a Toshiba XG4 NVMe SSD and the latest firmware version.  We are currently investigating this issue based on your problem report.

[brainshave]

Thank you and let me know if you want me to run any further diagnostics. I can reinstall Windows if need be.

[brainshave]

Any chance there was some progress on the issue? Any indication it's a hardware or firmware problem?

If it's only firmware and it's going to be fixed with a BIOS upgrade then please let me know how long it can take.

If it's hardware at fault, should I request replacement for the whole laptop or just the drive?

I saw that new 1.10 BIOS version came out but the readme file does not mention it's fixing this issue so I haven't installed it yet.

I'm still experiencing the issue daily.

[lukas2511]

I'm having the same issue, also on a X270.

[someotherguy]

lukas2511

Does your X270 also have the Toshiba NVMe SSD?

brainshave

We are still investigating this issue and unfortunately I don't have any update yet.

[lukas2511]

yup:

{
  "Devices" : [
    {
      "DevicePath" : "/dev/nvme0n1",
      "Firmware" : "51025KLA",
      "Index" : 0,
      "ModelNumber" : "THNSF5512GPUK TOSHIBA",
      "ProductName" : "Non-Volatile memory controller: Toshiba America Info Systems Device 0x0115",
      "SerialNumber" : "17GS12J8TANT"
    }
  ]
}

[heptagrammaton]

I have the same or similar (?) problem:

My X270 arrived last Friday and since then I've been getting a BSOD / system crash ("critical process died" mostly, sometimes "unexpected store exception") approximately 2-3x a day at random times.

• I ran the Windows memory testing tool and no problems were found;
• I ran chkdsk and no problems were found;
• I ran sfc /scannow to verify Windows system files and no problems were found;
• Doing a system restore doesn't help;
• I would examine the BSOD memory dumps but it never successfully writes any (the % is just stuck at 0 eternally);
• I haven't tried other OSes because I have to work and haven't had time to set up Ubuntu to my liking; I suspect it wouldn't help.

The Lenovo Storage Device Firmware Update Utility says:

• Model: THNSF5512GPUK TOSHIBA
• Serial #: 0008_0D02_0016_32B7.
• Current Firmware: 5KLA5102 (latest)

I'm using the 512GB variant of the NVMe drive. My BIOS version is 1.11.

I chatted with a Lenovo support tech online who scheduled me for an onsite motherboard replacement. (Whether or not it'll work, I don't know, obviously.)

Windows also seems to freeze up for several seconds every now and then; I don't know if it's related.