I have Xubuntu 13.10 running on my Vaio Pro. I ran boot-repair from the LiveCD and managed to get the grub menu, though Xubuntu wouldn't boot. After some research, I discovered this page:

http://www.nicksplace.com.au/2013/07/04/fedora-19-on-vaio-pro-13-ssd-issues/

Its no secret that the Vaio Pro comes with a very nice SSD. The 128GB version is a MZHPU128HCGM made by Samsung. From my benchmarking it is very fast with ~1100MB/s read and ~500MB/s write. But when booting into Fedora 19, it may fail to boot, or the system may lock up for short periods (especially under heavy IO). During boot it may show a stream of the following messages (if it happens while you are logged in they will be in dmesg):

01:45:25,494 ERR kernel:[  155.668632] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x3 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen

01:45:25,494 ERR kernel:[  155.668640] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED

01:45:25,494 ERR kernel:[  155.668650] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:00:08:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in

01:45:25,494 ERR kernel:[  155.668650]          res 40/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)

01:45:25,494 ERR kernel:[  155.668655] ata1.00: status: { DRDY }

01:45:25,494 ERR kernel:[  155.668659] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED

01:45:25,494 ERR kernel:[  155.668667] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:08:80:b8:e7/00:00:0e:00:00/40 tag 1 ncq 4096 in

01:45:25,494 ERR kernel:[  155.668667]          res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)

01:45:25,494 ERR kernel:[  155.668672] ata1.00: status: { DRDY }

From my previous experience with the errors on other systems I decided to try disabling Native Command Queuing (NCQ). This immediately fixed the issue.

To make the fix permanent you need to add libata.force=noncq to your GRUB2 default kernel boot parameters. As root, edit /etc/defaults/grub and add libata.force=noncq to the end of the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX line. The finished file should look similar to the below:

GRUB_TIMEOUT=2

GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="$(sed 's, release .*$,,g' /etc/system-release)"

GRUB_DEFAULT=saved

GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true

GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console"

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0 vconsole.keymap=us $([ -x /usr/sbin/rhcrashkernel-param ] && /usr/sbin/rhcrashkernel-param || :) rd.luks=0 vconsole.font=latarcyrheb-sun16 rhgb quiet libata.force=noncq"

GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

Then simply update your GRUB2 menu and reboot:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/Boot/grub.cfg

I am very interested to know if anyone has experienced this issue on their Vaio Pro or whether there is an issue with my SSD.

So, I edited the grub list after booting from the LiveCD using:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

I then changed this line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

To look like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash libata.force=noncq"

And then I ran:

sudo update-grub