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Flash Voyager GT 3.0 64 GB dead


l0v3r

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The format fails even with VLIMPTool 1.0.0.15: it discover the Voyager GT, and its capacity, but fails to format with the following log:

 

[Device1 2012/5/4 16:43:16]

Status=Error: Public Lun NTFS format fail

SerialNumber=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

VID=0x1B1C

PID=0x1A01

 

and if I use a recovery tool, I can read the few data I copied in it. So it is only write protected... but how?!?!?

 

l0v3r

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Well, instead of an answer, two of my posts were removed... thank you for your useless help.

I'll take this into consideration for my next shopping and for my customers.

 

l0v3r

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  • Corsair Employee
I am sorry but your posts were not deleted and we would not support that application. I would suggest trying to format the drive with the Utility from SDCard.org and see if it can recover the drive but any data will be erased. sorry!
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  • 2 weeks later...

First, RAM GUY, know that I empathize and sympathize with you for taking the abuse of frustrated customers and keeping your cool. I've been in a similar position. I do not envy you. Understand, though, that I am one of those frustrated customers, but if anything in this post sounds abusive, I want to apologize in advance because it is not my intention to come across like that. I’ll stick to just the facts.

 

Nearly 4 years ago, on my recommendation, our department purchased five 16 GB Flash Voyagers. All are still in regular use. Mine has even been accidently run through the washer and dryer a few times and it still works just fine. Back then I applauded the virtues of Corsair Voyager drives. About 18 months ago our department was in the market for some more drives and purchased five 64 GB Voyager GTRs. One failed with the blinking blue light of death within 6 weeks. It was seen by multiple computers as a removable drive, but all data was lost and it could not be formatted. It was RMAed and promptly replaced. One failure? No big deal, but as time went by, that entire batch eventually failed with the same blinking blue light symptom, even the replacement drive, with mine being the last to fail last month. None were RMAed at the time. Fortunately, even though they were no longer functional, the drives had not been thrown away.

 

In the meantime, since the GTR drives had started failing, particularly the one that the BIG boss used, five 64 GB Voyager GTs were purchased. Within a month the first one has already been RMAed. At that time I was in the process of getting the failed GTRs replaced. We received two 64 GB GTRs and three 64GB GTs as replacements for the 5 GTRs. I just now opened one of the GTs and tried to format it. I got the dreaded blinking blue light straight out of the package. It had never been used before and wouldn’t even format. It was seen as a removable drive but wouldn’t do anything. I tried it on multiple computers using both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7. I tried the SDCard utility mentioned above. No go.

 

After the failure of 6 GTRs and 2 GTs out of 11 within 18 months, I’m going to have to admit that my faith in Corsair products has been shaken substantially. I don’t know the failure rate for those drives from the Corsair point of view, but from ours it’s nearly 75%...so far. I do appreciate the prompt replacement of all of the RMAed drives, but it takes a lot of time and trouble for us to do the troubleshooting, fill out the RMA form, and rebuild the lost data 8 times in 18 months, which takes time away from our regular duties. I have no doubt that this one will get RMAed without issue, but I’ve had enough of dealing with this problem. I realize that no product is 100% free of defects, but seriously, this has been going on for many years. The first reports I found of the blinking blue light issue occurring in batches, and I didn’t look very hard, began with the 8 GB Voyagers in 2007.

 

In 2010, in this thread, http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=88350&highlight=voyager+recall&page=4, pertaining to a mention of the dreaded “R” word, recall, Wired, a forum admin, posted,”16 people in this thread in a 3.5 month period? No way this falls under a recall.” Sixteen people do not represent the sum total of every customer with a failed drive, and if the data were examined, I believe you would find that the vast majority of people experiencing problems don’t post in a forum. Recall? I don’t know. I don’t have enough data. Besides, the issue that concerns me, and should be on Corsair’s very short list of things that deserve immediate attention, is figuring out why so many have experienced multiple failures. The issue is far more than a large number of people each reporting single failures. They are reporting multiple failures such as we have experienced.

 

When I was in my similar irate customer handling situation mentioned above, the customer service representatives were told that if we ever mentioned that something was a “known issue,” no matter how severe the problem was, we would be instantly terminated. There were a few terminations. I can only guess, by the canned responses, that a similar policy exists at Corsair. We would tell customers that the failure rate was not statistically outside normal parameters. We would tell them that all systems had a small failure rate but they just happened to be the unfortunate one and we would take care of it immediately. We would apologize and tell them that we would gladly repair the system right away…yada, yada, yada…thank you, and have a nice day, and all of the other platitudes that have been mentioned in the various threads in the Corsair forums discussing the blinking blue light problem.

 

Thank you, RAM GUY, for your never ending patience. I understand that you really are a nice guy. There is at least one person that appreciates your efforts.

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