SSD missing sometimes/freezing after boot

I think my wife's Force GT 240GB is going bad. At first, it was throwing out all kinds of BSODs and driver errors but now it just freezes as soon as windows loads.

 

I was able to get into safe mode and had diskcheck repair some bad sectors. After doing this her computer worked two more times but now it's just frozen. As I write this I'm running a windows repair on her PC and if that fails I'll try a fresh Win7 install.

 

Before all this began yesterday afternoon her SSD was working 100%, extremely happy with it till now. Just so everyone knows it was properly aligned and I had never done a firmware update since everything ran great. I'll post a progress update later.

Sounds like the problems I had the last few months before mine died this weekend. Just try it on all your sata ports and use different cables also on another pc. if none of that works RMA it.

Download and install the SSD toolbox and see what firmware the SSD is on. If it's lower than 5.0.X, i'd suggest you update the firmware.

 

Note: You will need to use the manual firmware updater tool to update the firmware from 1.3.X to 5.0.X

http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117994

 

Does the SSD work fine when its plugged into another computer?

 

Also, If the toolbox says FW 5.20 is the latest FW i would avoid that for now.

Installing Win7 on the SSD was a no-go. The installer got all the way to the very last step and hung there for over an hour and a half (should have been <20 minutes). I formatted the SSD and installed windows on another HDD in the computer, just for the time being.

 

I guess next step is to update the firmware. I did already try moving the SSD to another SATA3 port and got the same result. I'll try moving it to my computer after the firmware update and see what happens.

Updated the firmware from 5.02 to 5.05 and unexpectedly the drive seems to be working again, but it makes me uneasy. How do I know that the drive is actually fixed or is it on the path toward a slow death?

 

I grabbed this pic BEFORE the firmware update and was wondering if anyone here could tell me if it's a sign of future trouble.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b115/mopeymartian/Capture.png' alt='Capture.png'>

 

I'm not entirely sure if I trust the drive at this point.

Well according to that it seems like the important values are all ok.

 

If you haven't move the SSD back to a SATA III 6.0GB/s port and run an ATTO benchmark and post a screenshot.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b115/mopeymartian/ATTOCapture.png

 

Looks like it's running fine for now. I'm mostly curious as to why it suddenly had this issue after 2 years of perfection and hope that if this does happen again it's while my warranty is still good.

 

It would also be nice to know exactly what type of "instability" firmware updates fix to be able to gauge whether or not they are worth doing when all over this website it says not to do them until it's too late.

Changelog for FW 5.03

CHANGE LOG

1. Restored a minor TRIM performance variation from a previous release

2. Fixed a power management condition where the device failed to respond to COMWAKE, which might have resulted in the SSD not responding without being reset by the host

http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=110257

 

There is no changelog available for FW 5.05.

 

 

If an SSD is bad, it would show signs of it such as not appearing in the BIOS until multiple resets, slow performance even after a secure erase, files going corrupt, etc.

It went again and this time it brought my wife's computer to its knees. Out of nowhere, while she was WoWing, the PC just turned off and wouldn't post when pressing the power button. Opened it up and reset the memory chips... nothing. Turned the master power switch off then on again... nope. Unplugged all the hard drives... Bingo! Luckily I had another copy of Win7 installed and ready to use on another HDD so we're rolling with that while I RMA the SSD.

 

Just for kicks I plugged the SSD in again to see what would happen and it worked, but at this point I've had enough. Help me, Corsair! Your product is misbehaving and still under warranty!