Force Series 3 120GB SN 1123xx drive still has major problems

I bought my drive back around June 1st. Installed it, and was plagued with the random restarts/BIOS non-detection issues. RMAd my drive, just got it back and reinstalled everything last night (from scratch, not a system image).

 

While it certainly lasted longer than the last drive, it just reset and was not detected in the BIOS (again!) until power cycling the computer. I have a drive with SN 1123...

 

 

I'm not sure what my SATA cables say, I'm using the ones that came with the AsRock Z68 Extreme 4 MB, so I'd assume they're SATA III capable.

 

 

Also, I am in AHCI mode and am plugged into the Intel (not the Marvell) SATA ports. I can try tweaking some of these things but the long time between BSODs will make it difficult to reproduce the problem.

 

 

Here are my answers to the questions you asked everyone to answer in the initial problem mega-thread:

 

1. What is the specific model of motherboard being used?

AsRock Z68 Extreme 4

2. What OS and AHCI driver are being used?

Windows 7 Professional x64 Intel Desktop/Workstation/Server Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller version 10.1.0.1008

3. Is the drive configured as an OS drive or a data drive?

OS Drive

4. Do you have any spread spectrum clocking enabled?

No

5. Do you have TRIM enabled?

Yes (it's enabled by default in Win 7, right?)

6. Does your MOBO/BIOS allow you to enable and disable HOT SWAP or HOT PLUG on the drive controller?

No

 

 

This is getting really, really frustrating.

 

 

Other info:

Intel i5 2500k running stock at the moment

8GB ******** Ripjaws Series DDR3

1TB ******** Caviar Black HDD

Just for temporary troubleshooting, have you tried:

 

1. raising your PCH voltage to 1.15v (1.14v or 1.16v is fine if your BIOS won't do 1.15v exactly)

2. moving the drive to one of the SATA2 headers?

 

 

We're looking into this. In the meantime these are only troubleshooting steps so that we can try to isolate the issue and also see if the drive is 100% stable on a different controller. We're not going to ask you to compromise performance or go thru some voodoo ritual where you lose functionality just to make a disk stable.

 

So, if the 1.15v is not stable, please just for testing, run it a while on 1 of the SATA2 headers. It will still be VERY fast there and hopefully give you a stable rig and provide some insight while we investigate this further.

 

Thanks for your patience with us. ::pirate::

I will try both suggestions in that order and report back. I'm a little worried that I'm just about out of Newegg's return window and now I'm doing hardware testing.

 

Corsair better send me a very, very nice Christmas present this year. None of that jam-of-the-month crap like last year. Seriously though, please pass on to your customer service folks that we beta-testers deserve some remuneration for all this.

 

Thanks for your quick responses Yellowbeard. Even though you haven't been able to single-handedly resolve this ridiculous problem (and should never have had to deal with all this), your quick responses are the only thing preventing me from deciding to avoid corsair like the plague in the future. But after ~4 weeks, it's getting close.

I will try both suggestions in that order and report back. I'm a little worried that I'm just about out of Newegg's return window and now I'm doing hardware testing.

 

Corsair better send me a very, very nice Holidays present this year. None of that jam-of-the-month crap like last year. Seriously though, please pass on to your customer service folks that we beta-testers deserve some remuneration for all this.

 

Thanks for your quick responses Yellowbeard. Even though you haven't been able to single-handedly resolve this ridiculous problem (and should never have had to deal with all this), your quick responses are the only thing preventing me from deciding to avoid corsair like the plague in the future. But after ~4 weeks, it's getting close.

 

I perfectly understand your frustration and we genuinely appreciate your patience here. ::pirate::

Are you still recommending the clearing the CMOS? If so, can you explain why? I'm not sure I see what that would do. Raising my PCH voltage now.

Is your Motherboard a B3 Revision?

Are you still recommending the clearing the CMOS? If so, can you explain why? I'm not sure I see what that would do. Raising my PCH voltage now.

 

Yes, clear the CMOS. I have been doing massive amounts of reading and also checking in with our engineers as they try to identify the root cause of these issues. In some cases, users have gotten stability after changing drives by clearing the CMOS. There are a myriad of reasons that it may help. It's one of those things that may not help, but then it can't hurt; just another troubleshooting step.

 

If you are tired of fooling with it, I understand as you did not sign on to be a beta tester for us. My suggestion is to temporarily use the drive on a SATA2 port and give us a bit more time to work with SandForce on a fix. IF your drive is stable on a SATA2 port, then an RMA is not likely to solve the SATA3 instability.

 

Again, we appreciate your patience on this. ::pirate::

Well, it's been about 48 hrs since resetting my CMOS and so far so good. Of course, it took almost 24 hrs for the first one, so we're not out of the woods yet, but hopefully. By the way, in the spirit of running a controlled experiment, I only changed that one variable and haven't touched my voltages yet.

Well, it's been about 48 hrs since resetting my CMOS and so far so good. Of course, it took almost 24 hrs for the first one, so we're not out of the woods yet, but hopefully. By the way, in the spirit of running a controlled experiment, I only changed that one variable and haven't touched my voltages yet.

 

Fingers crossed for you, thank you for the feedback. ::pirate::

So it's been a few days since the computer has totally rebooted and the drive disappeared from the system, so that's good. However, as I just posted in the megathread in response to someone else's question, I'm seeing other weird behavior.

 

Basically, after the machines been on for a while, not doing too much of anything in particular it kind of "soft" freezes, for lack of a better term. Meaning that I can still move the mouse and click on things, but to absolutely no effect. Keyboard inputs either do nothing or aren't recognized at all (I can't tell). I've never heard of this happening before and it doesn't spit out any particular error messages and the only way I've found to fix it is a hard reset. Obviously, I can't be sure, but since this drive has given me other problems, I tend to suspect it.

 

Any troubleshooting hints yellowbeard? Have you ever encountered something like this before?

So it's been a few days since the computer has totally rebooted and the drive disappeared from the system, so that's good. However, as I just posted in the megathread in response to someone else's question, I'm seeing other weird behavior.

 

Basically, after the machines been on for a while, not doing too much of anything in particular it kind of "soft" freezes, for lack of a better term. Meaning that I can still move the mouse and click on things, but to absolutely no effect. Keyboard inputs either do nothing or aren't recognized at all (I can't tell). I've never heard of this happening before and it doesn't spit out any particular error messages and the only way I've found to fix it is a hard reset. Obviously, I can't be sure, but since this drive has given me other problems, I tend to suspect it.

 

Any troubleshooting hints yellowbeard? Have you ever encountered something like this before?

 

Based on what we've seen in the lab, your issue you described here seems to be one of those that may benefit from either changing to a higher quality SATA cable and/or a shorter SATA cable.

Yellowbeard:

 

I am using a 6gbps cable and it's the shortest I have (18") so I really don't think that's it. Also, after being up for ~20hrs, it just blue screened and dropped out of bios until I power cycled it, so clearing the CMOS didn't fix it. Dang. I've upped my PCH voltage and we'll see how that goes.

So after upping my PCH voltage a couple of days ago, I haven't had any problems. Fingers crossed that it continues.

im rock solid using the SATA2 headers and cant go more than 30mins without a freeze on SATA3 headers. im hoping the eventful fix is software/firmware.

I'd have a go at trying another SATA cable.

 

I actually had a similar issue when I got my replacement drive. I've got a Z68 chipset and my drive is plugged into the SATA3 port with no issues now. The crazy thing is that the cable I replaced to get my drive working works just fine on my conventional hard drive plugged into another SATA3 port. Both cables I used are identical in every way (same length, same spec, same brand).

 

Also, before I replaced the SATA cable, raising the voltage to 1.15 actually made my drive less stable.

Bad news. Even with the higher PCH voltage, I just had another BSOD requiring a power cycle for the drive to show up in the BIOS. But since I had 3+ days of up time, I think I'm going to leave it be pending a (hopefully very soon) fix from Corsair/Sandforce. I might try swapping out the cable as choberts recommends.