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lost partitions and now firmware upgrade does not see the disk


vikjon0

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I am a bit lost here, I see on the google that it is a known fact that the corsair force series is loosing the parititions with data and all. Upgrade to 2.0 firmware will PERHAPS stop it from happening again.

 

This is where I am lost. Should this not be seen as a samewhat MAJOR issue? Are you trying to keep this quite or what is the general idea? I would expect the inferior product to be withdrawn from the market or at the very least the customer should be informed when buying. (Well, the last part might hurt sales right?)

 

Well, I will consider to return the disk, but on the other hand, if it works with 2.0 what do I care?

 

well, the upgrade tool does not see the disk from win7 AND do belive my eyes? Do you only provide an exe tool? You are aware this will not execute on non dos/win based systems?

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well, the upgrade tool does not see the disk from win7 AND do belive my eyes?

 

Your eyes may be good but perhaps your reading ability is not. You have to right click the exe and run as administrator for the drive to be recognized.

 

Yes it is an exe tool, it was designed by SandForce so if you have problems with not considering minorities then you can take it up with them but my guess is that the drive was designed with windows in mind for a couple reasons: over 90% market share, the fact that win7 was the first to support TRIM and has very, very good SSD support, the fact that this is a high end product and *generally* used for system building, not so much for system replacement.

 

Anyways, there should not be any lost partition problems with this drive from what I know. I use this drive every day and never have that problem. I do have firmware 2.0 but firmware 2.0 was to fix other issues if I remember correctly.

 

Have you checked what firmware version you currently have? Have you tried a secure erase? You haven't provided and system specs either, or what problem you have specifically.

 

My comments do not reflect Corsair.

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Your eyes may be good but perhaps your reading ability is not. You have to right click the exe and run as administrator for the drive to be recognized.

Reading skill is most of the time up to par. I did do that.

 

Yes it is an exe tool, it was designed by SandForce .....

The win market share might be a factor, that fact that someone else made it is not. They did not sell it to me.

 

Anyways, there should not be any lost partition.....

Well, there is and I see in this forum it happens.

 

Have you checked what firmware version you currently have?

1.1 (at least not 2, I checked as per instriuctions in this forum)

 

Have you tried a secure erase?

No, is that related to upgrade tool not seeing disks?

 

You haven't provided and system specs either, or what problem you have specifically.

I have tried to upgrade on two computers so far. The newest is dell e4300 bios A20 (latest in Jan 2011). I have a couple astrock ion as well but they do not run win.

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Have you tried a secure erase?

 

No, is that related to upgrade tool not seeing disks?

 

If you did indeed right click and run as administrator on a Windows 7 machine, I must ask are you running your SATA controller in IDE or AHCI mode? It should be in AHCI mode for the update. But if you are running it in AHCI mode you can secure erase the drive first and delete all partitions (so the disk is in RAW mode). This will undoubtedly allow the drive to be detectable.

 

Yes it is an exe tool, it was designed by SandForce .....

 

The win market share might be a factor, that fact that someone else made it is not. They did not sell it to me.

 

Actually it matters a lot, that's how the computer industry works. For example, I have an Asus motherboard with three different SATA controllers. If I want the latest JMicron driver, I go to the JMicron site. If I want the latest driver for my ICH7R, I go to the Intel website and get the latest RST driver, etc.

 

I don't know why SandForce chose to have a 32bit exe for their update tool, I would have preferred a CLI .exe myself that I can run from my bootable DOS disk but this what we're stuck with unfortunately.

 

the reason why reading. 's'kills was edited because it created a competitor's word.

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If you did indeed right click and run as administrator on a Windows 7 machine, I must ask are you running your SATA controller in IDE or AHCI mode? It should be in AHCI mode for the update. But if you are running it in AHCI mode you can secure erase the drive first and delete all partitions (so the disk is in RAW mode). This will undoubtedly allow the drive to be detectable.

 

I run the disk in IRR mode and I cannot change that since w7 will not stand for it.

IRR shhould be "on top of AHCI" but maybe it is still the problem.

I need a boot disk with the upgrade tool or I need to temp re-install win7 and then put back the image after the upgrade.

 

That's fine...(well I am not happy).

 

The next concern is that you don't give me much hope that 2.0 will stop it from happening again. Perhaps I need to switch it for another copy (or if possible other brand).

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You can use a live CD environment such as UBCD4Win or Hiren's.

I personally used UBCD4Win to update a Force drive once and it worked great.

 

After you update secure erase the drive and if you're still having problems, RMA the drive as you may have a defective unit.

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You can use a live CD environment such as UBCD4Win or Hiren's.

I personally used UBCD4Win to update a Force drive once and it worked great.

 

OK, that's more like it. I think it would be a great idea to publish an upgrade disk with the firmware in place. Or at least make this the standard answer and a sticky. Thus avoiding to alienate people with response like "mac/linux users needs to have w7 on dual boot".

 

Anyway, I do have win7 on the laptop and I have now manage to upgrad to 2.0. I didn't do a secure erase and I am not sure what changed. I restored the orignal image to the SSD and it finally worked. Still in IRR so thats not the problem.

 

My concern now is if I can trust it not to happen again.

I intend to make another attempt to switch from IRR.

I have no problem doing a secure erase, but since I will have to restore the image on top any way I am not sure there is a point. What is the the secure erase about?

 

The only other thing I can think of is that I made som win7 tweaks found in this forum. I have since seen that no tweaks are officially recommended(?). I will leave that alone.

 

W7 tweaks will not exlain the cold boot issues I hade all alonge. If that does not disappear I will have to think this through.

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I cannot manage a switch from IRR without re-install.

Good news is that the problem at cold boot have not appeared since the upgrade.

 

I will go ahead and do a secure erase with part magic 5.9 liveCD now.

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Part magic 5.9 is a truly amazing liveCD it has pretty much everything one need. Clonezilla, gparted etc. Even wifi support. I am writing this from the liveCD.

 

I could not erase the disk when it was internal...locked by bios?!. It is now hooked up on USB and hopefully erased within 180 minutes.

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OK, the dialog said 30-180 minutes. Only difference compared to guide was that I was asked if I wanted "enhanched secure erase" since it was supported by my device. I said yes to that.

 

I interupted after 4-5h and after reboot the erase says "device have to support..." bla bla. No action is supported.

I did an external swipe which I understand is not the same.

 

All this is a bit technical for normal end users...

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So can you secure erase the drive normally now using an internal SATA connection?

No, I only managed to do an erase with one of the external alternatived.

After the interupted attempt the utility now says it is not supported.

But this was on USB, I have not attemped with internal again.

 

I am not sure how an erase will stop the device from dropping the partitions again?

The cold boot issues have dissappeared since upgrade to 2.0, but I am not sure the two are related.

I will make sure to make freq backups and will attempt secure erase at a later time.

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I am not sure how an erase will stop the device from dropping the partitions again?

 

Secure erase resets all the sectors at the lowest possible level, at the controller. If you just quick format a drive you're only changing the partition table, and if you pad zeros you're only changing the good blocks, any bad blocks won't be accessible through software. The only way to rest a drive to it's factory state is secure erase, because it can access even bad blocks and potentially revive them, so we recommend you do that after having problems or a firmware update.

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