800D Sata 6GB/s Hot Swap Board Failure

SATA 6GB/s Hot Swap Board in Obsidian 800D case has failed :[pouts:.

Started getting disk errors, and drives not being recognized by system. I can bypass board and drives are recognized by system. Installed spare board and it works. Old board would work with HDD but not SSD. The board did not fail all at once but appeared to die a slow death. I used the board for several months with a 3GB/s SSD without any problems. Never could get a 6GB/s SSD to work correctly for any period of time with the board. In the last week started getting disk errors in windows and BSOD with the 3GB/s SSD. After reading about problems with the Hot Swap Board here I suspected that was the problem and sure enough it was.

Submitted an RMA today.

Do I need a reply from RamGuy to reference on my RMA?

I have received NO response from Corsair about this RMA!

I had already submitted an RMA on Saturday 10-22-2011 and had no response. Finally did get a response late Tuesday 10-26-2011 requesting my name and address. No further response after submitting.

When I try and check the status I get an error message "Case ID and/or Password are Incorrect". Did not receive a password just a case number.

:(

hopefully ramguy will cruise thru here & see...

maybe im overly optimistic, bu the only reason i could see asking for your address is that they are shipping it. gl.

I am also having the same issues. The backplane worked fine for about 2 months and then I started having boot problems and missing drives. I am using all four of the hotswap bays. Two for raid, one for storage and the other for a different operating system.

The only way I can get this to work is to power down, pull all the drives and then push them back in. I realize I can just ask for another RMA. But I joined the forum because I think I made a discovery and I wanted to share.

If anyone recalls, an older flashlight will loose its power and become dull for no apparent reason. If the flashlight is shaken, then power is restored. There is some technical terminology for this. The point is, the contacts become dirty. This is when I decided to clean the contacts on the hard drives.

The contacts seemed clean, but I cleaned them anyways with rubbing alcohol and let them dry. When I was cleaning them, I noticed that there were wear marks on the contacts of the drives. The wear marks only covered half of the contact. This is telling me that the drives are not being seated fully into the backplane. I was using one adjustable hole and the other fixed hole to fasten the drives. I then decided to use both adjustable holes and advance the drive further into the bay. The amount that I advanced was equal to the amount of contact that was not worn. In other words, I adjusted the drives to fit all the way into the backplane.

After cleaning the contacts and adjusting the drives, I have not had a problem for a few days. I am not sure if this will fix everyones problem, but it was a solution for me.

great info! prolly could fix quite a few problems if your observation is correct- and it makes complete sense to me.

sounds like something corsair should take a look at & sticky if it is in fact a problem.

thx for the concern but i think u mean 'curlysir' ;)

i have yet to order my 800d. lurking in the forums so that when(possible if) i do ill be ready for any possible problems. ppppppp ftw.

Finally got my replacement board about a week after my last post. Have not tried the new board yet for the 6GB/s drive as my system is working great with the backplane bypassed on the boot drive. I am using the extra backplane I had for 2 non 6GB/s SSD's without a problem.

Will probably wait for Corsair to respond with a possible solution before I try the boot drive in the hot-swap bays. My other board also worked for several months before I started having problems.

I'd install and use the replacement pcb. There isn't any point in waiting for Corsair to respond with a solution.

Just inspect the connectors are fitted correctly and not loose. And make sure they are not bending.

Well, my fix lasted for exactly 2 weeks. One of my drives disappeared when I went to boot up. Windows took forever to boot and then locked up. I tried to reseat the drives as I did before. I was able to boot back into windows and it ran ok for about 2 minutes and it locked back up. So, I had to remove the backplane again. The backplane is dead, again. This was my second RMA and I am not feeling too confident for a third.

Ram Guy, was there any new developments to this issue?

crap sry to hear that, was hoping u found ' the fix'.

i think i might go with another case in both builds. to me one of the prime attractions to this case was the front hot swap bay. take it out of the equation and there are other just as good cases for cheaper out there.

it is a shame that corsair cant/wont fix this..

I just had a thought. SATA is hot swappable only because the ground leads are longer than the positive leads. This means that because the drives were not fitting in all the way into the socket, the positive leads had even less contact than the negative leads. This effectively turns the positive leads into a resistor, which is not good.

I may be going out on a limb here. But, if the current in the SATA cables is weak or limited with a resistor, then it may possibly draw more power through the power supply thus burning out the boards. Don't quote me on this as it is only a hypothesis at this point. I am not an electrical engineer, but I have taken electrical classes.

So, from all the posts I have read, if all four bays are used then the average lifespan of the backplane is roughly two months. I just got approved for another RMA. When it shows up, I will install it again and report back in a few months. Hopefully, with a new backplane and setting the drives to their proper distance then this might be solved. Only time will tell.

what u r saying sounds reasonable. what i dont get is that the backplane is pretty basic. with the resources that corsair has available u would think this problem would be fixed by now. considering that it is happening across a wide range of drives bothh ssd & spindle the problem is obviuosly in the backplane and given the amount of people that have reported problems(& i would say most problems arent reported here but are direct support/rma cases) repoducing the issues shouldnt be hard. especially given the time frame involved...

anyway gl to u & pls keep us updated.

-The backplane doesn't have a lifespan.

It may be the SATA connections are not properly plugged in or they are bending the connector on the PCB. If you want, Re-route the SATA cables so that they will not overlap any other cable. Also, Just because the backplane is covered by the plastic cover, It does not mean the user can bunch up other cables and hide it where the SATA connections are. It may be possible the extra cables are making the SATA cables bend the connector hence the backplane giving issues.

I haven't had any problem/issue with the Backplane. Keep other cables/wire out of the SATA connection compartment. And it should be fine.

what do u think is a reasonable life expectency for something like the backplane. i think min 5yrs is not unreasonable...

your suggestions are legit as i can beleive that are a probably a few people doing exactly what u said. your implication that because you have no probs & if u keep extraneous cabling out of the compartment all will be good is a little off.

bty, all sata cables are sheilded. while it is good advice to try & keep cables seperated they are all built to be buched/crossed over as that is normal layout for 99% of computers(even kowing this is i still try to get everything parallel & neat because..well im anal like that:)). most, if not all people reporting problems with the backplane have no problems when it is out of the loop. so we are back to defective backplanes.

-The backplane doesn't have a lifespan.

Everything has a lifespan. Most electronics will eventually die because the copper in the PCB will spread out cause a short. The time is relative to the quality of the work. However, that was not my point. My "lifespan" was a simple educated guess based upon other people's postings.

I have a hard time accepting that someone would intentionally bunch up cables in a case like this. This is not the run-of-the-mill cheap case that most people buy. The 800D is a case for someone who wants a quality, well built case with cable management. A properly utilized case will keep all the cables hidden and organized. Also, the USB 3.0 version includes one power cable, unlike the previous version that was daisy chained to four separate boards. Honestly, I just don't see how the cables could be crammed together causing tension on the connectors.

I am always willing to learn something new, and I do not consider my thoughts to be final. If I am missing something, then could you enlighten me? The more feedback I get, the closer I get to a solution.

@ Curlysir

I didn't mean to hijack your thread. Nobody was responding and I have the same issue. I am only trying to find a solution for everybody. If you have any thoughts, it is your thread so feel free to post something.

Everything has a lifespan. Most electronics will eventually die because the copper in the PCB will spread out cause a short. The time is relative to the quality of the work. However, that was not my point. My "lifespan" was a simple educated guess based upon other people's postings.

 

I have a hard time accepting that someone would intentionally bunch up cables in a case like this. This is not the run-of-the-mill cheap case that most people buy. The 800D is a case for someone who wants a quality, well built case with cable management. A properly utilized case will keep all the cables hidden and organized. Also, the USB 3.0 version includes one power cable, unlike the previous version that was daisy chained to four separate boards. Honestly, I just don't see how the cables could be crammed together causing tension on the connectors.

 

I am always willing to learn something new, and I do not consider my thoughts to be final. If I am missing something, then could you enlighten me? The more feedback I get, the closer I get to a solution.

It depends how the the SATA cables are installed. With the SATA 3GB/S board the SATA connectors are placed on the far end of the PCB. Which then depends on the length of the SATA cable. If the cable was overlapping other cables for example a 24 pin. The SATA cable has to push the 24-pin cable down so it can plug in to the motherboard. And the 24-pin cable is probably trying to push the SATA cables out which may cause the SATA cable to tighten and create a bend on the connectors.

I'm not saying that everyone has done it like this. Sorry if you don't understand what i'm trying to explain, It's just that i don't know how to put it in words that can be easier to understand.

 

@ Curlysir

 

I didn't mean to hijack your thread. Nobody was responding and I have the same issue. I am only trying to find a solution for everybody. If you have any thoughts, it is your thread so feel free to post something.

No problem here. The more people discuss this problem the sooner we may get a solution. I would really like for the hot swap bays to work with 6gb/s ssd's. I have not tried the 6gb/s ssd with the replacement backplane as the system is stable connected to the MB in the bottom HDD trays.

Short term I am looking at using a mobile rack bay for my 6gb/s ssd. I will probably mount it in the bottom HDD mount and connect it directly to the MB. I will have to remove the front cover to remove the drive but I don't dismount the boot drive that frequently. Long term I will either wait for Corsair's solution or look at mounting the mobile rack bays in the current hot swap bay location, this solution would be expensive as the bays are about $35 each. My first mobile rack bay will be here tomorrow so I will know soon if this method is plausible.

No problem here. The more people discuss this problem the sooner we may get a solution. I would really like for the hot swap bays to work with 6gb/s ssd's. I have not tried the 6gb/s ssd with the replacement backplane as the system is stable connected to the MB in the bottom HDD trays.

 

Short term I am looking at using a mobile rack bay for my 6gb/s ssd. I will probably mount it in the bottom HDD mount and connect it directly to the MB. I will have to remove the front cover to remove the drive but I don't dismount the boot drive that frequently. Long term I will either wait for Corsair's solution or look at mounting the mobile rack bays in the current hot swap bay location, this solution would be expensive as the bays are about $35 each. My first mobile rack bay will be here tomorrow so I will know soon if this method is plausible.

Received the mobile rack bay today and installed it in a empty 5.25 bay using a 5.25 to 3.5 adapter. Hooked it up, installed the 6gb/s ssd and booted without a problem. After about a week I may get brave and see if the Corsair backplane will work with the same cable. This will give me a comparison and see if I can find the weak link in this problem.