mimarsinan Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 I purchased 4 Force F240's about two weeks ago, and set up a RAID 0 array with them; using Intel Matrix RAID controller on my D901F Clevo notebook. It was fast, but the RAID 0 array collapsed in little over a week. Cause: One of the drives appeared to be missing to the RAID BIOS. Removing the drive and trying to access it on an external USB enclosure caused "USB device not recognized" error in Windows. Trying the drive on other notebook computers - the drive wasn't even recognized in the BIOS. I returned the drive, and got a replacement. Rebuilt the RAID 0 array. Today, the second RAID 0 array collapsed. This time, it is a different drive that failed. Leaving the issue of downtime aside - and I was lucky because I do make VERY frequent backups - what is going on with these drives? Come on, drives getting bricked in just a week? This is UNBELIEVABLE. I resent my investment in 4 of these. The retailer where I purchased them will not issue a refund for all 4 of the drives. And I will certainly not trust any single drive, given the frequency of failures I have experienced. People of Corsair - do you have anything to say about the failure rates of your drives, and do you have any remedy to offer, before I go public with this scandalous information? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wired Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 People of Corsair - do you have anything to say about the failure rates of your drives, and do you have any remedy to offer, before I go public with this scandalous information?No, I don't work for Corsair. This is a public forum, so you've already gone public, just an FYI :) Corsair will more than likely ask you to RMA the drive to them for a failure analysis. Just a head's up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synbios Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 Intel Matrix RAID is quite old and was replaced by Rapid Storage Technology at least a few years ago. Notebooks don't play well with the Force SSDs cause they usually can not provide enough power to keep it running or detectable. Soft reboots can typically remedy the problem though. Sure you can say that the drives are faulty in that respect but the actual drives getting bricked or erasing your data is pretty rare. The drives play nicely with most desktops. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frustrator Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 So basically you're saying that no remedy can be found for Force SSDs (not only from Corsair) in laptops? Clearly, if they require too much power to be detectable firmware updates won't change this, right? We're already waiting for 9 months to see any progress for this issue (S3 boots), but like it stands right now, better stop hoping then .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synbios Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 So basically you're saying that no remedy can be found for Force SSDs (not only from Corsair) in laptops? Clearly, if they require too much power to be detectable firmware updates won't change this, right? We're already waiting for 9 months to see any progress for this issue (S3 boots), but like it stands right now, better stop hoping then .... These are my own observations but that's my guess as to why we have not seen firmware updates that correctly addresses the issue yet. I know they are still working on it, so it is possible they can implement a fix in the firmware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rminnocent Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 Intel Matrix RAID is quite old and was replaced by Rapid Storage Technology at least a few years ago. Notebooks don't play well with the Force SSDs cause they usually can not provide enough power to keep it running or detectable. Soft reboots can typically remedy the problem though. Sure you can say that the drives are faulty in that respect but the actual drives getting bricked or erasing your data is pretty rare. The drives play nicely with most desktops. Is 1,5W to much to be detected, strange? I Hope not because I ordered 2x force 3 240GB for a raid 0 configuration in my laptop :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimarsinan Posted May 31, 2011 Author Share Posted May 31, 2011 Intel Matrix RAID is quite old and was replaced by Rapid Storage Technology at least a few years ago. Notebooks don't play well with the Force SSDs cause they usually can not provide enough power to keep it running or detectable. Soft reboots can typically remedy the problem though. Sure you can say that the drives are faulty in that respect but the actual drives getting bricked or erasing your data is pretty rare. The drives play nicely with most desktops. Did you even read my post? I have had TWO drives bricked in the past two weeks, approximately ONE drive PER week is getting bricked. BRICKED means, as I ALREADY wrote, BRICKED. I have tried them in external USB enclosures as well as other notebooks via internal SATA connection. BRICKED means BRICKED as in no BIOS or external USB detects them. Don't blame Intel Matrix, because I am using their latest Rapid Storage driver, and the latest BIOS for the ICH10R controller in the notebook. Buyer beware...these drives do NOT stand up to real world use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimarsinan Posted May 31, 2011 Author Share Posted May 31, 2011 No, I don't work for Corsair. This is a public forum, so you've already gone public, just an FYI :) Corsair will more than likely ask you to RMA the drive to them for a failure analysis. Just a head's up. Oh, I haven't gone public yet. Going public means issuing a press release with detailed documentation of the very high failure rates of these drives, possibly accompanied by a lawsuit for time and materials loss, and possibly followed up with a class action lawsuit. I will put the full power of my company behind this and make sure Corsair gets a LOT of PR. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wired Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 Are you stating that you believe that your data set that's been posted here (2/4) is thorough enough for something like that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimarsinan Posted May 31, 2011 Author Share Posted May 31, 2011 Are you stating that you believe that your data set that's been posted here (2/4) is thorough enough for something like that? Are you saying you think Corsair can wriggle its way out of this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wired Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 I'm asking a question based on statistics and the scientific method, nothing more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimarsinan Posted May 31, 2011 Author Share Posted May 31, 2011 Exactly by the same method, I am saying I find it VERY surprising that I experienced COMPLETE failures of TWO different F240 units, one week apart; whereas previously on the same system, SSD failures occurred at the frequency of about once a year. So was I so unlucky that out of five brand new drives, two bricked themselves, resulting in an average of one week longevity for the total RAID 0 array? Or are similar Google search results cluing us into something disturbing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 Please use the RMA link on the left side of this page and we'll replace your drives. We are very sorry that you had an issue with 2 drives. Can you explain in more detail what specifically you were doing at the time of the failure, the system and drive configuration, etc? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimarsinan Posted May 31, 2011 Author Share Posted May 31, 2011 Thanks, Yellowbeard, for providing an RMA option. At the time of the failure, the system was off. Meaning, during both failures, no issue at all was apparent, the system was working and shut down normally; and when turned on the next day, the bricked drive would simply disappear from the RAID BIOS - collapsing the array. As described previously, once bricked in this fashion, the drives do not register in any notebook BIOS or via USB/eSATA external enclosures. I made a point of validating and re-validating the entire RAID array before all failures. This isn't an intermittent failure or some kind of error that gives any indication. Everything works 100%, until, one of the drives just dies off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimarsinan Posted May 31, 2011 Author Share Posted May 31, 2011 I have filed in an RMA request with ID #2071230. This is just for one drive, as I had previously replaced the other defective drive directly through the retailer. I would VERY MUCH appreciate expedited processing on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimarsinan Posted June 1, 2011 Author Share Posted June 1, 2011 Just a reminder. It's been more than 24 hours since I filed for the RMA, no response yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimarsinan Posted June 1, 2011 Author Share Posted June 1, 2011 I just finished imaging the entire system, and shut it down. Currently the array has only 3 drives instead of 4...and I rebuilt the RAID 0 with these 3 drives. Well - you guessed it. After shutting down and booting back up, the array is AGAIN corrupt. No drive appears to be bricked, but the drive with serial number: 6512000004080034 Has "magically" been disowned by the RAID array - it doesn't show in the list of RAID devices. Do I need to RMA this drive as well? Is it about to fail too? Seriously, what is going on? If these drives are not RAID-able, I expect Corsair to issue a FULL REFUND for me on the purchase price of these drives, or replace them with RAID-able, comparable SSD's that don't die like flies. Corsair? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 I have a RAID-0 stripe of Force drives on my 2 personal machines and have never had an issue. My suggestion would be to stop putting them into that machine you have. It could be something killing them as opposed to them simply dying on their own. I have never seen 1 person with this many bricks. The odds that it is solely the drives are minute. If after a complete power off, remove the power cord from the machine and then a cold boot the drive does not reappear, RMA it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimarsinan Posted June 2, 2011 Author Share Posted June 2, 2011 I don't believe its the machine, I have been using Memoright's SLC drives on this system since 2008. The Memoright's also fail at the rate of about one per year, which still being unfortunate, is far more acceptable than a rate of one per week. Have these drives been stress-tested in RAID 0 setups in arrays of 3 or 4 with ICH10R firmware raid? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimarsinan Posted June 2, 2011 Author Share Posted June 2, 2011 Please be advised that I have returned the defective drive under DHL tracking number 4068767043. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimarsinan Posted June 3, 2011 Author Share Posted June 3, 2011 Yellowbeard, have these drives been stress-tested in RAID 0 setups in arrays of 3 or 4 with ICH10R firmware raid? Clearly there's an issue with this setup. The least corsair can do is determine the root cause of the drives getting bricked, to save others the agony of weekly failures. Most people don't backup - I am lucky that I do - even then, the significant downtime due to imaging and daily losses should never have happened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employee RAM GUY Posted June 8, 2011 Corsair Employee Share Posted June 8, 2011 I also have had Force drives under Raid 0 setups and never seen issues myself. I have ran many tests in Raid 0 using them different ways without any failures. I even took the liberty to switch my motherboard out using the same chipset and still not break the raid. How exactly are the drives being used? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimarsinan Posted June 14, 2011 Author Share Posted June 14, 2011 RAM GUY, thanks for the response. I am using the drives inside a D900-F (Clevo, sold by Eurocom reseller) under ICH10-R Intel RAID 0. OS is Server 2003 and the latest Intel Rapid Storage drivers are installed. The RAID 0 array validates fine under the RST tool. This is the InstallAware build machine, so it gets to run a lot of VMs, and pack our product. 8 GB of data is compressed into 5 separate packages simultaneously using 10 threads on the 990X CPU. Then the data is tested on VMs - generally four of them running at the same time, each assigned to two cores - an uncompressed build is mounted as an ISO on each of the four VMs, where they install the 8 GB data onto the OS's being tested on. This level of activity doesn't always happen, but a few times around new releases, it does happen quite a few times each week. This is when the drives failed. So far I am running with just 3 drives and haven't had any new failures. On that note, while my package has been received by Corsair according to DHL, I have still NOT heard back from your RMA department regarding return shipment. It's been well over a week since return receipt. Could you please check why its taking so long, while I keep my fingers crossed here that the array won't collapse again? I appreciate your help. Right near the release of InstallAware 11 these Corsair drives failed - TWICE as described above - which has caused a lot of pain and frustration. The least you could do is ensure the RMA process goes smoothly, but so far that is also a week overdue. Our customers demand a refund in these kinds of sustained under-performance situations. Since the retailer where I purchased the drives does not honor refund requests, I am wondering if Corsair itself might refund us the cost of the drives, given the extenuating circumstances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employee RAM GUY Posted June 15, 2011 Corsair Employee Share Posted June 15, 2011 Contact our Customer Service Dept for status update. 888-222-4346 Ext 701 or email them at RMAservice@corsairmemory.com. Intel chip-set I found to work best with 3 force drives since having another in raid 0 saturates the storage controller, which possibly might be causing the issues? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimarsinan Posted June 16, 2011 Author Share Posted June 16, 2011 Do you think then its the Intel storage controller when used with 4 drives that is bricking the drives? There isn't enough space with three drives to run the InstallAware build machine...I do need all 4 drives to be active. As if on cue, I have received the replacement drive today, and am currently migrating the RAID 0 array to include the 4th drive. If another drive gets bricked yet again as a result of this -> will you take this to be evidence that the storage controller is at fault? If that does indeed happen - how would you suggest I move forward? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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