X256 Dead

[jmint]

I have a MacBook Pro 15" unibody - 1st gen, late 2008, X256 ssd.

 

Last night my girlfriend and I were watching a movie on it and about 45 mins into it, the video just stopped. I couldn't exit iTunes, I got the spinning beach ball and no matter what I tried, I couldn't get control back. I couldn't cmd-tab to any other apps, nor switch to any other desktop. "Lame", I thought, ", I hate iTunes.."

 

This morning I get up, turned on my laptop and started making coffee. Came back a few mins later and I had a gray screen with the question mark folder icon. I knew exactly what that meant - no boot drive. I tried restarting many times - same screen and icon. I took the drive out of my laptop, popped it in a usb external enclosure, plugged that into my MacPro and nothing showed up in Disk Utility.

 

So I went to this forum and started reading the posts where people have had their drives just drop off, disappear. I'm obviously not the first. When I bought this drive back on 8/30/09 I read thru this forum and saw there were a few probs but all looked pretty good. I do not have a MBP that has the 1.7 EFI firmware update, so I figured I was good there. All in all I got the impression that, yah, it's early adopter, but seems like the technology is good and I can take the plunge.

 

I based my choice on what was said in these forums.

 

I ended up spending $750 on this drive and it's toast, in a little over a month. What's worse is - I do regular backups - I was away from my backup since Fri (today is Sun). This is my work machine. I have a prominent client and a project (I am a software developer) that I am wrapping up in a few days. The work I did for them on Fri was critical and now is totally gone. Not only did I lose out on a days worth of pay, but now I have to spend another day to make all that up. Plus, I have my own side project that I've been working on and made killer progress on it on Sat - it has a companion book which I started writing. Lost all that too.

 

Lessons learned from this:

 

1. Get a backup in the cloud. I have a 3TB NAS at home that all my machines TimeMachine on to. That's not enough anymore I guess; wherever there's Internet, I need access to a backup.

 

2. SSD is not there yet. Bummer, because I was so stoked to get this drive. I am the tech guy with all my friends, so I told them 100 year MTBF is frickin awesome and I have no more moving parts (sans seldom used DVD drive) on my machine. After reading posts other have had from drives just dropping off, I'm backing away from SSD. In my mind it is not more reliable than regular hard drives and it is definitely more expensive.

 

What would at least be a little bit of a recovery for me would be a full refund of my money. I bought through NewEgg and, of course, they won't do this (I'm not buying from them anymore). As a customer, this totally screws me and yah, you read the fine print, but you also just expect things to work. Corsair is a big company with a lot of resources, I'm a small guy with little. So for me to be out $750 and at least 2 days of work hurts me a lot more then them. This whole thing has really just bummed me out. I'm no stranger to Corsair products and after this, I dunno if I will go back. I know the DRAM is different, but for me, it's tarnished the image I had of them.

 

My advice for anyone thinking about an X256 SSD: Don't. My experience and others I think says it all. And while I appreciate the RamGuy's premise that they're selling thousands of these and there are only a few isolated incidents (mine included), I don't buy that. The drives are still really expensive and I know no one else that has any kind of SSD in the tech circles I roll in - and those circles are very cutting edge, rife with nerds. Of course, that proves nothing, but to me, it says a lot.

 

Here's the lot / serial for the drive:

09320108-10045863

 

It appears I'm in the dreaded 09320108 lot. I'm filing an RMA now to return the drive, but honestly, it's not going to matter. The damage is done, and I'm not going to get yet another drive and have it do the same thing. So $750 (minimum) wasted, lesson learned. Stay away from SSD until the price comes down considerably and there are no reliability issues.

[Wired]

1. True, however even the cloud can fail: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/10/11/0335210/Server-Failure-Destroys-Sidekick-Users-Backup-Data

 

NAS + cloud should be fine, or have a NAS at home and another one at a friend's house wherever and sync them across the net (preferably sync them physically first so as to have minimal backups via the net later).

[jmint]

Yah, I'm going with

 

http://www.backblaze.com

 

for my laptop only.

 

They seem to have good prices and I was reading on their blog about how they construct their backup machines. Their transparency seems good and they're cross platform. Price is good too - $5/mo.

[Wired]

I'll have to check them out. Used http://mozy.com/pro/ in the past for work purposes.

[RAM GUY]

Let's get it replaced, please use the On Line RMA Request Form and we will be happy to replace it.

[jmint]

Hello Ram Guy,

 

I filled out the RMA already and received the instruction email from Corsair. However, I have noticed that some people are getting P series drives as replacements to the X series. After my experience and seeing more people coming in with failed drives, I'd like to get a P series replacement and not another X drive. How can I make this happen?

 

Thanks

[RAM GUY]

Once you get the RMA number contact our customer service and ask them what the replacement will be, by phone at 888-222-4346 or 510-657-8747 Ext "3" or by email at RMAservice@corsairmemory.com.

 

However, I was informed late Friday there may be a solution for that but the P series drive will be a replacement option.