All Corsair SSD and freezing problems

Right. Even lazily browsing the forum, the single most serious problem many users report - including myself - are the random freezes of most Corsair SSD drives.

 

Yes, I did do a fresh install on a factory-new (thus I imagine secure wiped etc.) disk. I did do tinkering, which sort of helped but did not solve the freezing problem completely, etc. etc. etc.

 

I am a Senior Consultant, Windows Server and client platforms expert, MCSE, MCT and all those things and I can say two things:

 

- A fully debugged product should not require customers to do what I am doing now, search the web for unprofessional and undocumented/unconfirmed "solutions", skimming forums, tinkering with non-standard OS settings (Windows 7 in this case).

- I use my computers as tools for my business. I expect that the components I build them from perform according to normal expectations. If not, they have a direct impact on my business. This is far from good. See below.

 

 

It seems to me that the current crop of especially Force 3 60 and 120GB drives all exhibit the freezing problem. Corsair is selling a flawed product on to unsuspecting customers.

 

I demand a definite fix to ALL freezing issues with their SSD disks ASAP.

 

Guys: it can in my view considering customer testimony, no doubt, be proven that the Corsair SSD products are flawed, which then opens an option for a class-action suit. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

 

Action now!

I've had a Force 120GB GT for over 6 months and since 1.3.3 haven't had a single issue. A simple Google search would have given you 3 other manufacturers to suit your needs for a STABLE drive (aka MARVELL!). As a consumer, part of the fault lies with you for not researching the product enough before buying it.

-Are the SSDs on firmware 1.3.3?

 

 

This is a support forum, This does not mean most of the Corsair SSDs have the freezing problem. Pretty sure the freezing problems have been fixed by now.

My drive is 1.3.3 and judging from other posts, so are many of those of other users that have the freezing problem. Some users have even downgraded to 1.3.2 because of this, stating that the previous version had less of the freezing. But it would BSOD at times instead.

http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showpost.php?p=568426&postcount=13

 

I detail above how, I have no business tie to corsair

just hope it helps someone else.

I've had issues with V1.3.0 as well. No issues anymore since 1.3.3 and I'm happy with it.

Right. Even lazily browsing the forum, the single most serious problem many users report - including myself - are the random freezes of most Corsair SSD drives.

--SNIP--

Guys: it can in my view considering customer testimony, no doubt, be proven that the Corsair SSD products are flawed, which then opens an option for a class-action suit.

 

Basically my thoughts quite exactly, thank you. Being an owner of an 15" MacBookPro (late 2011 model) and Corsair Force GT 120GB SSD I feel like the latter is the biggest mistake I've managed to purchase for years. (To even sweeten the deal, Corsair don't even have a way of upgrading the firmware other than finding a suitable Win7 system). I guess the joke's on me for being dumb and cheap enough to buy this piece of you-know-what and not go for a more expensive competitive product. Well, enough of that. I'll give this sub-product max a month and then it's buy-buy Corsair for life.

 

Thanks!

The Corsair Force Series SSDs continue to offer blistering performance with an awesome combination of read and write speeds.

 

What a load of utter bollocks...unstable doesn't even start to describe these drives.Regular/random hangs when the disk activity light is brighter than a nuclear explosion. Nothing to do and no solution from Corsair. Crossed off my list and anybody asking me for advise (as an IT professional, that means quite a few people).

Merged posts into the same thread.

 

1. Please post your system specs so that we may suggest troubleshooting steps.

2. Have you tried secure erasing the drive?

3. Have you tried FW 5.02? (Firmware links are on the left sidebar).

I guess this explains the random, few-second freezes I was getting before I secure erased my ssd and reinstalled everything. I thought I was getting a virus. I'd web surf, then suddenly the cursor would just hang ... frozen for a few seconds ... couldn't do anything. I'd ctrl+alt+del, and even that would hang on a black screen for a second or so before finally popping up the menu to pick task manager. I was sifting through all kinds of win 7 forums, b/c I thought that was the issue. But, after secure erasing my ssd and reinstalling everything, the issue is gone. However, I can't pin-point this specifically on the ssd. Like I said, I may have had a virus .. a virus both MS Sec Essentials and Malwarebytes couldn't detect (unlikely, but never know). It could have been corruption with the win 7 file system or something; the ssd drive does have to talk to the win 7 os, and I know from Vista experience that things can slowly, creepily start getting corrupted at times and make the os act bizarre without you knowing what's really going on. My point is, unless I have tangible proof / drive metrics that my drive was causing my freezing, then anything I say about it is mere conjecture. Computers are still complicated things.

It really bothers me when someone classifies a brand as junk.

 

I have one computer that has 3 old 40G drives in RAID 0 and have never had a failure.

 

I recently upgraded another computer from 1 Force 3 too 2 and put them in RAID 0 also, again with no problems.

 

2 other computers plus my laptop run the old 120G drives and all work great.

 

With that bit of information I cannot say that all Corsair SSDs are junk.

In November 2011 I built my new gaming pc using a Corsair Force 3 SSD. I was getting blue screens upon bootup. After updating the firmware to the latest version, my drive has been running smoothly ever since.

 

Update your firmware.

I'm another of those who experienced BSODs and freezes (Corsair Force GT).

 

As I wrote in other threads, the only way I found to make the SSD work flawlessly was to stick with MS AHCI driver. As soon as I install chipset-maker-specific AHCI driver, freezes and BSODs come back at once.

 

I've written in this forum that I got freezes using the Intel RST driver (I tried both the latest one - 11.2 - and the version recommended by Intel - 10.8), but recently I moved the SSD to a completely different rig (AMD 780g chipset + Phenom X4 2350e); and *again*, while I use MS AHCI driver no problem, but as soon as I install AMD AHCI driver I'm readily welcomed with freezes and BSODs.

 

Clearly this device does *not* live well with vendor-specific AHCI controller drivers. Since I read in various posts that the main difference between these drivers and the MS AHCI driver is the power management features, this makes me think that the SSD has a faulty power management. The fact that tinkering with SATA power management hidden settings in Windows 7 alleviates the problem seems to confirm this hypothesis.

 

And, before You ask me:

* YES, I upgraded to latest firmware (5.02)

* YES, I performed a secure erase after upgrading the FW

* YES, both my motherboards do have the latest BIOS

 

This was my first SSD, but I think it will also be the last for a long time. I'm going back to mechanical HDD. I'll relegate this SSD for use as boot drive in an old hardware I'm putting together for a self-built NAS.

 

I've been a Corsair customer for a long time, I do have other Corsair products and I'm very happy with them, but in this case I must really say I'm disappointed with the lack of compatibility of this SSD with vendor-specific software.

 

Regards,

Filippo

The drive you have sounds faulty, It should work for both Intel and AMD chipset drivers.

If you want to replace it, Request an RMA.

Hi Toasted,

 

I know that requesting an RMA would be the ultimate resource, but I just want to make sure I've tried all possible workarounds before opting for that. Continuing to search around the forum I noticed this post:

 

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=96663

 

I decided to try also this remedy. It looks like it is somehow working, in the sense that I've been using the PC for about 30 minutes without any apparent problems (prior to applying the suggested registry fix, the hangs/BSODs occurred within a few minutes, if not seconds, after boot).

 

I've noticed other forums where users complain about flaws in handling power management features by SandForce controllers. It looks like it is my case also. I'm not completely happy knowing I had to tweak an undocumented registry entry to fix (hopely!) my issue, but I still hope that SandForce will deliver a firmware update that will definitely fix this issue.

 

Best regards,

Filippo

having the same issue here. i rma'd the drive and got a new one. the new drive (force3 120gb) has newest firmware (5.02).

 

using it with intel ich10r sata controller. windows (7 x64) installs but randomly bsod afterwords. have tried using every sata port on the mobo. bought a new, short, sata cable. erased the drive. using ahci mode. tried with windows drivers and intel drivers. still, random bsod (never takes too long)

 

put the HDD back in. install windows. works fine. i have invested hours following the tips on the forums and not sure how much time the $%^ thing is worth.

 

its for sale on craiglist. help still appreciated if it comes in time to be useful.

Hi Droflim,

 

did You try the Windows registry workaround I pointed to in my previous post? It looks like it really works (2 days since I applied it and no freezes / BSODs whatsoever). Using latest (11.2.0.1006) Intel RST drivers.

 

Worth giving it a try before raising white flag...

 

Best regards,

Filippo

Hi guys,

 

I know this is an old post, but I just wanted to resume it because I noticed that Intel recently released a new version of its RST drivers, 11.5.0.1207.

 

Beside offering compatibility with Windows 8 (for those of You that are interested in it), I realized that these new drivers seem to manage correctly power management on the Force GT SSD.

 

So far I was able to overcome the stability problems with the registry fix I linked in one of my previous posts in this thread; but with these new drivers I'm getting no more freezes/BSODs, even after removing the registry fix.

 

Maybe it's the right time? :) Let's hope so.

 

Best regards

Filippo

FYI - Cross post from another forum

 

IRST 11.5.0.120​7 Removed by Intel, Memory Leak and Other Issues

08-04-201209:42 PM

 

Intel has removed the latest version of IRST, 11.5.0.1207, from their download pages. It has multiple issues including:

 

Memory leaks. Memory usage climbs slowly higher and higher for no good reason.

 

Some applications will BSOD when they are started when using this driver.

 

Windows will see the SATA interface as a SCSI controller with this driver, which is false.

 

The performance of this driver is below average.

 

There is nothing to be gained using this driver, so if you're using it, install an earlier version such as 11.2.0.1006, which now is the latest IRST driver Intel has available on their download pages. You don't need to uninstall it, and doing so will cause big problems if you have any RAID volumes on the Intel chipset. You can install an earlier version over 11.5, and you will see a warning displayed that you are installing an older driver. Just continue the installation and it will complete fine.

 

The only way you would have this driver is if you installed it yourself by downloading it from Intel, as no mother board manufactures have it on their download pages or software installation disks. It's possible that some automated driver update process could have installed it, but you should know if that was run on your PC.

FYI - Cross post from another forum

 

Well, I've found these drivers in the Intel website. Therefore, I can imagine that Intel fixed the mentioned issues and re-posted the driver.

 

By the way, I just checked the Intel website, the drivers are still there available for download.

 

Anyway, thanks for the info, I'll keep an eye on the memory consumption. So far, no BSODs on any application.

 

Regards,

Filippo

filippo, it's not on the site:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=21593

Important Note: This version of the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (RAID) has been temporarily removed from our website. Please use version 11.2.0.1006. Please contact Intel® Customer Support for additional information.

filippo, it's not on the site:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=21593

 

I found it going to http://www.intel.it and selecting "download latest drivers" from the main menu, then doing a search using "RST" as keyword.

 

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=21592&lang=ita&OSVersion=Windows%207%20(64%20bit)*&DownloadType=

 

Anyway, the note you mentioned speaks about the RAID variant of the driver. I downloaded the AHCI variant.

 

I don't know if the two are actually different drivers or if there are other reasons why these should be separate downloads.

 

By the way, it's fun: the drivers that cause headaches to anyone else work (at least, apparently) fine for me and vice versa :)

 

Regards,

Filippo

Look at the date of the file though, it's from 2 weeks ago. Presumably Intel forgot to remove it from all the sites, that's all.