Corsair Force Failure?

[Philth]

Bought a refurbished Corsair Force 60GB SSD off newegg.ca a little less than a year ago. Installed windows 7 to it and everything was smooth up until a couple of weeks ago when my system would lock up and crash during mundane tasks (browsing chrome). Upon restart I'd get boot sector error messages. I tried a windows 7 repair disk, but it found nothing. Eventually it would boot back up to windows, usually after unplugging/replugging the sata and power cable, but within 15 mins I would get the same crash experience and boot sector error. Tried reinstalling Windows, which seemed to work for a day or so but then I began getting the same symptoms.

Anyone else have problems like this? Is it common for these first generation Corsair SSDs? Most importantly, anyone have any experience with their warranty system (or am I SOL with a bad drive)?

[EmptyMellon]

Have you installed the latest Firmware? Force Series Firmware 2.4 Update (SATA II DRIVES ONLY) - The Corsair Support Forums

If so, then...

Have you contacted Corsair Customer Support?

[maverick_brent]

I had one die on me, your lucky your even getting it to boot at all, mine died to the point it wasn't recognizable in bios what-so-ever. and unfortunately its a refurb so your warranty is done for. hopefully the firmware update will work, if not I would try doing a complete wipe and format. hopefully that will get ya going again...

[Galcobar]

SF-1200's classic disappearing from BIOS error. Unfortunately, Sandforce never did identify the cause of those random disappearances and thus never wrote a firmware fix. For some people updating the firmware will fix the issue, but there's no certainty to that. Similarly, a secure erase and re-install can solve it, at least temporarily. One other possibility for saving the drive is to pull the power cable and leave it for several hours. That can sometimes ressurect the drive.

However, before you do any of that I'd take the few minutes of operation you get each time you power-cycle (it's the unplugging the power cable which temporarily clears the lock) to pull whatever necessary files you can off the drive. You can't get much before the drive locks, but you should be able to retrieve some smaller files.

[Philth]

Thanks for the info. Luckily it was only system files on that drive, nothing worth saving. At the price of SDDs these days, I think I might just replace and forget this one if it's a common hardware issue. Don't feel like dealing with unstable SDDs.