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Ruh-roh Shaggy, that smokin' fast 120GB Corsair Force Series solid state drive you bought might sputter and spin out. That's the word from Corsair, which says that a "significant percentage of these drives do not perform to specifications." Corsair said it analyzed issues associated with the stability of the recently released drive and wants users to stop using them immediately, even there are no signs of janky behavior.
The problem only affects the 120GB variant with the part number CSSD-F120GB3-BK; all other drives in the Force and Force GT families are unaffected. And unfortunately, it's not something that can be fixed with a simple firmware flash. While the firmware is busted, Corsair says the solution requires changes to the hardware components as well.
That's the bad news. The good news is Corsair is replacing the recalled drives at its own expense. Corsair will pay for return shipping to owners of affected drives and will exchange or replace them within ten business days.
If you own one of these drives, contact Corsair here to arrange a replacement.
Image Credit: Corsair
Comments are closed on this article
andrewc513
June 08, 2011 at 6:27pm
The original Force series had issues too. Corsair is bad about rushing the first launch of a new SSD series. In the case of the original Force drives, it was pre-release firmware.
Back when the Force series first launched, I got a 60GB Force for my Precision 390 at work. Like many others in their support forum, I would get daily BSOD followed by the drive not being detected by the BIOS. Soft resets didn't do anything, you had to fully power off the machine and turn it back on the the drive to start up again. This happened daily for me and hundreds of others until a new firmware was released after about 3 or 4 months. Then the BSOD's stopped altogether after flashing the new firmware.
LilHammer
June 08, 2011 at 10:45am
So you're saying you'd rather endorse a company that knowingly shipped hardware-revised SSDs under the same name and model number as a previous revision, which performed slower... and a company that also denied any issues or switcheroos until they were called out by Anandtech at which time they finally owned up to their "mistake"? They switched from 34nm NAND chips to 25nm and used only half the NAND chips in the same 120GB drive, reducing the number of channels by 50% and simply left the model number alone. You could say they never even bothered to test performance on the updated drives - either way it doesn't matter. They changed things, knew it would affect performance as well as capacity of these drives, decided to leave the labels alone so no one buying their SSDs could tell, and denied it the whole time.
Yet a company who proactively recalls their drives deserves no respect. I think you should reconsider what you value. I currently run a pair of OCZ Vertex 2 drive in RAID 0, fully knowing and taking responsibility for the risks. Though I've had no problems with the drives, I am seriously considering avoiding them in the future due to their willful deceit. If they treat their loyal enthusiast customers this way, why wouldn't they do it again? Besides, this was not the first time they left their customers in the lurch.
MrHasselblad
June 08, 2011 at 10:10am
I'll be sure to only endorse OCZ from now on for SSD's. Although I've been a computer professional for well over twenty years; I can also well realize that the general public has a majority of customers out there whom have zero experience whatsoever if trying to (or wanting to) repair their machines.
So let me make sure I understand this correct... After the user backs up literally all of the content of the drive - the drive is then somehow removed - a somewhat easy procedure, but... Then the same user goes without that same computer for about ten days, and then gets along with the time consuming process of restoring all files after a replacement is mailed to them.
Really hoping that there is a procedure in place to help someone whom has never removed a hard disk before. For those that really still don't want to try it, whom would pay for the tech?
Is this the new standard for proper customer service??
Baer
June 08, 2011 at 10:07am
It is not just the price of the drive and the shipping, how about the install, load and set up time? I have a Vertex II SSD which has been running great for about a year so I am a fan of SSD's and I also have a COrsair PSU and H-70 and 12 Gb Dominator Ram which have all been running well. Still I am disapointed that a flawed unit like this could have been released.
