G.Skill 2 128gb causing data corruption?

[Pc_Madness]

Hey guys, has anyone heard anything about the G.Skill Falcon 2 128gb drives causing data corruption?

I know of 3 people experiencing this issue, and all 3 SSD's were bought from the same place at around the same time. (Bad Batch?) I'm hoping this is simply a firmware issue rather than a bad SSD, but anyway the symptons:

I've got Steam on the SSD, and it has a verify integrity feature for games, a couple of times I've had missing / corrupt files, so I thought it was just Steam screwing up, but as I heard that all 3 of us are experiencing the same issue, I did a little test,

Anyway, I've verified a game 5 times,
- 29 corrupt files
- 4 corrupt files
- 1 corrupt file
- All files fine.
- 2 corrupt files

I've also had several problems copying files off the SSD - "File not found or corrupt" errors

Another guy also said that he copied a large file to the SSD, and MD5'ed it multiple times and got different hashes each time.


I've also experienced a few errors with Windows files becoming corrupt, and once or twice when I've started up the computer my user account has been missing (basically it was a corrupt Services file that took the whole thing down, so it couldn't find my account), but on restart everything is fine.


My theory is that occasionally the firmware corrupts the data as its sent to the computer (but the actual data is fine) which is why on restart it works fine, and also why my computer hasn't exploded into flames because of files becoming corrupt.


OS is Windows 7 and the drive is in AHCI mode.

Where do we start to figure out where the problems lies?

[Titus]

I have a 256GB Falcon 1 SSD running in AHCI with Windows 7 64-bit and have not experienced any file corruption issues...I also have Steam and just went and verified the game cache of 4 of my games as a test (Left 4 Dead 2, DiRT 2, Modern Warfare 2 and GRID)...all came back as being successfully validated with no errors

the fact that 3 of your friends are experiencing the same issues means that the problem might indeed lie with the place you purchased them from...then again FW 1819 has been known to cause performance issues for a lot of people hence the reason most people (including myself) prefer FW 1571...I run the Wiper tool every few weeks when I notice any slight performance drop and I then get my full performance back

[Pc_Madness]

Sorry, this is a Falcon 2, not a Falcon 1, shouldn't have left it out of the title. One of the guy's drives is dead now, so looks like it was just a bad batch.

[Titus]

even though you have a Falcon 2 the drive itself is not very different from the Falcon 1...so any performance issues would most likely affect both versions as they both are based on the Indilinx controller with the exact same firmware

[wizard]

I to are having data corruptions, I will shutdown my windows 7 and there are no errors but the next day I try to start and the first time I got a kernel error, I did a restore from my backup and the next time it happened it was in the werfault and I again restored from a backup?

Should I try and downgrade the firmware?

If so where do I find it?

What is so annoying is there doesn't seem to be any errors showing up just doesn't restart?

[Pc_Madness]

Generally speaking Wizard I don't think you need to restore from a Backup, simply restart your computer and it should fix itself (or move the errors to somewhere else).

And as far as I'm aware, theres only the stock firmware for the Gskill Falcon 2?

I spose you didn't buy it from PC Case Gear in Australia by any chance?

[wizard]

Generally speaking Wizard I don't think you need to restore from a Backup, simply restart your computer and it should fix itself (or move the errors to somewhere else).

And as far as I'm aware, theres only the stock firmware for the Gskill Falcon 2?

I spose you didn't buy it from PC Case Gear in Australia by any chance?

No just rebooting didn't fix it, I went through a lot of test and could not recover from it (Chkdsk showed not error etc)
The recovery option of window would not fix it either, said there were no problems but still would not boot, The file system seems to randomly corrupt.

Yes it is the 1819 firmware but just wanted to see if there is any new one.

I bought it form CPL (Computer parts land) in Melbourne and I might be sending it back if I can fix this problem. I have tried new ram, new power supply new install 64bit Win7, I am going to try a new MB when I can get it sent from my suppler.

[bjone]

Try to make the same operation copy/md5 on both you HDD and your SSD a lot of times.

If the SSD has issues each time and never the HDD, obviously it's the SSD does have an issue. You can try limiting its bandwith to SATA 150 (no NCQ....)
(you can memtest/OCCT to be sure that the CPU/Mobo/ram are sane)

[wizard]

Try to make the same operation copy/md5 on both you HDD and your SSD a lot of times.

If the SSD has issues each time and never the HDD, obviously it's the SSD does have an issue. You can try limiting its bandwith to SATA 150 (no NCQ....)
(you can memtest/OCCT to be sure that the CPU/Mobo/ram are sane)

I have done a memory test (Win7 test and memtest86 OK

I have put different Memory NO CHANGE

I don't have problems with my RAID0 Hard driver (That I have found)

I have tried WIN7 64 bit and have the same problem.

I am using ACHI on the Sata can this be the problem?

I don't think I want to slow the SATA down as the would defeat the purpose of SSD?

[Pc_Madness]

wizard, I was using ACHI as well, same with two other people I know with the issue. I had to switch back to IDE because the drive I'm using for my OS now is a SATA1 piece of crap, but I've been trying to reproduce this error now that I can do whatever I want with the SSD, but no luck. :\ I might try putting it into my server and seeing if I cause problems then, thats running ACHI as well.

Whats the best way to test the drive for errors? I've been copying 720p videos off and on the drive, and no problems.