Falcon 128 Data Recovery

[ubiq]

My Falcon 128 worked perfectly for 5 months. One morning, recently, it died. Swapped cable, machines, nothing recognized at BIOS, utterly inaccessible. No firmware updates were ever applied since it ran fine out of the box. Prior to RMAing it, I placed a jumper on the two pins figuring it was dead already, what's the harm? To my surprise, it appeared as an unitialized drive. I disconnected it at this point. Clearly, the drive is functional on some level. My questions are two:

1) Is there any method for extracting the existing data? Unjumpered, no BIOS recognition, jumpered, unitialized but apparently functional. I don't want to initialize it and lose my data if there's a viable recovery method.

2) What does jumpering the pins actually do? Why does the drive appear dead unjumpered?
Is there a way to determine it's actual status? If the data is not recoverable can I jumper the pins and self-help it back to its original condition? What happened to it ennyways?

Thanks for your kind attention.

[DisasterArea]

Utterly dead 64Gb Falcon 1, no warning!!!

OMG - I have exactly the same issue, a completely invisible Falcon 1.

I'm going to jumper it and update the firmware, as it was going into a new machine when I started having the issue - i.e. it never showed up when installed.

Luckily I'd backed up the contents and just migrated to a 128GB Falcon II on the old machine, then this drive was due to be installed and I find it dead.

Will let you know how I go.

[kkara4]

RE: dead falcon no warning

Exact same issue for me. The night before i shut down as normal, the next morning i started up and voila. "DISK BOOT FAILURE. PLEASE INSERT SYSTEM DISK TO CONTINUE". sigh...thought it was a random error so i restarted, but no avail, tried changing sata ports, power adapter, computer all no dice. interestingly got the same results as ubiq in regards to jumpering it, tried to initialise the drive in disk manager but it didnt want to initialise. would liek to get data back before i RMA but is there a solution to make it live again?. Im out of options ive tried everything to get it working. please help GSKILL TECH!

[DisasterArea]

RMA it is

Well, the jumper did nothing and I cannot see the drive. RMA it is. I won't be wasting the money on another G.skill falcon if I can get a refund that's for sure.

Why are so many failing???, so much for 1.5 MILLION hours MTBF, try 200 hours.

[ubiq]

With the drive jumpered, the firmware update software fails to see the drive, although it does appear under the BIOS. The G. Skill tech I spoke with attributed the problem to a dysfunctional controller, but was hazy on the details. I've just RMA'd mine. Anyone having success with resurrection, I'd like to hear how.

[Podling]

Hi All.
Add another dead Falcon-I 128GB to the list !

Bought mine last June & it has been fast & furious. With that speed and silence I could live with the occasional unexplained 10.0 second freezes and the daft/bogus SMART data. However, tonight I pressed 'refresh' on Firefox & FF crashed... then the PC BSOD'd... & then wouldn't reboot into Win7-32 'cos of some problem with 'NTDLL.DLL'. After a little investigation it seems that none of my PCs here can see the Falcon.

I'll try reflashing the firmware (from 1571 to 1819 (?) ), but based on what I've read on these forum pages I expect that I'll be driving over to the shop tomorrow for a replacement or refund.

Well hacked off !

PS: Last Summer most of my usual PC parts suppliers were offering G.Skill SSDs. Now none of them are. Curious...

[Podling]

Well, re-Flashed to v1819 and the SSD seems to be working again. Write speed has dropped 25% but its still good. I shall be keeping an eye on this SSD and tightening my backup schemes. Trust, once lost, is very hard to re-earn.

[DisasterArea]

lost cause

Jammy git!
Mine has gone to RMA. I have no faith in this product now. so scared of my falcon II 128 failing now $450 worth!!?????

I'm told 5 week turnaround

[Violet]

My first G.Skill SSD lasted ~6 weeks before it died. I returned it to the shop I bought it from, and had to wait seven weeks for a replacement due to a worldwide shortage.

The new SSD lasted a few days and died.

I have no faith anymore, and have asked for my money back.

[Gamelovers11223]

Add me to the same boat. Grrrrr, I'm so pissed. It's a second drive already. The first one worked for 5 months, the second for less than two month! Damn, I have lost all my data. Now on monday I'm calling Gskill and getting my money back! Plus let them pay for the data recovery. If not I'm gonna call BBB and get to the bottom of it. I am SICK of my computer being not working every two moths because of the same issue - a DAMN SSD.
Gskill needs to address this problem. There are alot of people except me with the same problem: SSD dies, it's not visible anywhere (bios, device manager) and NO WAY to get the data out. Notice, NOT ONE Gskill technitian answered in this thread, does it mean they have no solution? Where are you TECHNICAL SUPPORT?

[Hase1]

Mine currently Runs from 15.09.2009-Today.
I do daily e.g. weekly an acronis Backup of the drive on my external 1000GB

It's a Falcon I 120GB. Firmware1819
Running Daily non-stop from 9a.m.- 0p.m. Hour as Bootdrive

Over 991 Hour of usage


Indilinx SSD Status Tool
http://download.orbmu2k.de/download.php?id=50

[DisasterArea]

And this has what to do with this discussion???

[Extide]

I bought my Falcon 128GB in may of last year, flashed it to 1571 firmware when that came out and rocked that for a while until recently I crossflashed it to an OCZ vertex. Sorry guys but it seems like OCZ is MIA on these forums about these drives, and the first gen Falcon isnt being sold anymore. The Falcon II is even hard to find.

FWIW My drive still functions perfectly. (Knock on wood I guess)

BTW If you are interested in crossflashing to a Vertex you just need some of the old OCZ Firmware that uses the Jumper method to flash, use that first (I believe I used 1.1 but I can't remember now) and then you can use any newer OCZ firmware as the drive now shows up as an OCZ Vertex in the bios. I can provide the files needed if you can't find them online.

To answer the questions:
1: no there is no way to get the data :/
2: Jumpering the pins changes what part of the flash is displayed to the system. Either the part that is used for data storage (un-jumpered) or the part where the firmware resides (jumpered)

[950Sidewinder]

Bought my 1st gen Falcon in April last year and got the disappearing drive trick played on me. All the data gone, dead drive. Got a second gen drive (jumper moved up) as a replacement. This one all of a sudden BSOD's on me recently. Chkdsk was started on the next reboot. Sat and watched in horror as all the errors were racked up. Windows booted and was barely functional. Half my applications were corrupted. Fortunately I was able to save my Outlook PST file. Formatted the drive and re-installed Windows. Couple days later same thing happens. Had to go back to a conventional hard drive and all has been stable. I was willing to give G.Skill the benefit of the doubt after the early knocks they took. But looking around at so many of the same incidents and now a second drive failing on me like this... I'm looking at a lost investment because I simply can't trust the Falcon SSD. Also $60 out of pocket for combined shipping fees from Canada further adds to the pain.

[ace-a-rue]

i have two 128 gig falcons operating in two different computers..so far ok, but the above makes me VERY concerned...at least i am ready since i do acronis backups on a regular basis.

did everyone do the mods recommended about minimizing the writing to the drive since the write commands seem to be the culprit in wearing out the memory chips and maybe the controller?

also, does anyone use the sleep mode?...i do all the time instead of doing a full power on and off...it is just a faster mode to get the computer back online.