Falcon II 64GB Faulty?

[walkerx]

Hi all,

I've had my Falcon II about 3 months now and been using it as my windows 7 drive - recently my pc totally crashed and i couldn't get into windows no matter what i tried. In the end I though i would do a re-install but this failed, so I ended up installing W7 on my standard SATA drive.

I noticed the latest firmware was ready for download so downloaded, ran it (requires XP compatibility mode) and upgraded the firmware on the SSD. During the process it mentioned there were some bad blocks, but stated the upgrade was succesful and the drive reports itsef as using firmware 1916.

The health status is reported as good @ 94%, with 67 (103 decimal) blocks listed as bad. But every now and then when boot up my pc it wont boot from the drive.

Now I've also noticed that if your pc crashes it could cause a problem with the SSD as under the tweaks it advises you to set 'enable cache' as not required, but the system will not allow you to edit it, thus giving the potential of data loss when system crashes.

can anyone advise on next course of action

thanks

[GSKILL TECH]

You can simply send it in for a new replacement and the new SSD should run fine.

http://www.gskill.com/rma.php

Thank you
GSKILL TECH

[walkerx]

ok, have received the rma, but is this correct UK users have to send them back to Taiwan.

Do you not have a returns department in europe?

Also if have to send back to Taiwan, what are the costs going to be and the details need for exporting from UK and how long will it take

[GSKILL TECH]

Unfortunately, we currently do not have a Europe RMA office, so you will need to send it to Taiwan. Shipping will be quick and simple, we will note as gift or sample so you do not occur any tariffs or taxes.

Thank you
GSKILL TECH

[walkerx]

Thanks,

Will this actually be door-to-door so I incur no additional charges, will the product be insured during transit?

[GSKILL TECH]

Yes, should be door to door and insured so there will be no accidents on our end.

Thank you
GSKILL TECH

[walkerx]

thanks, as it's under warranty (purchased dec 23rd 2009) i've taken the rma information to my supplier and asked them to deal with it, due to the costs involved in shipping to taiwan.

[walkerx]

I've withheld sending the drive back to GSKILL for RMA for the following reason.

Currently it works as expected on any Intel Based System, but on any AMD Based System the drive has issues.

This suggests it's an AMD issue and not a fault with the drive, but we need to do further testing in various boards. But so far the drive fails in 5 AMD boards and works in 2 Intel boards.

Can you advise which controller you use on these drives?

thanks

[sspinboy]

walkerx,
i'm curious about what SATA mode you run while you encountered fail in AMD platform.
IDE or AHCI?
And the fail you mean is to disable write-cache?
Because i encountered fail when i tried to disable write-cache on MSI 790FX-GD70 with SATA running IDE mode,but it work if i run SATA in AHCI mode.

[walkerx]

We've tried it in IDE and sure had same with ACHI, but will retry tonight.

Either way you should be able to disable the cache under either setting.

But it still doesn't getting around the issue of not being able to boot properly or install when configured as IDE..

regards

[sspinboy]

hey walkerx
Could you list the model name of AMD boards that you install OS on and encounter failed.
Maybe i have the same boards to reproduce your issue.

[walkerx]

Fujitsu Intel Core 2 Laptop - Works fine
DKA790GX-Plat (Phenom II x4 940) - Can't disable write-cache, issues installing and rebooting
MSI K9N-SLI-2F (AMD 5600) - Can't install as says can't create partition
ASROCK P4I65G (Celeron 2.6) - Works fine
ASUS M3A78 (Phenom 9950) - Can't disable write-cache as slave, won't boot as master
Asus M2N-SLI (AMD 4200+ DC) - Can't disable write-cache as slave, won't boot as master
Asus A7N8X deluxe (Athlon 2500+) - Can't disable write-cache as slave, won't boot as master
Gigabyte M57SLI-S4 (nforce 570 sli) motherboard running windows xp and the ssd as slave, the write-cache can be disabled without problems, but there were intermittent post problems with drive connected.
ASUS nforce 4 motherboard the pc wouldn't get past post with the SSD installed.
Gigabyte P55-US3L we were able to disable write-cache under Windows 7

We also retried back in the two MSI boards last night and even though we had the initial problems above we were able to fully install Windows 7 64bit under IDE/ACHI modes and able to disable the cache.

There is definitely something wrong with the drive for it being intermittent like this. But also I would not expect the drive to be only 94% good after 4 months of use and containing 103 bad blocks, especially when I have hard drives that are 2 years old and not one issue with them.