SSD appears as uninitialized, lost all data and partitions (loop)

[Bec]

My Phoenix PRO 240 GB just lost all data, all the partitions and appears as if it has never been formatted before.

The system it was running on was Win 7 professional x64 and the laptop Sager NP8662 (ICH9M chipset on AHCI with latest intel drivers).
I updated to the latest version 3.2 the day I got it ~2 weeks ago and had no issues until now.

I booted from esata with a backup XP drive, had absolutley no data recovery success with ontrack and easeus data recovery programs.
I repartitioned the drive but by the time I got to the win7 installer the partitions were gone.
I tried this several times and finally I managed to install win7.

However I noticed that restarting the system was ok but shutting the pc down was causing the HDD to be 100% wiped clean...

Please advise? Could this be the firmware, should I try and downgrade? RMA?

[major53]

My Phoenix PRO 240 GB just lost all data, all the partitions and appears as if it has never been formatted before.

The system it was running on was Win 7 professional x64 and the laptop Sager NP8662 (ICH9M chipset on AHCI with latest intel drivers).
I updated to the latest version 3.2 the day I got it ~2 weeks ago and had no issues until now.

I booted from esata with a backup XP drive, had absolutley no data recovery success with ontrack and easeus data recovery programs.
I repartitioned the drive but by the time I got to the win7 installer the partitions were gone.
I tried this several times and finally I managed to install win7.

However I noticed that restarting the system was ok but shutting the pc down was causing the HDD to be 100% wiped clean...

Please advise? Could this be the firmware, should I try and downgrade? RMA?

Bec you have already tried every thing I would have tried,also I also hope it wasn't caused by the 3.2 firmware,cause a lot of people in the forum have also upgrade to it.how long have you had the drive if it has been less than 30 days you could send it back to where you got it from . if it is over the 30 days get that drive back to gskill and let them do all the work.I wouldn't spend a lot of time on it.sorry for the problem but it look like a rma to me.

[Bec]

Well it gets worse.
I tried to re-flash 3.2 in win7 x64 and got a blue screen.

Now the drive is not recognized, I get a bios error and the drive shows up as [SandForce-(S3)] and 25gb in size...

Is there any way I could blind flash the firmware again? On boot via an usb stick or something...
The drive is not recognized by the utility, nor does it show up in windows...

[fedup1664522]

I experienced exactly the same behavior, but I had not touched the firmware at all.

FM-25S2S-60GBP2 spontaneously erased itself

In that thread, I stated that it would be important to find out what happened to cause the drive to spontaneously erase itself, but I got no input back from G.Skill. None whatsoever.

I just got the standard response to "send it in for an RMA," which is of no help in the present or in the future.

I'd like to find out what is causing this problem so I can avoid it in the future. It's clear that other people are having a similar problem, and that this is not fixed by the latest firmware.

This is really ridiculous.

[major53]

bec & fedup1664522 are you both using these ssd in a latop computer? if so maybe you got some kind of static charge that got through and shorted the hard drives out.

fedup1664522 I'm like you I would like to know why a ssd would all of a sudden lose all the OS and not let it be reinstalled with the os software.did ether one of you experience any kind of power outage ether from the outlet or the pc you had these ssd in?

I know sending back the ssd is a pain in the you know what ,but it may be the only thing you can do to it now that it will not re flash or load OS.

I have had little flash drives to go bad like that, flash ram will go bad sometimes for no reason.

[fedup1664522]

No, I am not using any of my drives on a laptop computer.

In fact, the drive that erased itself was in use for two weeks, and then just suddenly went offline and came back erased.

If you just spend a few minutes searching through the forums, you can find a lot of people having similar problems with data completely disappearing. It's actually quite alarming.

So many people (including g.skill) suggest to send it in for an RMA. While I understand that may be the only option after the fact, I would like to learn what specifically is causing the problem so I and others can avoid it in the future.

There does not seem to be a proactive, bug-fixing mindset around here.

Here are some more bugs that should be fixed:

Firmware Update Program does not recognize drives with non-windows partitions

Individual activity LED not working in backplane configuration

[Bec]

So have you had this issue on more than one SSD?
The store I got it from has a 28 day money back policy so I guess It's either money back or having to send drives for RMA over and over...

This is really annoying. I really don't know what to do.

I bought this drive for speed but there really ain't any if I have to backup 200 GB weekly...

[fedup1664522]

For me, I only experienced this problem with one drive, which had Firmware 2.1 at the time.

GSKILL TECH said that the newer firmware should fix the problem, but if you search the forum posts since then, you will see that other people are still having this type of problem with Firmware 3.1 and Firmware 3.2.

[Bec]

I think what we may have experienced is a malfunction of the TRIM command.

Althought the data loss was after a power down the fact that nothing (well nothing but one empty folder) was recoverable clearly shows the SSD has been WIPED/TRIMED clean!

http://techgage.com/article/too_trim...s_impossible/4

As far as I researched I doubt this is limited to the sandforce controller or the SSD brand as no one seems to be spared even if the occurrence is quite rare.

What SSD optimizations have you used? Registry or power profile changes? What chipset do you have?

I have ICH9M And the last (I did all possible optimizations from this forum) optimizations I made were:
http://gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=7056 this although I wasn't using the microsoft driver and undervolting the CPU with RightMark CPU Clock Utility.


However I didn't use stamatisx's optimizations.


Could this be somehow related to the power profile or the windows registry settings?

[fedup1664522]

I was running Linux and had just rebooted the machine when it disappeared from BIOS.

I wasn't doing anything with power-savings on that particular machine.

I am pretty much in agreement with you about the drive misinterpreting something for the TRIM command. About eight years ago, I had a Western Digital drive spontaneously password-lock itself, probably due to a misinterpreted command.

FWIW, my motherboard has an Intel ICH10D SATA controller, and I was using standard Linux AHCI drivers.

I doubt this has anything to do with Intel chips, though. I've never owned a hard drive that has so many basic problems before, like being recognized by BIOS, being recognized by update programs, and spontaneously wiping itself.

I wonder if the other drives with Sandforce controllers (A-Data, Corsair, OCZ, Patriot) have the same problems.

[Bec]

I chose Gskill because they seemed the most reliable: http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCateg...y=636&name=SSD

AFAIK no controller is so far 100% issue free...