Falcon II 64gb problem

[skozzy]

I have a FM-25S2I-64GBFII 64gb Falcon II drive which GSkill supplied as a warranty replacement about a year ago or less of my previous 64gb SSD which stopped working. This drive now apears to be going bad.

When I run a Read Scan on the drive with HDtune it reads upto 10.5gb into the drive then freezes, once it freezes the drive no longer responds and the system eventually hangs.

The SMART show a bunch of figures
01 Raw Read Error Rate is 5
09 Power On Hours Count is 67
C6 Offline Uncorrectable (the number keep changing)
C7 Ultra DMA CRC Error Count (the numbers keep changing)
C8 Write Error Rate (the numbers keep changing)
C9 TA Counter Detected (the numbers keep changing)
CA TA Counter Increased (the numbers keep changing)
CB Run Out Increased (the numbers keep changing)

The SMART status still shows OK, so how do I determine if the drive is faulty apart from it locking up a lot.

Also can I ZERO the drive safely and will it do anything good or bad ?.

Only getting a year out of an SSD drive isn't very good. I have swap file, temp folders, internet temp on a RAM Drive so this drive has had less use then it would if I left all the temp folders on the drive.

[G.SKILL]

HI skozzy,

how about C7 status?
Did it show warning?
please use jumper and use FW1916 clean tool to erase bad blocks.

[skozzy]

The result for the C7 Status changes each time I look at it, the version of HDtune I was using shows the SMART in real time, and the C7 Status changes every second or two and that number looks random to me. The SMART status says OK at the end of the line even though the numbers for C7 keep changing.

It has firmware 1916, but I don't know anything about the FW1916 clean tool you are talking about. Can you send me the program or give me a link for it.

[skozzy]

Well now the drive is going real bad now, after some minutes of operating after turning the power on the drive disapears from the system, rebooting it is still gone, only way to get it back is power off the computer then power back on. But several minutes later it disapears again and the computer crashes.

How do I check how much warranty is left on this drive. ?

[skozzy]

I have left the drive out of the computer for a day, then plugged it into a different sata port and tried to backup the data on it and after a minute or two the drive stops responding. Guess it's time to RMA it.

[skozzy]

I tried formatting the drive and it reports bad blocks. Then scanned it again with HDtune and it also shows bad blocks.

If I attempt to bios upgrade from 1916 to 2030 while the drive seems to be in bad shape will it completely destroy the drive or will it completely reset it and make it useable again.

Also can it be upgrade in a usb caddy, or must it be connected to a sata port on the mainboard.

[Tradesman]

Gskill should be in on Monday, know it's frustrating having to wait.

[skozzy]

I upgraded the bios to v2030 it listed many blocks of bad data, after the upgrade it seemed to run fine for about 2 hours, just enough time to install a new Windows 7 and do all the updates, then it went offline again. After cycling the power it had bad blocks showing in HDtune. Time to give up on it. I don't believe there is anything else I can try.

[Tradesman]

GSkill should be in today, might be time to RMA, they will prob be on the boards as soon as they catch up weekend email

[G.SKILL]

Sorry Guys,

Sorry for not replying earlier.
Please use FW 1916 clean tool.

Below is the link.
FW 1916
Please download this FW file first, you can follow the user guide.
Clean tool should erase all of bad blocks.

by the way, thanks Tradesman ^^

[skozzy]

I run the program assuming I did it correctly and it gives a list of bad blocks or bad data.
I will do it again and take a photo of it.

[skozzy]

Sorry for the delay in my reply here, but I havn't been well lately.

Anyhow, I set the SATA ports to IDE mode and run the Clean function a few times because I was not able to correctly work out which of the four in teh list related to my 64gb FalconII SSD Drive.

I have taken many screen grabs and will post them for you to examine and explain to me if the drive is faulty or not and will it ever be trust worthy for critical important data ever again.

[skozzy]

Each time I run HDtune the figures in the SMART tables change, after using the clean function I got 2 full drive scans without read errors, but every 30 or so blocks the scan pauses for 1 to 2 seconds then starts again. The benchmark test looked better this time then before, but it is blank at the moment with no partitions.

Is this drive now safe to use, can I be assured I can put important and/or critical data on it now. Or is the drive bad, and is it still with-in warranty and can it be returned.

[skozzy]

Just over 1 hour later and the errors are growing fast in the SMART tables.
Compare the difference with this picture compared to the previous one.

[G.SKILL]

Hi Skozzy,

the second photo, errors growing because it identified the real bad blocks but you don't have to worry about that, Flash ran down as time.
You can use it as a normal HDD.
Actually for using SSD, I always recommend users backup regularly.
Like what I said, Flash ran down as time and no one know when will it defective.