Corsair Force 3 SSD Recall

Just was checking up on Corsair's forum for an entirely different reason and I saw this:

Corsair Force 3 SSD Issues? READ ME FIRST PLEASE - The Corsair Support Forums

 

Uh oh...

Mr. Mysterious

 

I wonder if that's unrelated to the Vertex 3 firmware problems currently being investigated into by other companies, common factor being the Sandforce controller.

 

It wouldn't be a surprise if they are related. That being said as far as OCZ is concerned they can do no wrong and have perfect products. Their 2-3x worse failure rate (compared to Intel) says otherwise.

 

For the record, I have OCZ Vertex 3 120GB and 240GB, they work fine in both my laptops (Toshiba and Mac).

OCZ says only the SF2000 reference design boards are affected.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...hdrawn-from-Market-quot-is-this-true-for-OCZ&

Corsair Force 3 didn't work well in my MBP.

 

Phil, what issues did you encounter with your MBP and the CF3?

 

Freezes and crashes. Often.

Crucial M4 was more stable but also caused freezes during heavy multi tasking

Both drive worked fine in my Windows based laptop. Seems MBP has many issues with SATA III SSDs.

 

humm,,I'm glad I got Samsung 470 SSD, 6 mos,,no problems.same performance.. It will be interesting when Samsung releases there Sata 6Gb/s models and takes the checkered flag in Sata III as well.

Cheers
3Fees

 

Yeah, OCZ is a cheap brand...and you get what you pay for. Nothing but trouble. First they say the problem is only for reference designs, then they link to a thread where non-reference-design OCZ SSDs have the same problem.

Ok...moving on...I don't see any Intel drives being recalled right now .

 

waiting some weeks till ocz has to recall it's stuff, too. after they stated they don't need to, of course.

but yeah, recalls can happen. as long as the companies are open about it.

 

OCZ is anything but open. If a reviewer complains about firmware bugs, which have existed in the past and some bugs continue to exist, OCZ blacklists them so that they cannot get review samples anymore. In other words OCZ refuses to give samples out to reviewers that put out any negative work on their SSDs in an attempt to minimize the possibility of there being negative reviews about a product.

 

No way. That is messed up. Bet they are the only SSD manufacturer that does that too.

I remember reading a while ago something about customers being guniea pigs of the SSDs they make and something about that OCZ don`t test their products themselves.

 

IDK if they're the only one, but they definitely do it. That also isn't the only underhanded dirty trick they've pulled in the past (namely, switching to smaller process NAND with worse specifications or lower durability while continuing to advertise the better numbers of the old part all without changing the packaging or advertisements). They've been caught doing that at least two times, possibly three. If there isn't an investigation into false advertising, there ought to be.

This was the article in question.

This was the concern about OCZ's product that started the whole problem (aka the well known "OCZ drive drop dead" bug):

This was the result:

Basically it comes down to OCZ demanded that Brian review the drive with the initial version of firmware that performed 3% better, even though that firmware was extremely unstable. Just so that the numbers would look a little better. That also gives you a really good idea about how OCZ considers performance over all other metrics, including reliability.

Brian is a former owner of NBR (full disclosure: I joined the moderator team while he was still part owner so I've known him for close to 5 years now) and in my experiences with him @ NBR never once did I have any reason to question his integrity.

Corsair by far definitely takes better care of their customers and probably respects reviewers much more. OCZ is nothing compared to them. Or Intel. Or Samsumg.

 

Or Crucial! Sorry, just putting that out there...

Mr. Mysterious

 

Last I checked they used SandForce for their drives as well. Maybe they're okay, but I've read enough about problem with those drives from various vendors that I don't care to try their product. I'll go with something that has a more reliable track record.

 

Huh? No they don't. They use a Marvell Controller, same as Intel.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Intel only has one drive that does not use an Intel in-house controller, and that was done solely to get a SATA III product to market sooner. That should be a one time incident, but even then I would not necessarily compare Intel directly to other companies as they may not use the same firmware nor design nor quality assurance procedures.

 

Well that stats don't lie. Phil has a thread detailing the failure rates (as best as we know) and it looks like Crucial has the best record.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Stats based solely on reviewers are not necessarily useful, mostly because people who do not have problems tend to not complain. That being said there really isn't a more comprehensive and verifiable data set for this sort of measurement so it's the best we have to work with.

It looks like Crucial and Intel have roughly the same failure rate, while some other manufacturers are an order of magnitude worse!

Sorry Phil, but the sampling method is not random and thus skewed. Whether or not the skew is similar across all brands or not, there is a skew as we simply do not know the total number of drives sold via NewEgg thus we have no idea how many people are having positive experiences.

I can't stress enough that it is probably the most comprehensive data set yet for SSD failure rates, but that can only paint a trend rather than provide verifiable statistics.

You'll want to read this:
SSD failure rates compared to hard drives - Storage Forums

This could be a more useful analysis of failure rates; it is supposedly based off a retailer's database. That being said unless this retailer has a relatively firm market share it might not be a useful sampling either.

Same trend though. Intel at the low end of the failure rates, OCZ the highest, everyone else mashed in between.

I'd love to see NewEgg publish the number of drives sold and exchanged and returned pasted right on the product page, but I doubt that is going to happen any time soon.

 

It's obvious the Newegg research isn't perfect. Neither is the one french retailer's research.

The two biggest holes in the french research are:
-it's completely unknown how large the sample was for each product.
-it does not account for all the RMAs that went straight to the manufacturer.

Actually I think the Newegg sample is larger. And it does account for RMAs that went straight to the retailer.

Is it a coincidence that all Sandforce 1x drives from different brands show a similar (±20%) Newegg failure rate? I think not.

Assuming that people are more likely to leave a negative Newegg review after a failure for brand X than for brand Y is an assumption I will certainly not make.

And if you were referring to the Crucial returns in the french study, it is unknown how many of the returns were Indlinix based and how many C300. It is known that failure rates of Indilinx have been relatively high.

The more I think about, the more I start believing the Newegg study is actually more valid then the French retailer.

But we have been these discussion at length in the appropriate threads. I suggest we don't do it again in this thread about Corsair Force 3 recall.

Here's the Newegg count thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...mer-reviews-current-ssds-who-will-help-6.html

 

Agreed, but we don't know how big the sample size truly is. Nor do we know how many people are happy with their drives or were not happy, but did not review it.

As I noted, there's definitely a trend that the data indicates. It just doesn't prove anything, but it is strong circumstantial evidence.

Agreed, but I'm saying that as a whole we don't know how many people do not rate reviews and how that relates to NewEgg's sales volume.

Good point.

The more I think about it, the more I start wondering if you are right.

Agreed. Even moderators can fail to stay on topic sometimes .

 

I'm really wondering just how transparent Corsair is being with this recall, given how they continue to advertise the Force 3 series on their site without making any mention of the recall on either the product page or any related pages, as far as I could see from a casual browse-through of Corsair's site.

 

They mentioned something about their being a necessary hardware change. That probably means there will be a small delay between purchasing anything from their site, and actually getting something. I highly doubt they'd sell you something only for it to have to be recalled immediately.

 

Perhaps it'll have no impact on new customers, but I would hope that they would be a little more proactive when it comes to notifying existing customers.

Nothing about a recall jumps out on the Support pages either, for that matter.

 

CSSD-F120GB3A-BK is the drive i have yours doesn't have the A does that mean im ok? also have had zero problems with the two drives i have running them at SATA 3 6GB/s. getting about 480-505 mb/s with no slowdown. so keep or return?

 

I have the same drive as you and over 1 month with absolutely zero problems. Use my laptop roughly 6 days per week averaging 1-2 hours per day.

 

I've had great experiences with Corsair tech support. They really stand behind their products. While other manufacturers make their customers pay for return shipping, Corsair is willing to take that hit.

On many of their products, they ship the replacement to the customer first, allowing the customer to reuse the shipping materials for the return. Since they're asking customers to return the drives first, I suspect they were caught totally flat-footed and literally lack the drives and parts to do immediate swap-outs.

Their response to this kind of fiasco actually makes me more confident with their products. This kind of service & support costs a TON of money, and they're going to make darned sure they don't get a repeat.

 

A companies value to a customer for me, is not when I need to buy something or how quick they answer the phone...its how they treat you when they DONT want your money...

Bombarded by 'HOW DID WE DO ?' surveys when I buy something, I can never seem to find the box to check that says 'WELL, YOU DID A GREAT JOB STANDING THERE TAKING MY MONEY"...OK, a little extreme maybe as the sales people and support need love too, theyre not all evil, no offense to them, bless thier little hearts....

A company shows its true colors, IMHO, when they need to take action for an issue, and expediently execute a plan to fix something thats broke...the norm is, for me at least, to NOT expect it to be easy and maybe not even worth trying
to replace what I paid for...

Kudos to the manager(s) who step up, and fix what needs to be fixed. Everyone makes mistakes (if you don't, thats cause youre not doing anything) it's when they happen, you help those effected quickly and fairly, as you yourself would expect the same.

I hope Corsair gets thru this without to much ado and others who arent so customer focused are the ones who suffer, and need to rethink they're 'Got your money, go to hell' policies...

 

Samsung for me.

 

Force 3 180GB on sale at Fry's now
i'm trying to resist...

 

I have had my Force 3 120GB since October last year and have not had 1 single issue (stuttering, freezing, BSOD, etc..).

I use my laptop every day too.

 

I have to chime in on this one.....sorry cknobman. that is not alot of use on a computer. I use mine 7 days a week approx. 7-9 hrs a day. I use my system for work. I have had my intel 320 in for over a year averaging 8 hrs a day for that year, because there have been days that I have been working for 14 hrs on it there has been days I only used it to surf the net for a couple of hrs. averaging it out at 8 hrs thats 2848 Hrs on my Intel. you have approx 600 hrs give or take in one year of use....see the difference.

 

kojack you just quoted a very old post of mine. I just posted the other day how my drive is still going strong.

I know as well about computer usage and what constitutes a lot as I am a software developer and use a computer 5-6 days a week for 8-10 hours a day.

Sure my personal laptop does not get as much use but, regardless of that point, I can say there are absolutely no issues with my Corsair Force 3 SSD and I have never had a single BSOD or instability issue in the 9+ months I have owned it.

I have used it plenty long enough to know there are no issues with the NAND or the Sandforce controller.

Actually if you look at reviews and studies Sandforce controllers are great for providing longevity as they incur low write amplification. That actually is one of the mains benefits of a Sandforce controller which is one of the reasons Intel has moved to a custom Sandforce controller themselves.

 

Glad you are getting good milage out of it. Im still scared of them because of all the horror stories about the sandforce controller.

 

Now on the other hand I do have an OCZ Agility 3 (which happens to have a sandforce controller as well) in my gaming computer which does get blue screens once in a while.

I am not sure what the issue is but I know OCZ has earned themselves a less than ideal reputation.

I have even updated the firmware to the latest revision and still gotten BSOD's with my OCZ drive.

 

So its more of a OCZ problem than sandforce? I only bought OCZ products one time and that was it because of their awesome warranty. I returned 2 channel ram kit and never got a replacement.

 

Guys does this SDD have the Phison S5 controller in it? If so we just released a FW update for our MyDigitalSSD drives with the S5 and it solved all the problems you guys are complaining about in our SSD and should work for yours if it uses the Phison S5. Go check out the MyDigitalSSD very bad performance thread and Gull posted a link to the FW on page 21.

Good Luck

MyDigitalSSD

 

Is the Force 3 GT serie affected?