Sony TT RAID failed Keyboard destroyed what happened?

My RAID failed yesterday and one of the new drives I bought is dead. I only had it for less than a day.
I don't know if it is was the drive or RAID but either way the drive does not work but the connector does so.

I'm most likely going to send a ram module I bought back as I’m unsure the voltages of that ram.

My keyboard also developed a problem. Not all the keys work. I looked at it and the connector is burnt the middle of it. The keyboard connector is what goes into the sound board. I'm not 100% certain how it happened may be it was either the ram or RAID that did that or some other unrelated fluke caused by something else. I kept on powering of and on without logging of in test mode and may be that did it. I'm not a smoker and I never physically did that.

The ram I originally had was 7-10-F1 the ram I bought was a 4GB 7-10-F2. I think what has confused me is that I googled and read that the ram I bought was CL8 when I had originally CL7 it makes no sense to me to me that ram could be CL8 when the first letter is C7?

I put my laptop on my desk like I normally do and it just turned off. I powered it on and it said no OS found. I opened it and the connector looked fine and the KB was ok at that point.

The TRIM/GC/no GC combo of my drives (I was using a current and older G2 Samsung drive) may be can be ruled out as leading my KB to fail as the drive already had failed before this happened. If it had something to do with my drive failing though i don’t know. I also configured my laptop to boot without the RAID monitor starting up but had no problem for several hours I was using my laptop.

I could still use KB to press F2 to enter the BIOS until the next morning. It must have confused my laptop a bit trying to take the drives out of RAID mode.

The more I think about it the more I think it was the power button but I don't know for sure. I mean I looked at that connector after I did the RAID and it was perfect. Even up to last night it was ok. The paper that is on the keyboard ribbon is slightly burnt.

Any thoughts what caused this?

Should I send the ram back? That ram was used in the 7 and 5 in the EU.

The laptop is ok but I need a new KB now.

My other drive I’ve had since October is fine. The other dive cannot be detected.
I’m a bit hesitant to try RAID again.

 

Argh geez Rachel... You serious???

First of all, my sympathy to your situation (as I'm probably gonna try the same sort of mods sometime this year...)

1. The biggest issue of the keyboard. The burning does not sound too good, but I'd suggest a fine-haired paintbrush (brand new, not used). Just brush the burnt connector-ends. That should get any sooted-out stuff out of there; do this with both the keyboard-side and the main-board-side connectors. Then blow into the connectors for a double-check and reconnect.

If the burning is seen in the middle of the flex cable, then I really can't help you there; sorry...

The one thing I always do after refitting the KB from a disassembly is to check whether all the keys are working. I just open up MS Word or similar and check away... I'm assuming that all the other times you opened your TT up you didn't have issues with the keyboard?

2. Considering your older SSD is working well, that rules out the storage connections. Have you tried connecting ONLY your older drive with the new RAID cable (you have the FPC-126 correct)? Try connect your working drive to each SSD connector on that and see if the cable is still working.

The fact that your RAID failed means something is either messed up in the drives in question, or that cable. Did you do a FULL reformat on your new SSDs before using? (never do a 'quick' format with anything, just saves time from the trouble later on in usage).

3. The RAM confusion you seem to be having is the latency speeds. CL7 and CL6. You don't seem to have mixed and matched between different latency RAM sticks (checking from the screenshots), which is good. So the new 4GB total worth of RAM is not posting in BIOS? Have you tried booting with just a 2GB stick to see if any are potentially faulty?

I'd guess that if your old SSD boots up fine with the new RAMs then you should be ok; shouldn't have to return anything.

You are not in this category, but this info might be of use... You CAN mix and match RAM sticks with different latencies and sizes, but your overall RAM will only go as fast as the slowest stick. The thing that you CANNOT mix and match (I'm pretty sure of this but can't confirm) is the clock speeds of the RAM.
So your TT originally came with a PC8500 (1066MHz). You shouldn't go sticking in a PC10600 (1333MHz) if you have already a RAM stick with a different speed, even if the RAM type is the same. You'll see pretty much no performance change between the former and the latter, and I don't think the TT was designed to use PC10600 RAMs in the first place.
I do believe the new Zs are capable of both, and are able to utilize the speeds from the PC10600 RAMs.

 

Thanks 5ushmonster. Yes it is really puzzling to me i don't know what happened. I'm typing this on my SZ right now as i'm tired of cutting and pasting lol.

I did try the RAID connector with my original drive and it works perfectly. My OD and SSD were both detected. I removed it though as i was going to sell it but decided against it now if i want to try RAID again in the future. I have the FPC-142 and FPC-167.

The ram booted up ok after a while but at the beginning i was having problems but it could have been related to the RAID and the improper drivers i had so it is hard to say for sure.

I've put the TT together now as it is being shipped of tomorrow. I'm fed up of opening it but i might possibly do again to take a picture. The connector is damaged in the middle and has a burn mark where the paper is where the part number goes. I never noticed that before and i did reinsert that connector earlier.

The KB was ok up until yesterday morning. I could boot up and enter the BIOS now my F2 and other buttons don't work which made it impossible for me to boot into the BIOS.

The whole thing is just so strange.

 

The RAM should work ok on first-go. That RAID setup, as you say, must have done something; was it reading and registering 2x SSDs as seperate drives when you first connected the 2x SSDs up together? And I guess you went and RAIDed them from there?

I can only think of some sort of overload on the keyboard's power line to cause a burn that you are describing. I ain't too well aquainted with the TT motherboard, but you said earlier that the KB is connected to the sound board? And that is then connected to the motherboard? Not too sure if you can start your machine properly anymore, but have you tried playing back some sort of sound on your TT too see whether the soundboard is still alive? That could be the culprit for everything right now (might not, but still worth a check...)

The last time I suffered an overload is an MP3 player's USB connection. It was a company's proprietory connection, and I connected it upside down - didn't know till I saw smoke and caught the scent of plastic burning; the MP3 and the USB interface was burned out of shape, but it still works (both USB and MP3)...

I'm assuming you are shipping it back to get it done under warranty? Or paid service from Sony?

 

These are some pictures







This thing really has me scracthing my head lol.

I still get sound. The sound comes from another part of the board clearly and there is another connector for that as you can see in the pictures.

Also, something else bizarre happened on the day or may be that was the day before i cannot remember. My extension cord just stopped working and mysteriously started working yesterday afternoon but my laptop is not even plugged into it. No i think i can rule that out. May be it was the powering on and of? Oh i don't know.

I'm just shipping it back and see what happens.

When i powered the RAID on it was two seperate drives and then i upgraded the BIOS so it could detect the RAID in the BIOS and then installed the OS.

I think i better just send the ram back or else i'm always going to be worrying about it. If i can get the ram that i thought i bought, they shipped me another one that would be ideal.

The SSD was bought less than 2 weeks ago, i shipped it to a friend in the US and then they shipped it onto me. It is actually better for it to fail now than down the line when i would be stuck with it.

This could have led to something more dangerous.

 

I'm prepared to pay. I also do have home insurance cover which might cover freaky stuff like this.

I must say so far that Sony service has been second to none. I spoke with them on chat yesterday and then less than one hour later i got a call back with UPS details. I was instructed that pickup would be Wednesday.

Today UPS turned up but i sent them back as i was not ready and they will come back tomorrow. I've been told 5 working days turnaround.

As this is a white HK model with a US keyboard i might get an option to have a UK one which i would take. It is tricky to remove the keyboard as it is unibody but i have seen TT keyboards being sold without the palmrests on Ebay.

 

Do you have a surge protector? Could there have been a power surge in the middle of the night? The extension cord may have gotten caught in the surge and reset itself afterwards.

 

TofuTurkey i don't have a surge protector but i'm going to look into getting a couple now.

Thanks

 

Having one drive with TRIM/GC and one without it do you think that is a bad idea in RAID mode? I'm debating on asking for another drive intead of a replacement. The seller only has though TRIM supported drives. I know TRIM in RAID doesn't work but with GC something might be going on.

I'm also thinking of doing non-RAID mode as i believe that has the same chance as a single drive to fail.

 

I'm thinking having one drive with GC and one without means the overall degradation (speed-wise) ought to be slower, I can't think of any other effect. I do think GC seems to be a pretty good solution (for now at least): it's independent of the OS and other firmware, and I don't have to break the RAID drive up every now and then to erase the individual drives. I think this general approach is better than something that depends on software (e.g. TRIM).

I think robustness to failures has several levels, RAID 1 etc. would be one of them, others would including drive imaging etc. to some other drive in a separate location. For the RAID I'm building I'll primarily use the latter to protect against failures In any case, I tend to completely reinstall my OSes every few months anyway (except for OS X): Windows tend to bloat, Linux has new releases (and I'm too tired of incremental upgrades). So occasionally breaking up RAID may not seem so bad after all.