Chunky_Chimp

As I updated in my rant thread here, my G.Skill Falcon was somehow rendered useless. I'm now updating that as follows here since this is no longer a rant:

I tried the drive in an external USB enclosure. Device Manager caught on pretty quick but only showed "USB Mass Storage Device". When I clicked "Populate" in the Volumes tab, it labeled it Disk6, with 0 bytes out of 0 bytes available, and a status of "Unreadable". After picking at Windows some more, and doing some googling, I've determined that the drive was physically damaged, but I'd have to void the warranty to find out which part was damaged. I don't know how to approach this, as it appears G.Skill has horrid support, while OCZ has excellent support. G.Skill is who put the identifiers on the drive, but all the internals (also the firmware) belong to OCZ. Which company should I contact, and what should I say? Is it possible for them to recover the IMCs and transfer them to a fresh drive so my data remains intact?

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kyleax1

Well it would make sense to contact the company that has their name printed on the product.

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Chunky_Chimp

I was quite prepared to do that, but I went to G.Skill's forums to look at how prudent they are at resolving issues... OCZ is MUCH better about it. Aside from that, I have no idea what to say as I'd have to give up my chance for a replacement to tell them what failed.

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eflyguy

You tell them the drive is not working. They will walk you through steps to diagnose the issue, and if they confirm it as defective, tell you what your options are.

As there's not much you can do to break an SSD, they will probably RMA it.

Forget what you've read about their support until you've contacted them yourself. Be polite, and also don't try to impress them with your knowledge. You know more than their reps in most cases, but they have to go thru a process before they accept a part for return.
..a

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Short Stroking - Why, and How

Old Hippie

I had no problem with GSkill replacing a faulty drive.

Are ya thinkin' twice?

TwoCables

This is true. The staff members that I see from roaming their SSD thread often say that it's best to contact them directly. They also do say that there are protocols to go through when requesting support, so our patience is very much appreciated.

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USFORCES

So much for these drives lasting 100 million hours with a 1yr warranty, they need to start putting lifetime on these because they aren't cheap.
My 16gb OCZ flash drive failed after 3 months and had to be replaced but it has a Lifetime warranty.

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TwoCables

But his SSD was put through some real hell. But under normal operating conditions, these drives should last the 1 to 2.5 million hours I've seen in print. After all, there are no mechanical/moving parts.

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eflyguy

Intel put a 3yr warranty on their SSD's..
Another reason I'm not concerned about having G1 vs G2..

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Chunky_Chimp

Right. If the first "blip" hadn't done in the drive, the next 5 probably would have. I should also note that I now suspect the firmware was corrupted somehow. The problem is, from what I can tell, updating the firmware wipes out the boot partition. Is there a way to update the firmware without "cleaning" anything?

But of course. The problem is, between my college, my sister's university, my brother's medical bills, and me not having a job, it's going to be hard to negotiate getting a UPS and still getting at least one nice thing I want for Christmas.

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