This would be an awesome sale if they were SATA III drives, not SATA II.

Gonna pass.

Run Away! Really-

Some really bad reliability on the USB drives.2/5eggs on 20 reviews.Series 2.ohhh were good.

SSD's had mega firmware issues- It seems these are NOT upgradable-from Corsair forumsfull of steaming refurb owners.

There are some great SSD brands out there, however, you hear a LOT about SSD's failing.

Got the GT version of the flash drives a while ago (16 gb usb 3.0) the read and write when in a usb 3.0 slot isn't much better than write times in a 2.0 slot.

So, refurbished SSDs that are only SATA II, and USB 3.0 flash drives with a write speed of only "up to" 12MB/sec? (note that USB 2.0 can handle at least 35MB/sec. You gain some speed on reads though I guess); and both with only 30-day warranties...
Not too impressed thus far unless there's a high likelihood that these are actually overstock or basically unused devices that shipped with a firmware bug, recalled/returned and the bug fixed, or similar.

Otherwise, flash memory has a predictable lifespan based on total amount of data written/overwritten to the device. It's a large number (usually many TBs), but without knowing how these might have been used/abused in the past it still seems like a potential risk.

If you can't upgrade the firmware stay away. You want sata III. Almost jumped.

To give you an idea, my mac (even your windows machine) can start up in under 20 seconds with a good SSD.

For SSDs I've had the best luck with Intel and the Crucial M4 series (but the M4 needs to be on the latest firmware, and the Intel ones are pricey).

These prices seem fairly attractive until you factor in that they're discontinued, SATA II, and refurbished with 30-day warranty. With SSD technology changing fast, also consider that these are previous-generation drives.


Thread on Corsair forum that's been going on since November with customers having trouble updating firmware on Force series SSDs (and without that update many people were getting BSODs after the system wakes from standby or sometimes drive not detected at cold boot):

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=100469

Do these at least ship with the 2.4 firmware? One would assume so, but we all know what happens when we assume. If they do, then it might make sense to pick one up for an older system that doesn't have SATA III anyway and isn't super-important.

I've had good luck with Corsair products, and they do stand behind their warranty (for the one time I had to use it for a DDR2 stick), but offering only a 30-day warranty on refurbished products ... it's just too hard to justify the purchase here.

http://www.corsair.com/en/support/warranty/

kmartind wrote:For SSDs I've had the best luck with Intel and the Crucial M4 series (but the M4 needs to be on the latest firmware, and the Intel ones are pricey).

^this. The crucial M4s are reliable and constantly on sale. Same with the Samsung 830s except they have higher performance. Intel is too expensive for consumers but are also reliable. The key here on all three is the SSD controllers being used.

What you really want to avoid are drives using sandforce controllers, like these corsairs. Sandforce drives are the ones that have the vast majority of the problems, and cause the horror stories. The exception being the one Intel series using sandforce because Intel forced custom changes/limits on the controllers to make them more reliable, and somewhat affordable, compared to their better series which don't use sandforce

How does one refurbish an SSD anyway?

cappo wrote:How does one refurbish an SSD anyway?

they are most likely flashing the newer version of the firmware to replace the version that caused the drive to be returned. Or replacing the controller. I wouldn't consider them any more reliable though.

As others have already stated these SSDs have posts all over about them failing and then getting worse with firmware updates, I wouldn't chance it..


I put a samsung 830 128GB SATAIII in my late 2008 macbook and it's running like a champ!

For just $20 more on the 120GB price, NewEgg has a brand new SATA III SSD with much more positive reviews.

Incidentally, think hard about whether you really want more than 120GB. SSD is awesome for read-mostly usage; but consumer-grade devices are not so hot for erase and write purposes. I'm putting 120GB drives into my desktops as Boot drive and Programs directory, with Documents, swap, media, etc. on terabytes of HDD.

As the primary hard drive in your computer, I wouldn't trust these SSDs to house your operating system, ect. But for the prices, it's not too bad to have as a secondary drive for loading whatever applications you use regularly. For example, I have a main Intel SSD (80gb) for my OS, and a secondary Intel SSD (120gb) for my steam games, since I primarily use my computer to play games. SSDs really REALLY boost application loading times, so to have a secondary SSD is amazing.

If you're new to SSD technology, or have a older laptop you want to revive, then by all means purchase one of the lower priced ones. You can turn that old laptop of yours into a decently speedy computer for your kid/loved one, because SSDs can revive old computers pretty well. An old Thinkpad R40 of mine has a 20gb onyx drive in it, and it runs like a champ.

You couldn't pay me to take one of those 32 GB Voyager thumb drives. I had one and literally had to RMA it 7 times because each and every one of them simply stopped working. Half these Refurbished ones are probably my returns.
And yes, I know how to use a thumb drive as I'm a Network Administrator. Properly use, Safely Eject, whole bit. They'd just suddenly show in Device Manager as an Unknown Device and that was the end of them. Will never buy another Corsair thumb drive again.

unksol wrote:they are most likely flashing the newer version of the firmware to replace the version that caused the drive to be returned. Or replacing the controller. I wouldn't consider them any more reliable though.

I was thinking the same thing as well. As many have said, the biggest downside with SSD is the limited reliablity even among the best. If we knew how many read/write cycles these had been through, it might be more attractive, but you are really pressing your luck without knowing.

That being said, these could have been a case where the customer couldn't figure out how to install it properly and returned it. I would OK with that.

30 day warranty is tough though. Amazon and newegg have been running deals on these just above this price point with a longer warranty. This one was on sale a week ago for $89 and came with a THREE year warranty, not a 90 day.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147163&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10440897&PID=3668349&SID=

The SSDs aside, the VOyager usb drives are great. I have about 5 or 6 of them that I use to send back and forth through the mail to clients. Pretty rugged, and work great. Gotta love USB 3 as well.

There's a lot of bull going around about SSD Drives. A lot of folks posting stupid anti-knowledge, and really they are just repeating a few loud mosquitos with bad luck. Or really have no idea...

1. Yes, flash memory has a known limited life. BUT, that life is far longer than the MTB failure expectation of a normal mechanical hard drive. Far longer. Plus SSD drives have built in algorythms to handle failures to extend the life of the drive even more.

2. Yes, SSD drives fail. But in reality, the failure rate is much lower than with mechanical hard drives. And, there have been some noteable cases in some types (like one itteration of Sandforce, only one...) All electronics have an expected DOA or short life failure rate. All of them. Around 4% give or take.

3. Yes, SATA III is MUCH faster than SATA II. But how many computer actually have the proper Intel based SATA III chips that would even use the speed of a high end SSD? Few, very few. Time will change that. But more and more I'd see so many try to be a blazing fast SSD into a system with a slower SATA bus (even III's, yes some of them are slow) and complain about how slow they are. One component doesn't make a system go fast. It requires all components to be in the right class of hardware for true speed.

Are these SSD drives good? Probably. Corsair has great customer service if you end up with the around 4% margin of failure expectations. Yes, these will be faster than your hard drive. BUT, they won't be the fastest you can get. Those SSD drives are still over $1 per Gigabyte in most cases. SSD is still somewhat new in the market and still a low seller. So, they have not had the high use rate to allow for market testing and engineering like older hardware has. Once the super fast models get down to about $0.50 per Gigabyte, that's when I expect to see a major change in the technology. So, if you want speed, jump in! But if you want no headaches, back up your data no matter what storage type you use! DUH!

I had two of those silly USB thumb drives... *both* died within 2 months. Each drive had a different use case, one was getting disk images written to it directly, and one was just doing normal file storage.

Within 2 months they both just stopped showing up via USB... the controllers died or something. fail.

I've had the 120GB Force series for over a year now with no problems. It came in a used laptop and ran fine in there for 2 years before I got my hands on it. I used it in the laptop for a while and then moved it to a desktop and finally pulled it out of there and gave it to a friend.

If you only have Sata II in your machine, these are totally fine. I also own two Crucial M4's, two Mushkin Chronos and one OCZ Solid 3. The OCZ drive was a nightmare to upgrade the firmware on but the Crucial and Mushkin drives were both really easy. The Corsair was average difficulty but really not that hard.

I always use my SSD's for the OS, Apps and games. Then I use a regular old hard drive for data. Also Overclock.net has a great guide on how to optimize your SSD.

Narg wrote:There's a lot of bull going around about SSD Drives. A lot of folks posting stupid anti-knowledge, and really they are just repeating a few loud mosquitos with bad luck. Or really have no idea...

There hasn't really been any misinformation (well, other than the suggestion that all Sandforce products are necessarily evil). I have used SSDs for many years (going back to mainframes) and understand the technology pretty well (controller differences, wear leveling, write throttling, write amplification, read disturb, TRIM functionality, process improvements, what NAND flash and multi-level cell really are, etc). For the most part the average consumer doesn't really care about those details; they want something that works well and is fast and reliable.

There is no need to automatically assume that anyone who is critical of any particular SSD deal is an "ssd-hater" and doesn't understand how lightning fast a nice new one can make your computer and that thay can have a very long lifetime when used properly.

I'm critical of these particular SSDs for specific reasons, and thus, it is my informed opinion that most non-techies and semi-techies would be better off spending the extra bucks on a new generation SSD that supports SATA III and has a decent warranty and better reliability record.

The really tech-savvy folks can of course make their own determination about the value-proposition offered by these attractively-priced refurbished drives. I'd consider picking up one or two for older less-important systems myself if I knew these definitely had the least-buggy firwmare already loaded.

Narg wrote:Are these SSD drives good? Probably.

Now there's a definitive statement. :-/

Narg wrote:But if you want no headaches, back up your data no matter what storage type you use!

Agreed, backups are absolutely essential in all cases. But personally, I also consider re-installing the OS multiple times when your flaky storage device craps out to be a headache. My advice, get something as reliable as you can afford to start with, keep the firmware up to date, and greatly reduce the chances of premature failure. A decent warranty can't hurt either.

Gatzby wrote:I absolutely love Corsair for their memory and their power supplies. My Voyager put up with some serious abuse over many years. Eventually even snapped the case off and was still able to use it.

They are also top notch with customer service. I had lost my power supply cables and wrote in asking if I could buy replacement. They shipped new ones out immediately, free of charge, even knowing it was my own dumb fault.

I've had no problems with Corsair RAM and it's a reputable brand that I'd recommend in general, but only 30 days of said customer service seems more than a little lacking. If it were 90 I'd give them the benefit of the doubt, but 30 sounds almost like they're just trying to dump these drives and wash their hands of them.

First, wanted to say I love the idea of Tech.Woot, my home pages already include Microcenter and Newegg so this is pretty dangerous.

That being said, I wanted to jump on this Corsair SSD sale, sure they're only SATA II, but it's still way faster than any platter type hard drive, plus the laptops I wanted to upgrade only have Sata II controllers anyway.

The warranty kills it though. I even called Corsair to confirm, and was told on refurbished SSD's they now only offer a 30-day warranty.

No deal.

ThunderThighs wrote:I hear great things about SSD drives. I'm sure some of you can help educate the rest of us.

And look USB 3.0 thumb drives. Be still my heart.

These SSD aren't what you want. But in general SSD drives read and write information faster. Lets say you are playing a videog ame. I will choose WoW as an example since it is widely popular. When you zone into an instance the load time is based on how long it takes ur PC to read the info. If you wait 30-60 seconds using a regular 7200rpm HD with a SSD you generally won't wait at all. But that is assuming the files you are trying to read are on the SSD. This is one drawback, generally speaking, with basic computer knowledge, the entire program should be written on the SSD. With more advanced computer knowledge, beyond my own, you can apparently dig through games and find certain files to move to the SSD then repath the access for those files so the gameknows where to look. For instance, my friend has all his .MPQ files on his SSD for WoW and D3, then the rest of the files elsewhere, and his load times are next to nothing with a weaker processor and 1/4 the ram I have.

Of course some of this info may be wrong, I do not pretend to be an expert. People here can probably verify or correct me.

Hope I helped a little though.

kmartind wrote:Agreed, backups are absolutely essential in all cases. But personally, I also consider re-installing the OS multiple times when your flaky storage device craps out to be a headache.

I have no problem with putting the OS on one of these. Once it's installed, and periodically thereafter, I image it to a spare smallish HDD (of which I have several since all my HDDs are now upgraded to 1TB). If it dies, I plug in the HDD "spare", get a replacement SSD, and image it from the HDD. Not really a hassle for a low-criticality personal system.

I have to speak up and say enough with the "it's only SATA II". I have a Macbook that only has SATA I, yes you read that right. I have a Crucial M4 in it and it boots in 15 seconds. Everything including the big slow apps like MS Office load instantly. Its as good as having a brand new computer. For day to day use it's the low access times that make the computer feel fast, and for that you don't have to limit yourself to SATA III only. By all means buy the best SATA III drive you can get IF you can afford it, but don't think you are somehow settling massively if you have to buy a SATA II drive.

Unless of course it's a Refurb Sandforce controller SSD that has a bad Rep. In that case run for the hills... Then again $45 for the cheap one is tempting for throwaway use... Dam.

mesostinky wrote:I have to speak up and say enough with the "it's only SATA II". I have a Macbook that only has SATA I, yes you read that right. I have a Crucial M4 in it and it boots in 15 seconds.

For full disclosure you should probably reiterate that a Crucial M4 actually is a SATA III drive and uses a Marvell SSD controller (not SandForce).

True, in typical daily use, the difference between a 3Gbps and 6Gbps SATA bus is relatively small (while the difference between a hard drive and any decent SSD, even at 1.5 Gbps, is enormous), BUT you're still getting newer technology behind that unnecessarily fast bus. Keep in mind that the SATA III standard was finalized in 2009.

AnandTech had a favorable review of the series of disks - http://www.anandtech.com/show/3656/corsairs-force-ssd-reviewed-sf1200-is-very-good

Hard to find information, it appears Corsair has named subsequent models Force GT & Force 3 but retained the same sizes.

Here's a review on the Sandforce controller itself - http://www.anandtech.com/show/3661/understanding-sandforces-sf1200-sf1500-not-all-drives-are-equal

The mean time to failures on these drives are kinda stupid high. I wonder what failed on these drives? I don't think I'd worry about killing the chips with MTF's like that.

EDIT: Found pages 2 & 3 of the review of the controller. Sounds like Corsair disabled whatever was causing the issues in the release candidate FW that was put out. Issue solved with ver. 3.0.5

So I suppose if the version is 3.0.5 or higher on these drives, you're peachy. I wonder if Woot can tell us the FW revision?

EDIT 2: Found more info on the FW revisions and reinforcement of the notion that the issue is avoided on these drives : http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=531&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=5

EDIT 3: Found that the above version numbers are internal Sandforce numbers. The acutal Corsair firmware #'s are 1.1, 2.0 & 2.4. Some report problems of upgrading to 2.4, and that it doesn't fix the S3 state issue.

2.4 firmware - http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100449

Upgrade issues - http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100469

Mogul345 wrote:Hard to find information, it appears Corsair has named subsequent models Force GT & Force 3 but retained the same sizes.

FWIW, different controller. The Force 3 / GT / GS use the newer Sata III SF-2200 series controller. The standard Force 3 uses Asynchronous NAND, the GT uses Synchronus, and the GS uses Toggle NAND, which is supposed to be the best.

These older drives use the SF-1200 controller, which is the mainstream version of the SF-1500 Enterprise controller.

I've used many drives based on these controllers, including these Corsair drives, OCZ, and Mushkin, performance is fine, don't let the Sata II throw you off. But as I said before, you're taking a chance with the warranty.

Ugh, this is way too much information for me. I've been thinking about getting a 120gb SSD for the netbook I carry around with me all the time. I can't imagine SATA III would make any difference, but the fact they're refurbished concerns me. I'm an unemployed grad student, and this would be a preventative purchase against my HD dying, but I don't have money to waste.

Narg wrote:drivel

You lost me at the BS about only Intel making SATA3 controllers.

gilfilent wrote:If you can't upgrade the firmware stay away. You want sata III. Almost jumped.

To give you an idea, my mac (even your windows machine) can start up in under 20 seconds with a good SSD.

i would hope less than that! my windows 7 pc with a normal hd, older specs (2.5 ghz dual core) starts in about 15 seconds

I've got 10 Corsair SSD's, none of them failing. I am, however, pretty pissed that my OVERNIGHT shipping hasn't shipped.

**UPDATE** : Okay, W00t did refund my shipping, but STILL has not shipped the unit. Now I know why they call us "suckers".

I've used about 6 SSDs in the past 3 years.. I have an Intel 1st gen 160GB in my macbook pro, the original 80gb 1st gen intel died on my desktop just after a year. I have two 480GB ssds in my recent server (corsair), along with 2 in my desktop (160gb & 90gb). I can say that when you go SSD, you don't want to go back.

Regarding SATA2 vs SATA3, yeah, you are slightly (only so slightly) capped with SATA2, since the drive can run faster than that channel, but a good sata2 controller is often better than a bad sata3... In general, you'll be much happier with SSD over HDD... I ordered a 240GB drive here, now sold out.

My only recommendation would be to get at *least* a 120GB model for boot/software and at least 160GB if you are doing it for a laptop without a second drive bay.

I've noticed the Corsair SSDs getting dumped on all the deal sites lately which should raise the buyer beware flag for anybody looking at them. As noted, these have massive firmware issues on every review site I look at, which explains why they're being sold as refurbs. They came back for a reason.

Combined with the fact that every read/write shortens their life means you're rolling the refurb dice harder than usual.

gilfilent wrote:If you can't upgrade the firmware stay away. You want sata III. Almost jumped.

To give you an idea, my mac (even your windows machine) can start up in under 20 seconds with a good SSD.

That's about what it takes my Linux machines with regular drives.

rwdim wrote:I've got 10 Corsair SSD's, none of them failing. I am, however, pretty pissed that my OVERNIGHT shipping hasn't shipped.

**UPDATE** : Okay, W00t did refund my shipping, but STILL has not shipped the unit. Now I know why they call us "suckers".

Same thing here. Overnight Shipping has yet to ship. Ordered early 7/17 with a expected delivery date 7/18.