Several Falcon II 128GB issues, questions

[mfearby]

I've been using a Falcon II 128GB SSD for a couple of months now (first one died the day it arrived, second one still alive). I've been experiencing woeful Windows 7 stability ever since the switch to SSD. I generally have to restore with my Acronis image every week. Sometimes the list of usernames can't even display and the screen flickers like crazy, then you reboot and it shows usernames, but when you click them, they revert to showing usernames, and it's always the very next reboot that it's fine. Other times Win7 dies and forces me to run a repair because files have become corrupt. Still other times Windows itself will just randomly decide that most applications crash and there's no way to make them work again.

My brother thought it could be dust so I've completely eradicated ALL dust from my case, PSU, etc. Still unstable. When I ran Ubuntu on a Seagate SATA drive things were fine. Occasional fsck on boot, but it was always able to boot and behave. Windows 7 on this drive is just utterly mental. Has anybody else noticed this?

Also, where do I get the latest firmware, and how do I apply it? Can't seem to find relevant info on G.Skill's web site.

Also, where's the wiper tool? I'm thinking of a complete and utter rebuild. Can said wiper run off a floppy disk or will I have to load it into a WinPE or something and run it from there?

Thanks

[macdaddy]

just run wiper on the OS that you have on the ssd done.

[mfearby]

Where do I get the wiper from?

[GSKILL TECH]

http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=733

Thank you
GSKILL SUPPORT

[wizard]

I've been using a Falcon II 128GB SSD for a couple of months now (first one died the day it arrived, second one still alive). I've been experiencing woeful Windows 7 stability ever since the switch to SSD. I generally have to restore with my Acronis image every week. Sometimes the list of usernames can't even display and the screen flickers like crazy, then you reboot and it shows usernames, but when you click them, they revert to showing usernames, and it's always the very next reboot that it's fine. Other times Win7 dies and forces me to run a repair because files have become corrupt. Still other times Windows itself will just randomly decide that most applications crash and there's no way to make them work again.

My brother thought it could be dust so I've completely eradicated ALL dust from my case, PSU, etc. Still unstable. When I ran Ubuntu on a Seagate SATA drive things were fine. Occasional fsck on boot, but it was always able to boot and behave. Windows 7 on this drive is just utterly mental. Has anybody else noticed this?

Also, where do I get the latest firmware, and how do I apply it? Can't seem to find relevant info on G.Skill's web site.

Also, where's the wiper tool? I'm thinking of a complete and utter rebuild. Can said wiper run off a floppy disk or will I have to load it into a WinPE or something and run it from there?

Thanks

Did you fix your problem? I have the same one and have tried Windows 7 32bit, win7 64bit, different ram, new power supply, I am so sick of it I have restored my image back to a HD and the problems have stopped. Going to return the SSD and try and get money back

[mfearby]

Thanks for the link. I notice that it says only disk 0 supports TRIM. Even though my SSD is in the very first SATA port I have, and Windows treats its first partition as C:, Disk Manager is seeing my old HDD as Disk 0 and my SSD as Disk 1.

Also, since I have a Falcon II, do I really need to run the wiper any way? Don't the Falcon II drives support TRIM natively, or could this not be working because Windows is dumb and can't enumerate my drives properly?

To "wizard" my answer is "not sure". I now have my brother's PSU installed (he also has the same SSD with Win7 64-bit and has had no problems), so if my machine behaves itself for a week, then I'll be getting a new one. Never before have I experienced these utterly ridiculous instability issues. Sure, Linux (more precisely: X.org) would freeze from time to time and an fsck would ensue, but Linux always managed to pick itself back up and move on, but Windows just completely goes mental and commits suicide half the time complaining about boot files being corrupt). Windows has always been a bit of a precious little flower when it comes to being treated nicely when it comes to booting, but this just takes the cake!

Maybe I should ask my brother to swap SSDs for a while after giving back his PSU. If his machine starts acting up, then it's GOT to be the drive.