Have the Sandforce issues been fixed yet?

[CommissarTommy]

Hi everyone,

I was thinking of buying the PNY Professional 120GB SSD but I am not sure any more because of the issues I hear the Sandforce Sf-2281 controller has.

My question to you wonderful forum members is: Are the BSOD and Disconnect issues fixed on Sandforce drives?

Thanks in advance

CommissarTommy

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Samsung 830 128GB can be had for around £95:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/128gb...-write-320mb-s

The Crucial M4 128GB can be had for around £75:

http://forums.hexus.net/current-barg...4-79-99-a.html

These are among the most reliable consumer SSDs ATM.

[CommissarTommy]

Are there still problems with the Sandforce controller?
I was thinking about the 830 because the software lets you force TRIM.
Also what about the Plextor M3?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I think the issues probably have been mostly solved,but TBH the 830 and M4 have more consistent performance over a range of data though AFAIK,and seem to have suffered less issues overall.

The 256GB version of the 830 can be had for under £150 from Scan:

http://forums.hexus.net/current-barg...-146-70-a.html

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/256gb...write-400mb-s-

[Agent]

In a word: No

As luck would have it, our own Brian Klug happened to come across an unexpected crash with his 240GB non-Intel SF-2281 based SSD two weeks ago when he migrated it to another machine. The crash was an F4 BSOD, similar in nature to the infamous BSOD issue from last year. While two of the systems we reproduced the BSOD bug on were cured by last year's firmware update, Brian's system (an X58/Core i7 build) was BSODing regularly playing Battlefield 3. Games end up being a great way to trigger the SF-2281 BSOD issue as they frequently switch between periods of idle and load, which does a good job of stressing the power state logic in SandForce's firmware. I immediately sent Brian an Intel SSD 520 to see if the BSOD remained on Intel's drive. Switching to Cherryville caused Brian's BSODs to go away. Indeed most end user reports of SF-2281 BSODs went away with the fixed firmware, but we've still heard of isolated issues that remain unresolved. Whatever Intel has done with the 520's firmware seems to have fixed problems that still remain in the general SF-2281 firmware.

This is actually a dangerous precedent as it means one of two things. The first possibility is that SandForce has been made aware of flaws in its current firmware and chooses against (or is legally prevented from) disclosing it to its partners. The second possibility, and arguably even worse for SandForce, is that Intel was able to identify and fix a bug in the SF-2281 firmware without SandForce knowing it existed or was addressed. I suspect it's the former but as no one is willing to go on the record about the Intel/SandForce agreement I can't be certain.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5508/i...y-to-sandforce

I'd just like to point this out and and stress that there has not been a OCZ firmware update since this article was published (2.15, Oct 2011 vs June 2012 of the article) The bug that AnAnd were able to produce with the drive BSODing in that case isn't fixed.

[IronWarrior]

Does the HyperX come with the latest firmware? If not, how does one update it?

[ScottyW]

Does the HyperX come with the latest firmware? If not, how does one update it?

Would also like to know this please. Just grabbed the bargain ongoing at scan on the HyperX drives.

[dokdek]

Would also like to know this please. Just grabbed the bargain ongoing at scan on the HyperX drives.

You can get the latest firmware from Kingston's site, although be warned, sometimes updating the firmware requires you to format your SSD. You can also find out what firmware it comes with by looking on the SSD, it will usually say Firmware ver: xxxxxxxxx. Just look on the sticker.

[brookheather]

My Agility 3 120GB SSD has been fine since I installed firmware 2.15 a few months ago. Previously it used to BSOD.

[MrNeil]

Can you update the SSD via usb before the windows installation ?

[Agent]

Can you update the SSD via usb before the windows installation ?

No, the USB controller gets in the way. You need it attached to the mobo. I've tried on both the M4 and a Sandforce drive and neither have worked. The flashing programs need direct hardware access. USB caddys don't offer this.

[scaryjim]

If you want a cheap non-sandforce SSD what about the 128GB OCZ Octane S2, indilinx based and currently £65 at ebuyer? Yes, it's only SATA 2 so sequential read will be interface bottlenecked, but it's not really designed for blistering speed and e-peen enhancing synthetic benchmark scores; it's tuned to have very fast, ultra-low latency read access and work well at low queue depths (sacrificing write speeds and high QD performance along the way), which gives it very good real world performance. Hexus reviewed it (or at least its SATA 3 big brother) and were quite favourable.

Besides, it's just about the cheapest SSD available at the minute, and it's not sandforce - what more could you want

[DennisMenace]

Intel seemed to have fixed the Sandforce Bug (according to AnandTech's review), which is why I bought a 120gb Intel 520 a few months ago - just before the SSD prices crashed.

After a series of typical F4/9F BSODs, I can sadly confirm that Intel haven't completely fixed the issue (check their SSD forums), even with their custom firmware and extensive validation - although problems are rare compared to the early OCZ/Corsair Sandforce drives.

I was about to RMA the drive (for a replacement, which I'm 99% certain will still BSOD on sleep/wake) when Intel announced that the 520 series does not support AES-256 as advertised - and so are offering a full refund.

Samsung 830 256gb here I come (~£5 less for double the space). Result.

[csgohan4]

I had a Corsair force series GT 120GB sandforce based SSD and Had to no problems for the last 7 months. It had firmware 1.3.3 before they recently updated the firmware to 5.2 which I didn't flash to. I changed to Samsung 830 for future reliability and haven't noticed much real time differences really.

[raspute]

reviews sem to say sf has mainly patched up issues, but i'd still not take the risk. as dennis says, not even intel have managed to tame the beast

[Newblet]

I don't think they're anywhere near as bad as they used to be (Intel use them in some of their SSD series (like the 520 IIRC)) however there are two problems that I think still exist.

1) You cannot encrypt the whole drive
2) If you fill up the whole drive it has some problems

Anyway, I'd still recommend the Samsung 830 over any SSD, no matter what the speed!