Anatomy of a OCZ SSD smoked drive.

**Computurd** · 11-10-2010, 04:46 PM

well, long story very condensed here....
i purchased a ST1500W PSU, and on first boot it fried 3 of my SSD, all 3 were on the same power line. they are vertex gen1 30 gb drives.
One of the SSD actually began smoking very badly, and was apparently the cause of the issue. I contacted silverstone and they did some testing of the unit, as a matter of fact VERY detailed testing. i will post their results, they tested teh PSU, and the wire the devices were on, even taking photographs of the entire testing process.
They are assserting that a error with the drive caused an overvoltage on the wire that all the devices were on, thus shorting the other two devices.
Now, at least they looked at it, and did some testing here,.
OCZ is flatly denying that the problem is their issue, and will not inspect the drives. they are stating that no matter what happened now it will be impossible to ascertain where the short began, or how. they are blaming silverstone.
so, since the drives are not going to be RMA'd i did some testing myself.....

Upon power on to the SSD from another PSU, same result. the SSD starts smoking badly. so i dismantled the drives. the two that were not smoking show some very slight sscorching on a particular part, but nothing near what the one that fired up shows.
funny thing is that the damage is not near the power socket of the drive. it is near the SATA port and the side of the pcb.

my main gripe now is that OCZ isnt looking at the drives, and is not even interested in doing some sort of QA investigation into this incident.
I have offered to send the drives, but they dont want to see them.

NOW if there is some issue with these drives that could cause this after time, or even immediately, i think they should check! jesus it could have started my house on fire if i had not caught it in time! shouldnt they be investigating this in some way in case other users have this happen to them? it is very troubling that they are not interested in looking into this in any fashion. any good company should stand by their product, and it blows my mind they will not look at these devices.

**Computurd** · 11-10-2010, 04:53 PM

one of the other drives that was ruined, but didnt smoke, here is a pic for comparisons sake

**lowfat** · 11-10-2010, 05:00 PM

It sounds to me as if it was a power supply problem and nothing to do w/ the drives. Which wouldn't suprise me considering it was a Silverstone PSU. I recently bought a Silverstone DA850 and the molex wires were wired incorrectly. If I had plugged anything besides a water pump in to it, it would have cooked it.

**Computurd** · 11-10-2010, 05:01 PM

At least SilverStone exercised some due diligence in their testing, trying to see if it was their problem, they even tested the same sata line it happened on. Silverstone is saying that it is an overvoltage caused by a bad drive on the line.

**lowfat** · 11-10-2010, 05:13 PM

Did you mark the wire that caused the problem before sending it in so they new which wire was the one in question? The fact this happened on the first boot of the new power supply makes me still believe it was a power supply issue.

Or better yet, I don't suppose you took pictures of the wires the drives were connected to?

**josh1980** · 11-10-2010, 05:17 PM

That makes sense to me. Since I work at a nuclear power plant, we routinely send off components that fail catastrophically to see what the heck happened. If you took it apart you contaminated the "crime scene". There's really no point in them spending big dollars to disect the problem when you've already taken it apart.

I am sorry for your loss. Hopefully you didn't lose any important data. SSDs aren't cheap either.

**Computurd** · 11-10-2010, 05:50 PM

If you took it apart you contaminated the "crime scene"

'

i didn't disassemble it until they refused RMA and stated they did not wish to see the drives. so why not? no sense in throwing it in the trash to preserve the "scene"

lowfat Did you mark the wire that caused the problem before sending it in so they new which wire was the one in question?

yes, i put it in a seperate ziplock bag, with a note taped directly to that individual wire.

Or better yet, I don't suppose you took pictures of the wires the drives were connected to?

i did this as well. i have several pictures of the wire, there was some slight scorching, but it was so slight it didnt really show well in the pics, im not good at photography LOL

Hopefully you didn't lose any important data.

no data lost, just money

**tiro_uspsss** · 11-10-2010, 07:34 PM

if u have used the SSDs before without a problem (ie with a diff PSU), then the PSU is to blame

**SoulsCollective** · 11-10-2010, 08:20 PM

I don't think y'all are understanding this man's point. He's not trying to get OCZ to replace the drives. He's offering to send them three SSDs that died at once, all with damage near or in the same place, to see if there's some kind of issue. Silverstone have done extensive testing and not found any problems with the PSU. Silverstone may be wrong. But with the kind of documented evidence that they've provided it seems at least plausible that the SSDs themselves caused the issue, in which case, OCZ would have to be very foolish indeed not to wish to have a look at the drives.

**Funkwagen** · 11-10-2010, 09:59 PM

What scares me is OCZs refusal to even bother with an RMA. I'll give silverstone credit for actually doing some testing.

**dctokyo** · 11-10-2010, 10:41 PM

Silverstone should get credit for testing and not saying no like OCZ.

**lowfat** · 11-10-2010, 10:55 PM

Originally Posted by Computurd

'
yes, i put it in a seperate ziplock bag, with a note taped directly to that individual wire.

i did this as well. i have several pictures of the wire, there was some slight scorching, but it was so slight it didnt really show well in the pics, im not good at photography LOL

no data lost, just money

if you have a picture of the connector that plugs in to the power supply I would very much like to see it.

**[XC] Oj101** · 11-10-2010, 11:31 PM

Tip for RMAing: Play dumb. If it seems like the sort of issue they'd be reluctant to sort out just say "it doesn't work anymore". Don't tell them about testing, don't tell them the circumstances - nothing. Sorry for your loss

**Tiltevros** · 11-11-2010, 12:57 AM

u forgot to mension that i saw the second testing with a differnet psu with OCz burning for second time. Live streaming for some flaming SSD's.
im really sorry about the losses.

**Ao1** · 11-11-2010, 02:03 AM

Comp, why not ask Silverstone if they will verify if the drive was at fault or alternatively if they will not look at it why not send the drive and cable to an expert for independent analysis?

You had three drives on one power rail? Did the damage occur the second you turned on the PSU for the first time? I assume you had other devices plugged in on separate power rails and no damage occurred on the other rails?

Did the PSU trip out when it occurred?

I think you could still find the root cause as taking the drive apart does nothing apart from show where the damage occurred . What is (was) the burnt out circuitry near the SATA connector doing? Was it anything to do with voltage regulation?

It’s seems a bit weird that the damage is on the SATA connector not the power terminal.

**NEOAethyr** · 11-11-2010, 02:49 AM

I too find it odd that the point where the one drive failed was at the sata conversion chip.
That and to the side, whatever those chips were.

Might of had something to do with the pcb's grounding.

From the looks of it, my guess is it took the 5v/3v and shorted it to the sata data cable ground.
How that might happen, I dn, maybe is was a faulty smd resistor or cap that started it all.
Whatever it was, looks like those chips to the right side of the pcb had something to do with it.

Now aren't these things supposed to have a decent warrenty behind them, being a ssd drive and all?

I'm surprised if you didn't f' up your board's chipset...
Did this happen while the system had been on for a while, or during bootup?

Did you have 3v hooked up to the drives or not?
(missing wire on sata power cable or no?)

Just curious...

Ocz seems to like to blame there probs on the most generic things.
It must be shipping damage, that's the #1 cause of there faulty products, lmao.
Couldn't be because the product was built in a shed in the middle of china..., has to be the shipping...
If your house catches fire blame ups... (no not really)

**Ao1** · 11-11-2010, 03:43 AM

Comp, the first thing I would look at is the circuitry circled in red. That seems to be either the origin of failure or the weakest link.

Interestingly Super Talent “opted to make their own main board with a custom layout. Their layout includes higher grade / larger capacitors throughout the design, as well as their own logo. They clearly put some extra work into this build, while OCZ stuck with the reference board provided by Indilinx.”

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=733&type=expert

**flamenko** · 11-11-2010, 03:56 AM

Yup...agreed...and condolences.

**RyderOCZ** · 11-11-2010, 05:50 AM

Originally Posted by [XC] Oj101

Tip for RMAing: Play dumb. If it seems like the sort of issue they'd be reluctant to sort out just say "it doesn't work anymore". Don't tell them about testing, don't tell them the circumstances - nothing. Sorry for your loss

That is a really great piece of advice.

If I am correct, Computurd has had these drives for over a year running, testing, benching, just fine. The first power up on a new PSU and snap, crackle, pop. I will also say that he is the very first person to ever present me with a fried SSD, out of 200,000+ Indilinx drives, nobody has ever come to OCZ with a fried one, I am 100% sure the SSD did not cause this and so were my superiors.

**[XC] Oj101** · 11-11-2010, 08:12 AM

Originally Posted by RyderOCZ

That is a really great piece of advice.

If I am correct, Computurd has had these drives for over a year running, testing, benching, just fine. The first power up on a new PSU and snap, crackle, pop. I will also say that he is the very first person to ever present me with a fried SSD, out of 200,000+ Indilinx drives, nobody has ever come to OCZ with a fried one, I am 100% sure the SSD did not cause this and so were my superiors.

At least Silverstone actually had a look at his PSU instead of saying "don't care do not want don't bother sending it in". There's always a first time

Anyway, have a look at this thread Linky It's a common practice in South Africa for suppliers to try to screw the customer, down here if you mention any testing you've done you're automatically at fault no matter what. Down here it's play dumb or cover your own warranty out of your own pocket

**TJ TRICHEESE** · 11-11-2010, 08:36 AM

Originally Posted by Computurd

any good company should stand by their product

Well theres your problem, we're dealing with OCZ not a 'good company'

**yngndrw** · 11-11-2010, 08:45 AM

Originally Posted by RyderOCZ

That is a really great piece of advice.

If I am correct, Computurd has had these drives for over a year running, testing, benching, just fine. The first power up on a new PSU and snap, crackle, pop. I will also say that he is the very first person to ever present me with a fried SSD, out of 200,000+ Indilinx drives, nobody has ever come to OCZ with a fried one, I am 100% sure the SSD did not cause this and so were my superiors.

It doesn't matter if you're 1,000,000% sure - As the drives have not been inspected by OCZ you cannot prove that the drives are not at fault. No statistics alone can prove this.

On the other hand, I don't buy Silverstone's conclusion - How could a SSD burn out other SSDs in the chain ? Especially since the power supply should (And as shown in the tests, does.) protect against overvoltage ?

It would be nice to see more power supply tests, showing what happens in the case of multiple simultaneous shorts of multiple rails - Maybe it is related to some kind of logic design error in the protection system.

**lowfat** · 11-11-2010, 08:53 AM

Originally Posted by yngndrw

On the other hand, I don't buy Silverstone's conclusion - How could a SSD burn out other SSDs in the chain ?

I agree with this as well.

I still believe it was wired incorrectly. Still hoping he can provide some pics of the connectors. If they can do the following to one of my power supplies I don't doubt they could have reversed the 12V and 5V lines on a sata connector by mistake.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...w-picture.html