Anatomy of a OCZ SSD smoked drive.

[josh1980]

Yep.. and that plastic tab breaks of REAL easy. . Google it.. In 2 searches I found pictures of someone that installed it backwards! His tab bended(didn't break off). He was pissed when he realized he blew 4 hard drives and a CDROM

Y'all have fun now.. ya hear!

Someone please lock this thread. It would appear that people are more interested in arguing with others than actually discussing the problem.

lineman!? Do you REALLY think a nuclear reactor operator knows about being alineman!? Hellz no! We deal with computer circuits! I was dealing with solid state memory before SATA was invented. We designed our own solid state circuits and troubleshoot the circuits. My background in electronics is EXTREMELY extensive. 90% of my education is circuit theory.

[Computurd]

Since his cables didn't melt off their insulation it's pretty reasonable to say that you did NOT hit the overcurrent protection limit either.

14 AWG cable would be able to take the surge current for a short period (I.e. The length of time it takes for the OCP to kick in.) without melting its insulation. Therefore I don't think that shows that an OC condition didn't happen.
^^yngndrw

. I dismissed the notion of the grounds being connected because you do NOT want regular current flow through the ground of the SATA cable.

you are missing a very important part of this here: i could care less about that. i am saying "you cant dismiss anything" under conditions of it being shorted to the point of warping, components frying out, etc, anything can happen. of course you do not want regular current to go through the ground. we arent talking about what we WANT, we are talking about what we GOT. you siderant on faraday cages is a nice distraction though does nothing to further your argument though. nice filler.

Is it likely that 3 drives all had manufacturing defects that all decided to show themselves all at the same time? Heck no

not saying they all had defects, the thrust of my argument is that one of the devices caused some sort of overvoltage, causing the others to pop.

I'm sure at this point you ARE now checking to see if you have 1 rail or multiple. I'll tell you..

it is apparent here that you think that i am not very bright. LOL i have had so many PSU over the years, and i could tell you how many rails on ALL of them. gimme some credit here....i research EVERY purchase i make. you are seriously off topic with this...i dont need a primer on the difference between single and multi rails, none of us do. at what point did you think that i went out and bought a 1500 WATT PSU and didnt know what i was doing? this isnt a peice of equipment some ten year old kid goes and blows four hundred bucks on well, at least he shouldnt....

your background i would consider as relevant, if it involved computer equipment. I would not go to a lineman on a pole and hand him my psu and ask him what the hell happened. different fields of specialty there. none of your background has to do with PCB, SSD design, or PSU design, maintenance. you do sound like a smart guy and all, just not in this field

there is no need to lock any thread. there have been no insults that i am aware of, maybe not people playing very nice, but there is going to be some hard feelings probably if you tell someone they fried their own gear repetitively, when in fact, they havent! im not here to argue with you, this is supposed to be about my issue here. tbh it does make one a little rankled when they have dealt with computers, and built them, since the early 90's, yet you come in and tell them that it is user error, that they have fried their equipment, by connecting something improperly, that is impossible to do! LOL i make stupid mistakes all the time, but i find that tantamount to calling me mentally retarded after i have been building computers for 18 years!
no hard feelings though please dont attempt to get my thread locked, i am looking for resolution to this issue here.

[Bobsama]

Computurd, what was was the RAID controller you used? Just out of curiosity.

My personal opinion on this is that OCZ passed over an opportunity to look for a point of failure. Then again, OCZ isn't THAT big of a company and such doesn't have hundreds of millions or more to devote to manufacturing perfect.

[yngndrw]

Someone please lock this thread. It would appear that people are more interested in arguing with others than actually discussing the problem.

You think I made my comment because I have nothing better to do than to argue ? No, I simply made it because I thought that part was incorrect - That is a discussion.

[Computurd]

Areca 1880-IX12 4gb cache, shes a beauty still works fine. initially i thought the sas fanout was bad on it after the incident, but turns out that is just because the other two drives were bad. i have thoroughly tested all ports on the raid card, and the sas fanout later. they all work fine.

My personal opinion on this is that OCZ passed over an opportunity to look for a point of failure. Then again, OCZ isn't THAT big of a company and such doesn't have hundreds of millions or more to devote to manufacturing perfect.

+1 there. but they have failed at pleasing a customer. one who buys and uses their devices extremely prolifically, and also tests, and posts test results with several different raid cards on several enthusiast forums. i have purchased 15 of their SSD, alone! not including ram, flash drives, etc. i have 18GB of ddr3, and 8 gb of ddr2 in machines in my house currently, that i use, that is not counting all the ram i have bought from them in the past. i use crucial for pushing it with rigs, but the ocz for the 24/7 stuff. in the end though, i am just another customer. and when i refresh my array with 12 new devices to max out this areca and set some new records(soon), im damn sure not gonna do it with devices i cant trust to be backed up with the warranty that they are still under for the love of christ.

[Tiltevros]

i cant understand the point of this presentation :S what is the point of all of this??? do we have to make any Kirchhoff's circuit laws ?? wtf???
why r u showing-knowlodge here???
The easiest sollution for all of that is just to accept those #$@%@#$% drives and then say "hey Mr.. u killed ur drives so its not our problem to accept ur replacement"
is that so difficult to do???
I think we all know little bit of electronics here but plz dont make me burn my degrees..............

Mr. Computurd opend the thread to post his problem that he expirience with OCz u dont have the right to ask from an Admin or Operator to close the thread......

Now for the last post that i read and i was pulling my hair away is that u can connect the cable on the psu upside down......

OMG CAN'T U SEE THE SQUARES AND THE OTHER SHAPES WITCH THE PSU MAKERS DISCOVERD TO MAKE VERY HARD TO CONNECT THEM IN WRONG POSSITION.

http://i517.photobucket.com/albums/u...8-52-04099.jpg

PLZ ppl think before u post.

[NEOAethyr]

...
Sometimes when you load up a cable's 1st connector with a high load, the 2nd connector down the line will show higher voltage then the 1st does.

That and smd part specs.
Consumer, industrial and military.
The lower grade spec'ed parts could very from one to the next a few 100 ohm's perhaps.

I dn whatever.

But the single rail comment thing...
The multi rail psu's are usually marketing scams.
They take a few 12v wire's, feed it to a pcb where there's a few small 100uf caps that make up the so called multi rails.
It's just taking a good solid single rail and making it weaker.
It allows them to lie about the max power output... that's essentually what a multi rail psu is, a overspec'ed and unreliable psu.
A real one, well I don't think there's a such thing for the consumer pc market.
Sorry.., but I think that it's the harsh reality of it :\.

[Computurd]

Yep.. and that plastic tab breaks of REAL easy. . Google it.. In 2 searches I found pictures of someone that installed it backwards! His tab bended(didn't break off). He was pissed when he realized he blew 4 hard drives and a CDROM

and this was a silverstone PSU, eh? i would like to see the link. ya see, the guys who designed the PSU actually are very bright, which might be part of the reason they are amongst the most respected PSU companies out there. the prong on the side is very strong, and for the sake of science i tried your theory. not gonna happen. you cant even get it in at all. you would need a hammer to even get the darn thing in there to where the prong would even touch, i mean seriously, it will NOT go in there backwards. the psu is right in front of me on a rack, so i gave it quite a go.
Then i took down the new ST1200 i have in a box and tried it with its connectors. same thing. even if you somehow forced it in there, there would be no way you could bend that tab back far enough for it to go in there, ya see, the back of the tab is just as long as the front, so the rear of the prong would touch the housing before you could bend back far enough.
so in order to actually get it to bend back that far, i had to take a pair of needle nosed pliers and force it back as far as it could bend. the plastic is very resilient. then, after forcing the tab back i measured the length that you could insert the plug. with the tab of the connector bent back all the way, it would allow the connector to go in 1/8 of an inch. on the picture below, i have made two lines, the distance in between those two lines measures 1/8 of an inch.
the picture below that is of the socket the plug goes into, and i took it at this angle to illustrate a point. the two red arrows are pointing at two very tiny little glints there, those are the pins down inside the socket. the other pins you cannot even see, that is because they are recessed back so far into the socket. they are farther than 1/8 of an inch down inside the socket. it would stop before they would even make glancing contact.
there is absolutely no way that scenario would play out with this PSU. the more i look at it, the more i am impressed with the system SilverStone is using here. this is idiot proof....

[Ao1]

Being that all devices are in parallel(and not series) they would all be exposed to the same voltage.

OK, so if the power supply is parallel and not serial I can understand what you are saying. Thanks for explaining that.

Now I try to understand your post # 73. I think what you are saying is that an overvoltage might not have been enough to trip out the PSU? That even if one of the SSD’s had a fault it could not have generated (or passed through) an overvoltage to the other SSD’s?

If we assume that the PSU was not at fault (based on Silverstone’s testing) and we assume that Comp wired it up correctly (no need to doubt this) what other possible causes are left?

I’m not trying to doubt your expertise; I’m just trying to tap into it

[Tony]

Stayed out of this one but I will just add I have seen the exact damage you see here to drives when 12V is applied to them.

How do I know?

A customer needed to know a good way of destroying drives completely in case they fell into the wrong hands....they added a change over switch in the psu line to their drives that switches 5V to 12V

The pics looked just like the ones in this thread.

[Ao1]

So a customer went to all the trouble of adding a change over switch in the psu line just to destroy the SSD? Surely a hammer would have been safer, more effective and quicker way of achieving that?

[[XC] Oj101]

Indeed. Just because the controller's blown doesn't mean the NAND chips have been hurt in any way...?

[yngndrw]

I'm assuming it was for remote destruction or something, maybe in case the machine was stolen.

Explosives would have been a better bet - Take out the computer and the thief in one go.

[Tony]

Those drives are toasted, trust me.

What should have happened here is the psu went to a 3rd party to test...end of story.

We all then would have had a clear picture and be able to make informed decisions.

Ask yourself this, is it down to OCZ to replace the drives if the psu blew them up?

My suggestion to anyone this happens to is to consider 3rd party testing on a psu before you RMA, imagine if it took 8x250GB drives out, 3x30's are expensive enough.

I can not and will not comment on this any more, i just wanted to tell you I have seen the exact same damage on SSD before, by applying 12V to the 5V input on the drives (intentionally in my case as stated previously)

Regards the 12V kill switch, the drives are military use, all data and the drive was to be destroyed.

[[XC] Oj101]

Ask yourself this, is it down to OCZ to replace the drives if the psu blew them up?

Would you bet your job that the PSU was at fault here? If not, it's up to OCZ to at least have a look.

[Tony]

He can send the drives in, that is not an issue, all we will do is confirm all 3 drives were damaged by over voltage...probably 12V.

He should have sent the psu for 3rd party test....that way we would have known what caused this, i bet once he mentioned the drives were ssd's any offer of compensation was withdrawn and suddenly the psu was ok.

[johnw]

He can send the drives in, that is not an issue, all we will do is confirm all 3 drives were damaged by over voltage...probably 12V.

Are you responsible for this "confirmation", or will someone actually examine and test the parts with an open mind to see what caused the damage?

Are you seriously saying that you can tell not only that the parts were damaged by overvoltage, but that the voltage was 12V?

When you say that the drive you saw damaged by 12V looks like the one in CT's picture, what about the other two that did not have obvious visible damage? Do they also look like the drive you saw damaged by 12V? Because they look different to me.

[Computurd]

they are definitely different, that much is for sure. so one drive was destroyed by 12v then? what about the other two?

He can send the drives in, that is not an issue, all we will do is confirm all 3 drives were damaged by over voltage...probably 12V.

without even examining them, apparently. visual confirmation, even thought the other two are different???? why even send them in if judgment has already been passed? so you can trash them and send me a rejection letter without even looking?

A customer needed to know a good way of destroying drives completely in case they fell into the wrong hands....they added a change over switch in the psu line to their drives that switches 5V to 12V

this does not make sense at all to me. the nand chips are fine on the drives. surely they could be 'read' as such. now, if the 12v killed the drives, why are the other two unmelted in this manner?? why arent they totally fried if that was the intended result? your explanation does not add up, please explain. why are the sata ports burnt up then?

i bet once he mentioned the drives were ssd's any offer of compensation was withdrawn and suddenly the psu was ok.

incorrect. they knew from first contact that the drives involved were SSD, i have emails from them to prove that, they offered to cover any damage, as long as it was their fault!

and tony, all i ask is an official response to this...if DooRules had the exact same issue, why was his RMA approved, and mine denied? what is the reasoning behind this??


i think the only thing to do here is to go to the Better Buisness Burea, maybe they have an idea of what can be done for this. there has to be some sort of recourse here when a company behaves this irrationally.

[josh1980]

they are definitely different, that much is for sure. so one drive was destroyed by 12v then? what about the other two?

without even examining them, apparently. visual confirmation, even thought the other two are different???? why even send them in if judgment has already been passed? so you can trash them and send me a rejection letter without even looking?

this does not make sense at all to me. the nand chips are fine on the drives. surely they could be 'read' as such. now, if the 12v killed the drives, why are the other two unmelted in this manner?? why arent they totally fried if that was the intended result? your explanation does not add up, please explain. why are the sata ports burnt up then?

What about the other two? I commented earlier that they aren't all identical. Some will have more or less solder, stronger and weaker parts. If they really were all identical, it would be normal to expect all of the drives to have the exact same lifespan. Have you heard of infant mortality with regards to new products? Check it out. In particular the "bath tub model". That would mean that statistically a device has a high failure rate when first installed and used(typically 10% or so if its designed life) and a high failure rate as the device/component reaches the end of it's designed life. Since you're dealing with a new PSU, you're at the absolute highest point for failure for the device. It can test fine at the factory and still be bad when you install it. SS isn't likely to admit their PSU ruined $100s or $1000s of computer components.

Let me give you some advice here...Do you know why people use voltmeters, ammeters, and ohmmeters? Because you can't look at a circuit to prove its functional. Just because you don't see any visual damage means absolutely nothing. What does mean they are damaged is when you plug them into another computer and they don't work.

And you are 100% sure the NAND chips are fine huh? How have you proven this? Visual inspection? Visually inspecting microscoping circuit paths and components? Inside a chip? Let me know how well that works for you.

You need to understand that they don't all have to fail the same way, and your expectation that there must be physical damage is... interesting.

I have taken the luxury of ordering your model power supply on ebay. I'm gonna hook up my old POC SSD to it with the plug backwards JUST to see what happens. If it doesn't die from that, I'll be more than happy to hook up 12v to the 5v to see what happens. You might not have plugged it in backwards, but I'll get a good amount of closure proving that it DOES break the drives.

The BBB would have fun with this. I know someone that used to work at the BBB. If you have components that smoked and you want them warrantied, you'll lose your claim. If your wanting them to "look at the drives and give an opinion", the BBB won't even process your claim as that is not in the realm of what they work with.

Like I said before, this thread is going nowhere. Everyone wants to argue about every single fact when they have no background in electronics. All they have is their computer skills, which doesn't prepare them for anything regarding failure analysis of computer components.

Just accept that the drives are bad and move on.

[tiro_uspsss]

SS isn't likely to admit their PSU ruined $100s or $1000s of computer components.

I'd have to agree with this part.. yes, its oh-so good of ss to 'look' at the PSU.. so what? since when has anyone here *TRUSTED ur average typical run-of-the-mill money-making business? NO ONE - heck, lets face it, DIStrust of business is displayed here @ XS almost daily.. again I say, good on ss for 'looking' @ it.. them saying its not their fau.. OH LOOK! I JUST SAW A PIG FLY BY MY WINDOW, NO BULL!

edit: its like the ford exploder, oops sorry, explorer issue..: "ford, are u @ fault for the loss of these lives due to dodgy quality yaddayadda?", ford:"noooo, we only make good quality, reliable cars; we'd never hurt a soul" ..... & we all know how that ended

3rd time: yes, good on ss for looking @ it....
anyone actually putting trust in ss's verdict: puh-leeez, gimme a break

& yeah, I agree, OCZ should look @ the drives, even if its just for the heck of it..

[Charles Wirth]

After owning and killing a few SSD's

Not taking any sides and looking the damage

Visible: the SSD fried from power and the other drives damaged tells me the PSU has failed.

If the SSD was taken apart and then the RMA was requested I could see it being refused.

If the RMA was requested by "my SSD doesnt work, here is my proof of purchase" I could see it being replaced normally.

If you have a convoluted story "what had happened was"... I would be cautious as a mfg.

OCZ has always had a great reputation for being the best at customer service, if they made this call based on "too much" information given by the user might have singled out the PSU as the point of failure.

I have seen SSD death to PSU a few too many times, multiple drives tends to be the PSU or PSU cables.

[johnw]

Like I said before, this thread is going nowhere. Everyone wants to argue about every single fact when they have no background in electronics. All they have is their computer skills, which doesn't prepare them for anything regarding failure analysis of computer components.

Wow, that is one of the most arrogant things I have read in quite a while.

Jump to conclusions much?

[dctokyo]

I have taken the luxury of ordering your model power supply on ebay. I'm gonna hook up my old POC SSD to it with the plug backwards JUST to see what happens.

josh1980, I am not sure if you have ever owned this type of PSU, but it is Physically Impossible To Plug it in backwards if your talking about were the plug goes into the PSU. TThe connector pushes down into place until the latch snaps over the nub. It's a keyed connector, you can't install it backwards, the connectors won't mate.

[[XC] Oj101]

Let me give you some advice here...Do you know why people use voltmeters, ammeters, and ohmmeters? Because you can't look at a circuit to prove its functional. Just because you don't see any visual damage means absolutely nothing. What does mean they are damaged is when you plug them into another computer and they don't work.

And you are 100% sure the NAND chips are fine huh? How have you proven this? Visual inspection? Visually inspecting microscoping circuit paths and components? Inside a chip? Let me know how well that works for you.

I hope OCZ is listening to this as well

FUGGER's post is exactly why I never go into details when sending something back. If you sound as if you know what you're doing they're going to screw you over.

[adsyf]

Hi Comp,

I think I told you this before with your last psu, but I blew an ssd and psu by picking up the wrong cable. In this case I used an OCZ modular cable (sata power) accidentally putting into a corsair modular psu. The result was a sata power cable fitting perfectly into a 12 Volt supply frying both components! I now keep each manufacturers modular cables separately and double check that voltage on each modular connector!