Am I being scammed? (SSD drive question )

marktruman · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:07

I sold a samsung 256mb SSD on ebay, working perfectly. I upgraded to 512, so I did a quick format on drive, removed it, ebayed it.. sent it

week or two later, buyer says the hard drive is faulty and useless condition and has multiple bad sectors, which has been certified by a pc engineer

I have no idea how this has happened, I sent it fully working but I have read that SSD get bad sectors due to normal wear and tear. The guy has good feedback, so I'm quite clueless how an SSD can go from fully working to useless within the space of two weeks

any thoughts?

SilverTongue · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:10

My thoughts are get aarhe tube of lube as unless you have proof that when the drive was sent there were no bad sectors on it then eBay will side with the buyer.

Though PC engineers report sounds a bit iffy if its first contact you've had.

MagicBoy · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:12

Warranty on the SSD? If so refer then off to the retailer/Samsung.

Otherwise bend over or accept a return if the serial numbers match.

Glanza · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:14

Sounds like you'll need to lube up for the good old paypal bend over.

How old is the drive, Did you do a drive report before you shipped it off?

Divine Pain · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:16

Sounds like eBay.

marktruman · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:17

Giggz said:
Sounds like you'll need to lube up for the good old paypal bend over.

How old is the drive, Did you do a drive report before you shipped it off?

the drive is from october 2013, and no drive report

it works flawlessly in my pc for a year and a bit, so I did a quick format, removed it, packaged it up and sent it.. had no idea about bad sectors, never had any alerts of warnings

looks like im going to lube myself up, not bothered about money, hes basically accusing me of sending a " faulty and useless " drive, and blaming me for waste of time and money

MagicBoy · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:20

Samsung SSDs usually have a minimum of three years warranty on them?

Divine Pain · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:22

Rare for SSDs to fail in two years from personal experience anyway especially from Samsung.

There is probably nothing wrong with it when you get it back. But I hope you took note of the serial number in case he pulled a switching act!

marktruman · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:25

MagicBoy said:
Samsung SSDs usually have a minimum of three years warranty on them?

ah, that means I can send it to samsung and get a replacement?

MagicBoy · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:27

marktruman said:
ah, that means I can send it to samsung and get a replacement?

Yeah, assuming you get your drive back and it's undamaged.

Hopefully you've got a note of the serial number...

marktruman · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:28

Divine Pain said:
Rare for SSDs to fail in two years from personal experience anyway especially from Samsung.

There is probably nothing wrong with it when you get it back. But I hope you took note of the serial number in case he pulled a switching act!

my thoughts exactly, the only thing I can think of is my quick format instead of a full format, may of damaged it?

AtreuS · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:32

You did make a note of the serial number?

Then again with ebay even if he sends another one back they will refund him once he posts proof of postage. He could send you a brick in a box and they will refund!

marktruman · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:33

AtreuS said:
You did make a note of the serial number?

Then again with ebay even if he sends another one back they will refund him once he posts proof of postage. He could send you a brick in a box and they will refund!

I did not, but I shall tell him I have, hopefully if he is pulling that trick it may stop him.. im resigned to giving a refund.. just a shame he thinks im selling useless items

MagicBoy · 20 Jun 2015 at 15:33

Nah, a quick format can't damage a drive. A quick format just resets the file indexes and skips the scan for bad sectors.

Personally with an SSD I'd do a Secure Erase via the manufacturers downloadable utilities. That would reset the drive to out-of-the-box/new status and would ensure all your old files would not be recoverable by the purchaser.

marktruman · 20 Jun 2015 at 16:13

I also cant believe an SSD can be faulty.. it doesnt have moving parts etc sounded weird

spoffle · 20 Jun 2015 at 16:16

marktruman said:
I also cant believe an SSD can be faulty.. it doesnt have moving parts etc sounded weird

That doesn't preclude them from developing faults though.

toon_mad · 20 Jun 2015 at 16:20

I could be wrong but I thought flash memory (eg SSD's) consists of memory blocks, Mechanical drives consist of sectors etc.

I wouldnt be suprised if he's one of those people who put fraps or something on his computer and has been recording to his SSD. I have seen stupid people do this and basically filled the drive up which cannot be healthy for a SSD drive at all.

Could be yet another one of those Ebay threads we are seeing, remember always take photos and write SN numbers down etc to at least try and protect yourself.

Randomface74 · 20 Jun 2015 at 16:21

I wouldn't even answer him.

MagicBoy · 20 Jun 2015 at 16:28

toon_mad said:
I could be wrong but I thought flash memory (eg SSD's) consists of memory blocks, Mechanical drives consist of sectors etc.

It's all abstracted nowadays anyway. The days of the OS using the physical drive geometry were over 20 years ago.

mahius · 20 Jun 2015 at 16:36

Depends. A perfectly good SSD can get murdered easily. I had a perfectly working Intel 330 SSD (nearly 3 years old) and I formatted it to use for data recovery. I put it in a cheap hard drive enclosure and the performance was terrible during the transfer. It got slower and slower, but I got all of my precious data transferred off the drive. I wake up next morning to find the drive is dead. Cheap HD enclosure kills a good SSD. I'd get another one on the warranty, but I can't be bothered and I accidentally unscrewed the the lid when I first tried to remove it from my laptop. Or would that be fine for warranty (it does say warranty is void if removed)? I wouldn't mind having a spare 100+ GB of fast storage in my PC, but I don't care about it or I would have already tried.