Less than a month since debuting its third-generation Force solid-state drive series, Corsair has issued a recall of the 120GB variant due to firmware and hardware problems with that specific unit. According to the company's light on details statement, "a significant percentage of these drives do not operate to specification," and as a result they are stopping shipments and implementing a remediation plan to get affected drives replaced.
The drive in question corresponds to part number CSSD-F120GBG3-BK – which should be printed on the front label right below the 120GB capacity marker. Anyone with a Corsair Force 3 120GB SSD is being asked to return the drive to Corsair, even if they haven't experienced any stability issues, to be exchanged with a fixed unit. All shipping expenses will be covered by the manufacturer, of course, and the estimated turnaround time is reportedly ten business days.
The 60GB (CSSD-F60GBG3-BK) and 240GB (CSSD-F240GBG3-BK) Force 3 models are not affected by this issue, nor is the company's Force GT series. Corsair was careful not to pin any fault on its partners – despite many users complaining about SandForce treating them like beta testers – and simply took full responsibility for failing to catch the issue before the drives were shipped. Problems included freezing, detection errors and BSOD errors.
Product recalls are always a pain for customers but we're glad to see Corsair trying to get things fixed as quickly as possible. More information on how to exchange a defective drive is available on Corsair's support forums.