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Bite me, OCZ

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ratbuddy

ratbuddy

Member
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Joined
Aug 24, 2007
So I looked at reviews, did my homework and recently deployed a pair of Lenovo Z570 notebooks with 120GB OCZ Agility 3 SSDs. The systems both experience random freezes lasting up to two minutes. Doesn't happen with the stock WD Scorpio Blue 500GB drives. I get calls from the ticked off customers and dig a little deeper, and find that it's a widespread problem with these drives.

Why the hell are these things still on the market?
 
ratbuddy said:
Why the hell are these things still on the market?
Click to expand...

IMO, there isn't enough press out there about the instability with the latest SSDs. You see issues here, you see reviews on newegg and amazon with people complaining. Yet when you open a magazine or read online articles, they cant stop praising the hell out of SSDs.

Good luck.
 
Great question. I know I wouldn't buy a Vertex 3, but they're the fastest, by a tiny margin, and it seems like that's what people care about the most.

Also, the reviewers tend to be outside of the tiny sample of people who have problems. Makes sense statistically. It's tough to find a review of someone using a product day in and out for a few months - reviewers tend to get the hardware, benchmark it for a day, and add it to their hardware pile.
 
OCZ is the fastest so sure it looks great at first. But if you dig deeper they also have the most problems after 6 months or so. Lots of issues with the drives just dying or having problems. I believe the statistic for their drives failing is about 10%, but I have a gut feeling it is actually much higher than that.

The next drive I get will most definitely be an Intel =)
 
Been using mine daily since the review... no issues here. I must be lucky... too many of these threads here already...
 
Marshmallow64 said:
OCZ is the fastest so sure it looks great at first. But if you dig deeper they also have the most problems after 6 months or so. Lots of issues with the drives just dying or having problems. I believe the statistic for their drives failing is about 10%, but I have a gut feeling it is actually much higher than that.

The next drive I get will most definitely be an Intel =)
Click to expand...
Probably not 10% - that would be really, really high. But certainly high enough that they've significantly damaged their reputation with the Vertex 3. I would've happily bought an OCZ drive before, but I wouldn't consider one at this point.
 
All you can really go on is experiences of the people you know. And in my case, they have all eventually had issues.

Im simply waiting until a more reputable brand is more affordable. The Crucial SSDs look great.
 
I'm sticking with Intel 510 and Crucial M4, at least until Sandforce puts out a working product. Never buying or deploying OCZ again.
 
I find it upsetting that two SSDs gave you problems at the same time... Do you think it could possibly a laptop-SSD compatibility issue? Bad batch of chips? Dumb ideas, but it seems that two is pretty unlikely.
 
neonblingbling said:
I find it upsetting that two SSDs gave you problems at the same time... Do you think it could possibly a laptop-SSD compatibility issue?
Click to expand...

That's exactly what it is, the drives have a design flaw and will not work properly in many systems. They should have been recalled months ago.
 
Just had my Vertex 2 (34nm) 60GB up and die. Windows installed updates and said it needed to reboot, during the reboot POST the drive never showed up again and the mobo couldn't find any bootable devices. Tried the drive in a different setup, same thing :( What I've read about SSD deaths is that they are very sudden and random. This drive showed no previous signs up failure. Was working fine one minute, next minute she was gone.

I got my RMA set up with OCZ and it's being shipped back today. Sure wish their RMA system was as easy as Giga and others, instead of having to start a ticket, fill in all the info, wait for a rep to reply, then end up filling in all the info again. Took about 2 days from the start of the process to finally get a RMA number.
 
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just built a rig for a client of mine... opted for the crucial m4 over anthing ocz... simply due to the widespread issues they are having.
 
2 sets of ocz ram over 8 years and a vertex 3 with no defects yet. i must be one the rare lucky ones i guess. only defects i've ever had were 2 gtx 480's.
 
Are ya running the Vertex 3 on a SATA II port? I think the issues are with SB and SATA III.
 
Brando said:
2 sets of ocz ram over 8 years and a vertex 3 with no defects yet. i must be one the rare lucky ones i guess. only defects i've ever had were 2 gtx 480's.
Click to expand...

You are lucky. I went through two sets of OCZ RAM in two weeks. Both were junk from the factory.
I have a Vertex 2 120GB SSDthat I got from a friend. But I cannot for the life of me figure out how to update the firmware or whatever it is that you have to update on an SSD. Been a few months since I messed with it though. Maybe I'll try to get it working again.
 
ratbuddy said:
Are ya running the Vertex 3 on a SATA II port? I think the issues are with SB and SATA III.
Click to expand...

yeah sata2. i haven't kept up with everything related to vertex 3 though. i didn't know about that. is it possible motherboard makers are just slow to adjust and make their products compatible? if the vertex 3's are physically messed up then why would it matter what they're hooked up to as far as how fast they die?
 
Mehovoric said:
You are lucky. I went through two sets of OCZ RAM in two weeks. Both were junk from the factory.
I have a Vertex 2 120GB SSDthat I got from a friend. But I cannot for the life of me figure out how to update the firmware or whatever it is that you have to update on an SSD. Been a few months since I messed with it though. Maybe I'll try to get it working again.
Click to expand...

i remember something from a while back where ocz chose not to have presets for their memory and it had to be set manually every time. lots of people thought it was defective because they didn't know to set the timings and voltage manually. or maybe you just got junk idk but so far everything ocz has been great for me. just chiming in to give both sides that's all.
 
There is likely a bug in the Sandforce controller or firmware that is causing these issues.

The fact that people are seeing these issues on both AMD and Intel platforms would in my mind exonerate the SATAIII controllers and motherboards. Not to mention, other drives like Crucial's C300/M4 and Intel's 510 (all using a Marvell 6Gb/s controller) seem to work just fine.

It's not just OCZ that has this problem, there are many companies selling Sandforce 2281 based drives including Corsair, Kingston, Patriot, and others. The burden is on Sandforce as the other companies are basically repackaging the reference design. I hope it is a firmware issue that can be resolved.
 
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