The Tech Report has already shown a variety of SSDs can survive long after their write life cycle has been exceeded and that some drives can continue past 2 petabytes. Kitguru is performing a very similar test, specifically with OCZ Arc 100 SSD and have now passed the 100TB mark with the five drives they are testing. Not a single one of these consumer level drives have died and only one of the drives has reported an error and that was one single bad block. While they have had problems with a specific controller in the past, they no longer use that controller and claims that all of their drives are tarnished is a bit of an exaggeration. A specific performance was also finally addressed, but they are certainly not the only manufacturer that has needed to be called out to address performance degradation over time. You can see the current results here.
"The drives all passed the warranty figure of 22TB at the close of December – our next test was to get them all past the 100TB mark. Would any fail?"
Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:
- Silicon Power Slim S80 480GB SSD Review @ NikKTech
- Western Digital My Passport Pro 2 TB Portable (Thunderbolt) @ Tech ARP
- QNAP TS-431 @ Legion Hardware
- Synology DS415play NAS Review @ Madshrimps
Not that the OCZ Vector
Not that the OCZ Vector failures have anything to do with that stigma. Then being told by OCZ tech support that because the drive is showing good read and write speeds even with explaining that data loves to corrupt after periods of time. That there is nothing they can do. Then being told that I would have to send it in for further testing on my own dime.
This is suppose to be fixed with firmware 3.0 but why should I trust them, they never even attempted to fix the problem after multiple emails with tech support. At least Samsung came out publicly and released statements on their issue, OCZ kinda just farted the firmware update out. I will however give props, it seems OCZ tech support is currently reaching out to people on Newegg. Maybe the change in leadership was needed.
Harping on the new ocz is
Harping on the new ocz is just plain wrong, they’re not their own company any more(you can call them toshiba). people that say ocz is bad choice for their current lineup clearly live under a rock when it comes to tech news and deserve to be called out for their idiocy.
I had an Arc100 for literally
I had an Arc100 for literally 7 days. Due to some power circuit issues, power to the PC was cut a number of times (~5-6) over that time. On the final power outage, the drive was completely dead. OCZ Support confirmed that that sort of thing can happen with the firmware getting scrambled.
Thats really not acceptable. Somehow my Samsung 830 from several years ago is still going strong in that same PC; the ARC 100 was returned.
I made the mistake of trusting that the acquisition and new firmware meant that QA had improved; not making that mistake again.
The snark towards people
The snark towards people complaining about OCZ is a bit unwarranted. OCZ was extremely uneven in QC for a few years and mixed solid SSDs with absolutely terrible ones. We’ll never get solid numbers, but by all accounts, the Petrol series and some of the Vertex series were one of the most failure prone drives ever made.
The Arc 100 is an entirely new series of drives and it’s apparently great news that it doesn’t share the problems that led to OCZ going bankrupt in the first place.
Well, that probably had more
Well, that probably had more to do with them selling drives below cost, but yes there was a time a few years ago when they had some issues.
The vector drives – the very
The vector drives – the very same ones they marketed as being ULTRA Reliable – are on their third version of firmware, with return rates between 7 and 9 percent.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0AJ0ZM4775&cm_re=ocz_vector-_-9SIA0AJ0ZM4775-_-Product
Take a look at those reviews. The Vector averages 3 of 5 eggs with freaking legions of complaints of drive failures and data corruption.
Anyone remember this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFiFmM4oYik
Come on Jeremy, you’re better than this.
Priced right, these drives
Priced right, these drives look good!
I have had two OCZ and one
I have had two OCZ and one ADATA. All of them failed. In my opinion it is because of the Sandforce controller.
I also have an intel M, a Samsung 830 and a 840. All of them are working well.
OCZ should have abandoned Sandforce controllers much earlier.
The Tech report confirms my suspions:
Intel 335 SandForce’s SF-2281 750 PB
Corsair’s Neutron Series GTX LAMD LM87800 1100 PB
Kingston HyperX 3K SandForce 728PB*
Samsung 840 Samsung MDX controller 900 PB
Samsung 840 PRO Samsung MDX controller still working…
OCZ ARC 100 OCZ Barefoot 3 M10 ???
*one kingston SSD is still working after 1.5 PB.
Well I’ll let other people be
Well I’ll let other people be the beta testers for new OCZ then for next few years.
Don’t really see the point giving them benefit of doubt when there’s literally dozens of well performing ssd in all price ranges.
I have several SSDs with
I have several SSDs with sandforce sf-2281 controllers and work at a location that purchase a bunch of Intel SSDs using these same controllers. I agree with the statement that it wasn’t OCZ as much as it was this stupid controller.
I have a rosewill HDD dock that will go to sleep on the USB port it is plugged into. All I have to do to put a sandforce drive into “panic lock” is to leave it in that dock overnight. The drive is unrecoverable without a warranty claim.
Sandforce had a terrible product and never got it patched to prevent the “panic lock” issues. They were a time bomb for your data. The fact that there is still no way for a user to recover a drive from this condition is just wrong. If they at least provided a way to unlock it and reflash you could at least use the drive again. (You would still loose all the data though).
If OCZ wanted to really get on my good side they would talk Sandforce into fixing all of those old drives that put them in the terrible brand position they are in now.
Oh god, PcPer, STFU. It was
Oh god, PcPer, STFU. It was NEVER about “OCZ SSD being trash”, it was ALWAYS about “SandForce being trash”. Now just take a guess what controller OCZ been heavily utilizing since all of that SSD craze began several years ago. That’s right. Exactly. You guessed it. And there were tons of other SSD-producing companies (besides just OCZ itself) who been using that garbage in their products. So STFU. You’re no more “expert” than those other “experts” you’re degrading just-so-oh-so-hard here.
So … you agree then but
So … you agree then but didn't understand my sarcasm?
To this day you will still see brand new threads in forums and comments, even in this particular post, about how all OCZ is garbage and that they will never ever buy a product from them again because in their expert opinion everything OCZ has ever made and will ever make doesn't work.
It is up there with those who will never buy AMD because every driver they have ever released is crap and will set your computer on fire … or something else just as ridiculous.
Being wary of a company after
Being wary of a company after being burned so hard is a natural and reasonable reaction. It took a long time after the 60/75GXP Deskstar disasters for people to trust IBM consumer disks again. After many uneventful years and a sale of the division to Hitachi, they started to regain consumer trust when they launched some product lines that where attractively priced and were discovered to be highly reliable. This process took about a decade.
Seagate’s reputation is still in a refractory period following their 7200.11 series firmware disaster six years ago. The events effecting OCZ are even more recent, and they’re just not there yet. With a failure rate that was so incredibly high with their Indilinx-based Vertex line, similar though less severe problems with many of their later Sandforce-based products, and a bankruptcy that felt like validation of that reputation to so many it will take some time for them to recover.
You have to remember two things. OCZ was the most visible face during the popularization of consumer SSD technology, and these problems occurred at a time when OCZ’s products seemed like the path out of the Jmicron wasteland we had known before during the really early SSD days. When their products were so widely purchased by enthusiasts and then subsequently burnt so many of them, it created a justifiably deep sense of resentment within that community.
You treat the topic like it’s just a bunch of cranky poseurs making noise instead of anyone who is actually knowledgeable. This isn’t fair to the reality of the subject and makes you appear as less of a legitimate authority on the subject.
I guess I would suggest just this: Show more respect to those who might disagree with you (ie the entire community of people you’re putting down when you say ‘experts’) and try to avoid such hyperbole even when it’s so easy to fall into using it when writing about a topic you might feel strongly about.
Jeremy’s dripping contempt
Jeremy’s dripping contempt for people who comment negatively about OCZ is even more off base than even you’re describing because as I stated earlier in a post above (which Jeremy didn’t bother responding to) the Vector drives which came out in late 2012 (just a little over 3 years ago) have horrible failure rates and horrible reviews on Newegg and Amazon. (This is in comparison to dozens of other drives released during the same time frame with far better reviews and far lower failure rates.)
To give you an idea of how much of a fiasco the Vector was and still is, when OCZ marketed the drives they put more emphasis on their reliability and the extreme validation process they underwent than they did on their performance (!!). As Anand wrote in November of 2012:
“The new OCZ is supposed to sincerely prioritize compatibility, reliability and general validation testing. Only time will tell if things have changed, but right off the bat there’s a different aura surrounding my first encounter with OCZ’s Vector SSD.”
All their marketing materials were geared toward this, and yet the drive is currently on it’s third MAJOR firmware release, with returns rates reported between 7 and 9 percent and legions of complaints on Newegg and Amazon.
OCZ’s reputation is well earned, and the Sandforce failures are only a small piece of a much bigger puzzle of failures and deceit, (anyone remember the Vertex 2 flash downgrade?) which continued all the way up to late 2012 with the release of the Vector.
Jeremy, you’re acting like a biased child fanboy with articles and responses like these. You’re willfully ignoring evidence which contradicts your breathless damnation of anyone who disagrees with your one-sided viewpoint, and in doing you’re harming your reputation which up until now i respected a great deal. Please make it right.
Um…maybe I’m missing on
Um…maybe I’m missing on something here, but…what’s wrong with heavily emphasizing on your product’s reliability and stability instead of it’s performance/speeds when it comes down to advertising SSDs? Plextor does exactly that and their SSDs are still ones of the most reliable AND greatly performing ones at the same time, out there. Plextor always emphasizes on reliability and stability factors in their advertisements of SSDs, much more than on their performance, but their SSDs still turn out to be being both very highly reliable and also having great working speeds. The 256GB version of M5S is an exceptionally clear and obvious evidence of that, a truly GODLIKE product when it comes down to SSDs. So I really think that this logic of yours doesn’t really work all that well in relation to the every single manufacturer out there. OCZ, yes, I see point on that, but there are much more fish out there in the pond, ya know?
Ugh, i thought what i was
Ugh, i thought what i was attempting to convey was crystal clear.
The point was that, because of OCZs tarnished reputation on reliability they decided to focus their marketing more on reliability for the Vector series. In an of itself, that would have been perfectly fine and a great strategy given their troubled past, except for the fact that the Vector was an absolute dog when it CAME to reliability, to the point that something as simple as an unexpected power loss could kill it dead instantly. (Imagine your computer hard locks becoming unresponsive to keyboard input and your only option is to manually disconnect the power. Boom, dead Vector.) And that’s just one example of the many problems plaguing the SSD.
If you promise your customers that your new product is ultra reliable and then release a product that is anything but you’re going to emerge from that transaction with a far worse reputation than you would have had you kept your mouth shut, and rightly so. And that, combined with OCZs past reliability transgressions meant that the Vector’s dismal dependability record was essentially pouring salt into the open wound of OCZ’s already tainted reputation.
Once more with feeling: OCZ has EARNED their horrible reputation. They tried to fix it with the Vector 2 years ago, and in doing so only dug themselves deeper. There are tons of other brands out there with far better track records who deserve the consumer’s usiness far more than OCZ does.
To all you OCZ defenders out there, get over it. OCZ made their bed…
Well, maybe it was that I
Well, maybe it was that I thought that you were bringing up that advertisement factor as a thing in overall, but since you were only referring to OCZ and OCZ only in that regard, fine. My point was on that you shouldn’t generalize the whole market when you’re really talking about only one particular crappy company/product, but since you’ve managed to explain yourself, fine.
Also, I really hope that you didn’t mean that “OCZ defender” in my direction, because that’s a pretty heavy insult to a person who, by principle, only uses Plextor’s, Toshiba’s, Micron’s and ADATA’s SSDs.
“Also, I really hope that you
“Also, I really hope that you didn’t mean that “OCZ defender” in my direction”
No no, not at all. I should have been more clear: that was geared toward Jeremy and this article. Also, if i came off as abrasive in my reply toward you it was not intentional. We’re in agreement on OCZ.
It is possible that you have
It is possible that you have more direct contact with OCZ and large scale information on failure and return rates than I do and have data which contradicts what I have seen. However, in the data I have seen from companies that track these types of datasets, apart from issues related to a specific controller, the overall failure rates of OCZ drives are not significantly different than competitors. I consider those sources much more reliable than anecdotal evidence from NewEgg/Amazon reviews and forum posts.
As far as being a defender of one company or another, it really does not matter to me which component you use in your system, I am reporting on the facts as I know them. Please feel free to disagree but try not to take as some sort of personal attack.
Ah, so it’s an educational
Ah, so it’s an educational deficiency. In that case perhaps you should have done your research first before writing this ignorant and demeaning article, no?
Allow me to edify you of OCZ’s failure rate and how that rate compares to other brands (for a specific period of time):
Total:
– Samsung 0,54% (versus 0,28%)
– Sandisk 0,70% (N/A)
– Kingston 0,72% (versus 1,00%)
– Intel 0,90% (versus 0,63%)
– Corsair 0,91% (versus 1,88%)
– Crucial 1,08% (versus 2,26%)
– OCZ 5,66% (versus 2,27%)
Specific Drives:
– 11,00% OCZ Vertex 4 256 Go
– 8,87% OCZ Vector 256 Go
– 4,76% Corsair Neutron 256 Go
– 1,16% Samsung 840 250 Go
– 1,00% Sandisk 256 Go
– 0,73% Crucial M4 256 Go
– 0,48% Samsung 840 Pro 256 Go
– 0,47% Sandisk Ultra Plus 256 Go
– 0,43% Crucial M500 240 Go
– 0,00% Corsair Neutron GTX 240 Go
– 0,00% Intel SSD 335 240 Go
– 0,00% Samsung 840 EVO 250 Go
Notice how the failure rates for drives with the letters OCZ in their title is far higher than ones without?
The article is here: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/920-7/ssd.html
Take that data then go take a look at the reviews of the Vectors, and compare those reviews to other drives in the above list. You might notice that there’s a strong correlation between a high failure rating in the article and a low review score. Amazingly that correlation also applies in the opposite direction for drives with a low failure rate in the article that have high review scores.
I found all of this out with a cursory google search. Perhaps next time you should do the same before you write an article like this which has no basis in reality, and is really, as far as i can tell, just you spouting off at the mouth about things you have no clue about and can’t be bothered to research?
That’s an updated chart,
That’s an updated chart, huh.
How about this – http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html, lol. Y-yeaaahhhhh…your eyes aren’t deceiving you and it’s not a typo either. :
I’m having a lot of fun
I'm having a lot of fun trying to find info not behind paywalls, unfortunately it is not going so well. Places like this http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=252304 tend to be out of the price range of interested individuals. That French source is interesting and not one I've run into before. I'm a little leery of the data as this is just returns as opposed to failures but even still that spike in Indilinx is rather worrisome.
Still looking but I can say that so far I have not run into University or Industry research which points out OCZ as something to be avoided. Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense however.
Oh wow. It looks like he was
Oh wow. It looks like he was right about you being a fanboy, after all.
Thanks for keeping an open
Thanks for keeping an open mind.
I also find it interesting
I also find it interesting that you’re perfectly willing to accept the anecdotal evidence cited in your article (Tech Reports Arc 100 endurance test) to exonerate OCZ of all charges, but ignore the far deeper pool of anecdotal evidence on tap at various online outlets which implicates of horrible reliability.
I also find it interesting
I also find it interesting that you’re perfectly willing to accept the anecdotal evidence cited in your article (Tech Reports Arc 100 endurance test) to exonerate OCZ of all charges, but ignore the far deeper pool of anecdotal evidence on tap at various online outlets which implicates of horrible reliability.
Dude, the Petrol. Come on.
Dude, the Petrol. Come on. Seriously.
You just CAN’T deny THAT.
No one (NOBODY) on this planet is that highly delusional or outright retarded as to deliberately deny the facts about OCZ’s Petrol and the massively bad consequences it produced.
No one in their right might would ever try to justify Petrol.
It was Superman 64+Cheetahmen II+Atari E.T.+Mindjack of SSDs. OCZ still can’t get over Petrol, dude. Even these days. So, please. Come on. Just. Don’t.
Are you an AVGN watcher?
Are you an AVGN watcher?
Because any mentioning of
Because any mentioning of truly shitty games = automatically AVGN watcher.
>We’re in agreement on
>We’re in agreement on OCZ
Partially yes, but not entirely.
Remember: I’m not against OCZ itself, it even managed to make some quite decent products in the past, mainly PSUs.
OCZs PSUs were actually pretty good (especially the “ZT” line above 500W). It’s just the SSDs they’re sucking at heavily, and not because “THEY’RE OCZ”, but because they’ve been using that SandForce garbage for such a long time it’s not even funny.
On one thing I actually agree with PcPer: during the several last years the “OCZ” acronym itself basically became an epitome of the phrase “unreliable SandForce trash”, but who’s really to blame for that? Yes, OCZ used trash, yes the failure rates are asininely high even these days (because Indilinx’s crap isn’t all that much better than the SandForce garbage. It’s just better. Slightly. Nowhere near the Marvell or Phison, but still better than SF. You can’t deny that. You just can’t), but one thing you can’t take away from OCZ is that they were the ones who made SSDs much MUCH cheaper, because they were the ones who brought all this SSD craze to the mainstream hardware consumer market in the last ~8 years, which in itself (disregarding of how crappy OCZs SSDs actually were, and most of them still are) made other manufacturing companies arise, and that brought up the massive price drops sheer “$ per 1GB”-wise on flash memory market, paved the way for much MUCH better SSDs also. I can’t state that OCZ was a definite pioneer of the arising mainstream hardware SSD market, because even then it wasn’t the only player (Intel, remember?) out there, but what it definitely brought to the table is a much faster popularization of SSDs as a whole and thus much lower prices. Sure, we’re still nowhere even close the prices HDDs have, but we’re moving there with a speed of sound, and OCZ is actually partially thanks for that.
>We’re in agreement on
>We’re in agreement on OCZ
>>Partially yes, but not entirely.
Actually, we’re still in agreement. I agree with everything you just said. OCZ was instrumental for bringing to prices of SSDs down from the stratosphere and cutting the bleeding edge of performance. This kept everyone on their toes and pushed the envelope for the entire industry. I don’t doubt this one bit.
With regard to quality tho, that’s a different story entirely, which is i am focusing on in my comments given the nature of the article.
I sign under almost every
I sign under almost every word you’ve said. *Tips fedora*
I actually find BareFoot not
I actually find BareFoot not that much of an improvement off of that SandForce trash. It’s more stable and more reliable than any SF, yes, but it’s still NOWHERE even remotely near any of the Marvells and/or Phisons.
I heard OCZ is developing it’s own brand new IP of a controller right now, let’s see how that one turns out to be…I really hope that they’ll succeed and this time people really start appreciating OCZ. I really do. Because their stuff was always extremely cheap “$ per 1GB”-wise (though nowhere near modern Micron with the MX100 and etc) and also much faster, in comparison to the competition. If their new IP controller turns out to be as reliable as modern Marvells, and not slower than SF, then it’ll be a complete win.
Everyone blaming Sandforce
Everyone blaming Sandforce for OCZ crap SSD’s.
That’s only part of the picture……..
The moment OCZ started buying wafers and binning
their own flash just about anything ended up in
SSD’s, even flash that others would relegate to
$4 pen drives…………………
Even today I’m cautious when i see flash cut and
binned by any other than the manufacturer…….
Likely to have slacker binning-$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Dude, as I’ve said
Dude, as I’ve said previously: the main problem in OCZ’s SSD products WAS the SandForce itself, really. And then later BareFoot (though it IS slightly better than SF).
Now, according to the latest info, they’re making their own new IP of a controller. Let’s just wait and see, alright? OCZ’s problems in the past were always that they were using crappy controllers from third parties. Now they’re developing their own.
Outside of their SSDs “before bankruptcy and acquisition by the much better Alpha dogs on the market”-period wise, they actually were making quite decent products. Seriously. Their PSUs were actually truly worth of buying, quite good products.
So let’s just wait and see, seriously. Maybe (just MAYBE, but still) OCZ actually does it right this time. I’m not getting my hopes high, but I’m still giving them a chance. Why don’t you? Anyone has a right for a last chance to redeem themselves, ya know? If they fail with that proprietary IP controller of theirs, fine, then OCZ is finally completely done for, but if they’ll actually manage to make a truly great thing, then…
Of course they had good
Of course they had good PSU-They bought P C POWER & COOLING.
Don’t know what happened to them when OCZ went bust……….
According to the info I could
According to the info I could find, after OCZ became bankrupt it’s PSU division (hence “PC Power & Cooling”) was completely bough-out in February of 2014, by a new Power Supply-manufacturing company called “FirePower Technology”. That division was sold in it’s whole entirety, so, basically, we will never see any PSUs from OCZ ever again (probably not even under Toshiba), because they simply don’t have anyone left who’d worked on any PSUs in the future.
As for the “FirePower Technology” itself…according to the info I could gather, they’re a relatively new brand and the company was created by a group of ex-employees from such companies as Enermax (it’s US office), Corsair (it’s PSU division), LEPA (aka LepaTek), Rosewill and “PC Power & Cooling” itself. In all actuality, after they bought the “PC Power & Cooling” team from OCZ, the percentage of employees from “PC Power & Cooling” in that company now holds at a 70% of the overall number of it’s workers, or somewhere around that. Absolute majority of FirePower’s employees are “PC Power & Cooling” workers, either new or old, is what I’m saying.
Hi,
Anyone having issues with
Hi,
Anyone having issues with OCZ Vertex 4 drives? Including data read errors (not tried write testing as yet, it’s the OS drive).
I’ve had one instance of the OS failing to boot due to errors and will be migrating to another drive (not OCZ) shortly.
Just curious if anyone else is seeing issues with this Vertex 4 range?
Kind Regards
Simon
I still have an OCZ Vertex
I still have an OCZ Vertex II. I contacted OCZ as it went bad during the warranty period. I tried to pay to get the data recovered. Several months passed. DriveSavers had no luck in recovering the data. By that point the drive warranty had expired. OCZ refused to honor the warranty because I hadn’t sent it back to them during the warranty period.
I’m still hoping that someday, someone will figure out how to recover the data from these drives.
Firstly, OCZ under their old
Firstly, OCZ under their old CEO was a pioneering firm that did things sort of out of the garage. They did some cool custom things on a shoestring budget and pushed the entire industry to follow. They overclocked RAM. Now we have XMP. They pushed PSU’s now we have a superior set of ratings for CONSUMER psu’s. AND they pushed the HELL out of SSD’s. I still have a 30GB OCZ operational SSD first generation. Now we have SSD’s out the but and competition for performance, quality and price.
Yes, the original CEO (Ryan???) should have been demoted to CTO or some other Steve Jobs like roll at craPPLE (his first time around when he was young) and let an experienced C-suite team run the business back in 2005ish. Because QC sucked donkey balls and when money got tight they did shifty things.
They now have that proper C-suite and a solid source of quality RAM. I own RD400’s, I like them. The arc’s though kinda suck from a performance perspective. I prefer cosair LE or patriot blasts in that performance range. But I have respectg for what OCZ was trying to do and what they did do.