AMD SSDs as bad as their CPUs?

Feb 25, 2011
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Aren't they just rebadged Toshiba?

With 9 reviews, it's not enough of a data set to really draw a conclusion.
 

SithSolo1

Diamond Member
Mar 19, 2001
7,740
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All of AMD's ram and ssds are rebranded. I believe the ram comes from Patriot and the SSDs are OCZ/Toshiba similar to the Arc 100 series.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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Cons: The drive I'm currently using is number two of this one purchase. The first drive was a dog, and would hardly let me format or partition it, and there were many times that it didn't show up on the POST screen.

Whether it was Windows setup, GParted, diskpart, or a commercial partition software, I'd usually get a "Success" confirmation, yet the drive would be unchanged (as if I hadn't run any partition commands) or I would get an unusable RAW partition or something like it. Whenever I could finally get a successful partitioning, it would be under diskpart one time, and another time under GParted, another time in "Disks" (from Ubuntu Live CD), etc. Success seemed to be random.

Then I'd install Windows or Linux, but things wouldn't last long. After several hours' use, the computer would start crawling, and if the computer went to sleep or was rebooted, that was it. The UI would be literally unusable, if it came up at all. Oddly enough, I wasn't getting I/O errors, at least printed to the screen. I forgot to check the logs, so maybe they were there. After four or five re-installs of Windows and Linux, with my hdds installed or not, I threw in the towel and called OCZ.

OCZ still wanted me to try the drive on another SATA channel, which I did, but nothing changed.

Other Thoughts: I'm glad for the purchase. I'd buy the drive again, despite the difficulties.

Good thing OCZ has good RMAs!
 

Puffnstuff

Lifer
Mar 9, 2005
16,208
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You've got to give amd credit for trying to diversify their lineup in the face of declining cpu sales. With that said they're asking a lot of money for a 480gb drive.
 
Feb 25, 2011
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Ultimately, I have to assume that those "I got two/three/four/five that failed before one worked!" guys are either 1) let's-buy-a-lottery-ticket lucky, or 2) somehow damaging their hardware during installation.

It's one thing to get a defective product, but with the failure rates that most stuff has these days, getting two in a row is like a 50,000 to 1 shot. Three or more? Fuhgedabowdit.

They also don't strike me as particularly bright - by defective #2, I'm asking for an exchange for a different brand/model.
 

Topweasel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2000
5,437
1,659
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Ultimately, I have to assume that those "I got two/three/four/five that failed before one worked!" guys are either 1) let's-buy-a-lottery-ticket lucky, or 2) somehow damaging their hardware during installation.

It's one thing to get a defective product, but with the failure rates that most stuff has these days, getting two in a row is like a 50,000 to 1 shot. Three or more? Fuhgedabowdit.

They also don't strike me as particularly bright - by defective #2, I'm asking for an exchange for a different brand/model.
Don't even give them the satasifaction of at least thinking they even owned the product.

Between consoles, OSes, phones, video cards, and CPU's. You have some of the most insane fanboy groups the world has seen. Products with bad reviews before they even ship, parroting fears of everyone else, and just trying to drum up discord for the company that didn't make the part that they purchased. I have seen people actually purchase the competeing product on some sites just so they would have Verified owner in their review. My guess is that most of these are Intel fanboys. Even the OP is just trying to feed into his bias against AMD with the inflammatory title.

I wouldn't purchase an AMD relabeled SSD or memory stick. Specially not at inflated prices. But there is little to no chance that the drives are anywhere near as bad as those reviews imply.
 
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Feb 25, 2011
16,994
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I wouldn't purchase an AMD relabeled SSD or memory stick. Specially not at inflated prices.

I totally would - personally, I think an all-AMD system (RAM, CPU, Motherboard, GPU, SSD) would be kinda neat.

But afaik AMD doesn't make motherboards, just chipsets. :(
 

Ramses

Platinum Member
Apr 26, 2000
2,871
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Must be expensive stickers and packaging with "AMD" on it lol...

Credit for trying I guess, but I'd be my ass this is a strictly marketing dept conjured up deal. You'd think they could have managed to be semi competitive though.


And I'd do a complete AMD system too. This is a hobby, remember?
Absolute performance or speed or economy isn't always the goal.
It's neat and interesting and fun. I'd like to rebuild the Unisys Aquanta DS/2 I
ran for years too because it was really, really cool. I think an all AMD system would be cool too. Or an all Intel system, or all Nvidia. I don't have the budget or the space even but if I did I'd totally do something like that. My most recent ponder has been a wall mounted display of every Cyrix CPU ever made that I can find in a nice wood bordered glass covered case, either the fastest of each line or the slowest, or both.
 

Magic Carpet

Diamond Member
Oct 2, 2011
3,477
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I've bought 10+ Toshiba SSDs in the last 24 months. No complaints. Second favorite to Intel.

Except for a genuine incompatibility, most user issues are solvable. And the rare incompatibility can strike anybody, be it Intel, Samsung / etc.
 
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DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
22,961
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I totally would - personally, I think an all-AMD system (RAM, CPU, Motherboard, GPU, SSD) would be kinda neat.

But afaik AMD doesn't make motherboards, just chipsets. :(

Just get an Asus board. AMD is in bed with them on some stuff, and when it comes to FM2+, all the best boards come from Asus.

The only AMD-badged stuff I'd consider would be their memory which is *supposed* to be dual-rank with Hynix ICs, which would be good for Kaveri chips anyway. That's not the only RAM out there like that, though.
 

coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
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Read the reviews. Nearly all of them are about the SSD dying within a short period.

The AMD SSDs are made by OCZ with the new Barefoot 3 controller and Toshiba NAND. OCZ reports under 1% failure rate for drives made with this controller.

And yes, AMD SSDs are as bad as their CPUs, they work just fine.

This is what a OCZ rep had to say about their products:
ocztosh said:
As this is my first comment in regards to this article please allow me to identify myself as a member of OCZ Storage Solutions. Thank you both very much for your comments and we appreciate all input.

In regards to reliability there were indeed some products from the previous organization which used third party controllers and exhibited issues, and the fixes often took a long time due to inability to control the firmware source. There were also some problem products like those in the Octane and Petrol Series that over time exhibited a 6.4% return rate nearly 3 years ago. Much too high, and certainly not acceptable. A lot of this was the driving motivation for the organization, even prior to becoming part of Toshiba, to make great investments in new processes from design through manufacturing, as well solidifying the need to vertically integrate to control everything from the asic through the firmware.

In comparison Barefoot 3 has very low return rates, and extremely low actual failure rates. Over time the failure rates are well below 1% (.1% in some skus) on products like the Vector 150 for example. It is a fact that the Barefoot silicon has never been reved, which is a testament to the controller. Also as part of the Toshiba Group we also are able to lock down the flash we use, all of which is premium SSD grade NAND. This complete access to Toshiba NAND has allowed us to take the controller further than we have in the past while improving reliability at the same time.

We completely understand the quality concerns from the past and appreciate your comments. We have changed everything from the people to the design process, and even the manufacturing and validation, even transitioning to building all our drives at a Toshiba certified partner factory, and are continually investing in this area as it is a key priority for us. Thank you again for the comments and dialogue.