just got an OCZ agility 2...undersized

[OS]

The 120GB drive i got from newegg formats to 107GB which indicates it's one of the afflicted slow and undersized 25nm drives.

I contacted OCZ BEFORE i bought this drive and they said they are only shipping revised drives now but obviously they did not recall any stock already in the channels.

 

[Quiksilver]

Okay.... sooo is this thread going somewhere?

 

[OS]

i'm just saying these drives are still in the channels even now, OCZ did not recall any stock.
any manufacturer worth a crap would know what serial numbers are afflicted but obviously their strategy is to just to continue to see who will complain.

basically these particular model drives may never be safe to buy again

 

[Quiksilver]

That's a little more to the point...

I couldn't tell what exactly you were upset about before considering you gambled(well you did know beforehand it was a possibility of it happening) on a OCZ drive and lost or the whole OCZ FUBAR situation.

 

[OS]

i asked them about this on their forum, they claim all the drives they ship now are revised, but apparently they did not recall anything already in the channel which they should have.

At their word, in particular newegg being probably their biggest vendor with highest inventory turn over, i thought would probably be safe but it was not.
If OCZ was at all proactive they could go to newegg and tell them which products are bad and to take them back.

the implication of this is even months from now if you buy these models from a retailer with alot or slow moving inventory you can still get an afflicted drive.

yes i guess i did gamble a little bit, but i did my due diligence and still got a bad drive.
i am just warning people, not a huge deal, but a hassle.

oh yeah and this drive also has the sleep issue everyone is talking about

 

[jmet]

Yet another reason not to touch OCZ products.

 

[Vidman]

Yet another reason not to touch OCZ products.

....wurd

 

[aigomorla]

I contacted OCZ BEFORE i bought this drive and they said they are only shipping revised drives now but obviously they did not recall any stock already in the channels.

which is why i and a lot of others will not support OCZ.

If you havent learned by now, there in major trouble from all of us.
You dont pull off what you did, and then have the customers pay for your mistake.

 

[Emulex]

just upgrade to the undersized vertex 3 special newegg deal.

 

[semo]

If you knew they were slimy why go to their forums to ask them? I would have just gone with corsair force or some other Sandforce drive instead. Anyway, can you get a full refund at this point?

Good point about newegg... you could say that their reputation has plummeted very quickly so even newegg are finding it hard to shift all their stock.

 

[holty]

Yet another reason not to touch OCZ products.

I have a OCZ drive, a Vertex EX 120GB SATA II drive on firmware 1.4 and am not having any problems. I got it back in late 2009 and have formatted and reinstalled windows 7 x64 several times. Flashed firmware a couple times. Never had any issues.

 

[semo]

holty, you will need to grab that tool from OCZ that tells you what NAND flash chips were used in your drive as you might have the 34nm version

 

[holty]

holty, you will need to grab that tool from OCZ that tells you what NAND flash chips were used in your drive as you might have the 34nm version

Um, ok

Why do i need to do that? seriously, not being a smart a**, i truthfully do not know?

 

[semo]

Have a look at my thread. There's a link to an article in my first post. Corsair have a FAQ on their website about the 34nm to 25nm transition (Corsair did it the right way, OCZ didn't).

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2143367

 

[LokutusofBorg]

I contacted OCZ BEFORE i bought this drive and they said they are only shipping revised drives now but obviously they did not recall any stock already in the channels.

Do you have a link to the thread you're talking about? Because if I take your words literally here, OCZ told you they are only shipping the drives with 25nm NAND, and you misinterpreted it. I haven't followed this issue *extremely* closely, but I've never read or heard any indication that OCZ was going to reverse the transition to 25nm NAND and actually revert to shipping 34nm drives...

 

[KK]

Do you have a link to the thread you're talking about? Because if I take your words literally here, OCZ told you they are only shipping the drives with 25nm NAND, and you misinterpreted it. I haven't followed this issue *extremely* closely, but I've never read or heard any indication that OCZ was going to reverse the transition to 25nm NAND and actually revert to shipping 34nm drives...

I just ordered that 120gb vertex 2 yesterday from newegg for around 150. How bad is this whole 25nm vs 34nm deal. I read an article from some tom guy's hardware page testing the two models, seemed to have mixed results as with performance. anybody here actually have one of the affected drives that can testify how bad they really are?

 

[HendrixFan]

I just ordered that 120gb vertex 2 yesterday from newegg for around 150. How bad is this whole 25nm vs 34nm deal. I read an article from some tom guy's hardware page testing the two models, seemed to have mixed results as with performance. anybody here actually have one of the affected drives that can testify how bad they really are?

There are some threads in this subforum that cover it, but it is something to the tune of halving read and write speeds in some situations.

 

[PowerYoga]

I think most of us here have a problem with OCZ's bait-and-switch tactics, not necessarily the transition to 25nm process. With this batch of 25nms they also only populated half of the channels on the vertex 2s (not sure about agility) which resulted in half of the read speed you'd normally see. Not to mention they have the balls to tell customers they need to man up the difference for the faster drives if they want to switch because the old ones are "more expensive to make". Oh, and pay the shipping too.

Though they've finally gone back after the public backlash and offered to exchange free of charge, this is the last OCZ product i will ever buy. I don't care how fast the vertex 3 is, I will not be giving my money to a shady company when there's other much more reliable companies out there making SSDs.

 

[nanaki333]

Though they've finally gone back after the public backlash and offered to exchange free of charge, this is the last OCZ product i will ever buy. I don't care how fast the vertex 3 is, I will not be giving my money to a shady company when there's other much more reliable companies out there making SSDs.

yep. i was excited about the new SF based controllers. after reading hit or miss reviews on more ocz SF drives than other makers, on top of the 25nm switcharoo.... i'll go to one of the other 10 makers that will probably have SF2000.

 

[JimKiler]

I just ordered that 120gb vertex 2 yesterday from newegg for around 150. How bad is this whole 25nm vs 34nm deal. I read an article from some tom guy's hardware page testing the two models, seemed to have mixed results as with performance. anybody here actually have one of the affected drives that can testify how bad they really are?

I had an original Agility 60GB and just upgraded to Agility 2 120GB and got 25nm NAND and knew it was likely to happen. Since my 60GB was always near full capacity I can say this Agility 2 is faster than my original. I read the Tom's article and tend to agree with him that issue is not so much bad 25nm NAND but not creating a new SKU allowing us to choose which drive we get.

 

[taltamir]

holty, you will need to grab that tool from OCZ that tells you what NAND flash chips were used in your drive as you might have the 34nm version

its not a 25nm vs a 34nm issue. The new replacement drives which give you full size and speed are also 25nm. They are just using 25nm differently (less cost cutting).

He might have the good 34nm version, the bad 25nm version, or the good 25nm version.
He doesn't need a tool to tell him what he has, he can just go into "My Computer" and look at the size.

Do you have a link to the thread you're talking about? Because if I take your words literally here, OCZ told you they are only shipping the drives with 25nm NAND, and you misinterpreted it. I haven't followed this issue *extremely* closely, but I've never read or heard any indication that OCZ was going to reverse the transition to 25nm NAND and actually revert to shipping 34nm drives...

no, they are now shipping revised 25nm drives. They told him they are only shipping the revised 25nm drives. (what they should do is recall / replace the other drives and then re-brand them the Vertex 2 VE and honestly report their stats)

The Vertex 2 come in 3 versions:
V1. 34nm: full speed & size
V2. 25nm: reduced speed and size
V3. 25nm: full speed & size

The problem is that they are all labeled the same; The biggest issue is with size & speed; The drive box says "##GB" but it is actually LESS than that, that is consumer fraud. If they made the V2 a "value edition" with honestly marked price then all will be good. Nobody in the computer industry does that with drive sizes. Everyone in the computer industry is taking advantage of the confusion in definitions and use decimal bytes to give you the size while windows reports it in binary bytes; but they don't actually give you less than the box says.
OCZ was trying to "save money" with the 25nm version 2; they realized that their money saving scheme leaves them with a smaller, slower drive and decided "hey, nobody will notice". Their v3 is doing things properly.
If you compare the V3 to the V1, the V3 has lower longevity (but it should still be decades), lower cost to manufacture, lower power consumption, and higher (worse) BER; but it has the same size and speed while the v2 does not.
You could liken the V1 to V3 transition to different xbox hardware versions or the like; you are not told about those. The biggest issue was with falsely representing its size and speed since the box does not specify longevity or process size. That being said, the V1 is overall better, mainly due to the BER difference; personally I would prefer that they be properly named, but everyone is doing that.

 

[JimKiler]

V3. 25nm: full speed & sizeQUOTE]

are you sure about this, I have not heard anything about two version of 25nm NAND.

 

[Mark R]

V3. 25nm: full speed & sizeQUOTE]

are you sure about this, I have not heard anything about two version of 25nm NAND.

Yes. This is correct, and has been stated by OCZ.

The first drives used 34 nm, 4 GB flash dies (e.g. a 128 GB drive would use 16 chips each with 2 dies - 1 die (4 GB) is used for data protection, allowing data to be recovered from bad sectors automatically).

The next drives used 25 nm, 8 GB flash dies (because of the larger die size, more capacity is used for data protection - giving these drives a lower capacity. On 64 GB drives, a smaller number of chips were used, giving reduced performance as well).

The current drives now use 25 nm, 4 GB flash dies (these work in exactly the same way as the original 34 nm 4 GB dies, and are essentially identical, except for the fact that the 25 nm flash doesn't last quite as long as 34 nm - but this isn't really an issue, the flash lasts plenty long enough). The disadvantage is that the 4 GB flash dies are more expensive - adding about $10 to the cost of manufacturing a drive, over and above the cost of using 8 GB dies.

 

[taltamir]

The disadvantage is that the 4 GB flash dies are more expensive - adding about $10 to the cost of manufacturing a drive, over and above the cost of using 8 GB dies.

Pretty much yes, although while 16x4GB 25nm dies are indeed more expensive than the 8x8GB 25nm dies, they should still be cheaper than 16x4GB 34nm dies.

Also calling them dies is inaccurate, they are actually chips in which 1,2,4 or 8 actual dies are stacked vertically (well, if it is 1 then there is no stacking). I am rather confused about what to call them myself. Multi Die Chips is what I am referring to them as right now

 

[KK]

Yes. This is correct, and has been stated by OCZ.

The first drives used 34 nm, 4 GB flash dies (e.g. a 128 GB drive would use 16 chips each with 2 dies - 1 die (4 GB) is used for data protection, allowing data to be recovered from bad sectors automatically).

The next drives used 25 nm, 8 GB flash dies (because of the larger die size, more capacity is used for data protection - giving these drives a lower capacity. On 64 GB drives, a smaller number of chips were used, giving reduced performance as well).

The current drives now use 25 nm, 4 GB flash dies (these work in exactly the same way as the original 34 nm 4 GB dies, and are essentially identical, except for the fact that the 25 nm flash doesn't last quite as long as 34 nm - but this isn't really an issue, the flash lasts plenty long enough). The disadvantage is that the 4 GB flash dies are more expensive - adding about $10 to the cost of manufacturing a drive, over and above the cost of using 8 GB dies.

So will the drives that are shipping now more than likely just be the v3 drives. The v2, are they still in production or getting shipped out from ocz?