New SSD With Counterfeit Memory?

[Elixer]

http://thessdreview.com/daily-news/...w-sample-ssd-contains-fake-nand-flash-memory/

So, if you got a new SSD, and the performance isn't quite right, it could have counterfeit NAND ? Yikes.

Heck, it might not even show up in performance.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow. Just like the bad old days of fake L2 mobo cache chips that had been remarked.

 

[JellyRoll]

Thats not 'counterfeit NAND'. It is merely NAND that OCZ desolders off RMA SSDs and sells into the market. A fairly common occurrence. Yet another reason why opening your SSD voids your warranty, they do not want you to know what you are getting!

 

[bballkenn]

http://www.cracktwo.com/2011/04/chinese-fake-hard-drive.html this one is still good. Don't open it or it will void warranty.

 

[bradley]

Thats not 'counterfeit NAND'. It is merely NAND that OCZ desolders off RMA SSDs and sells into the market. A fairly common occurrence. Yet another reason why opening your SSD voids your warranty, they do not want you to know what you are getting!

I wanted to post this story few days ago, an epic thread: "Kingfast literally pulls an OCZ," but didn't want to ruffle any feathers. lol It also wouldn't surprise me if OCZ was using substandard NAND in their Vertex 4 SSDs.

 

[bononos]

Thats not 'counterfeit NAND'. It is merely NAND that OCZ desolders off RMA SSDs and sells into the market. A fairly common occurrence. Yet another reason why opening your SSD voids your warranty, they do not want you to know what you are getting!

Seems like too much work to desolder off ram chips from faulty ssds. The chips would probably be set aside in testing during the packaging process. The article says that the 'fake' chips were originally Micron wafers packaged by OCZ, failed testing, then resold to the low cost backalley operators who then blacktopped the chips back to the Micron brand.

 

[JellyRoll]

De-soldering RMA'd NAND is a very common practice for manufacturers who simply assemble the parts. It is the most expensive component on the board.
IF that NAND had failed inspection it never would have been branded OCZ. They bin the NAND first, then put their logo on. Why would you go to the trouble of branding the NAND if it hadn't been binned yet and was possibly a failure? That is not how it works.
The 'author' of that article is probably one of the least respected SSD 'reviewers' out there. Look at his other content, then decide if you should trust his assumptions, or the garbage fed to him by the companies involved.

 

[Tsavo]

OCZ is the chronic disease that keeps on giving.

No wonder they are about to go tits up.

 

[Ao1]

“Of particular interest is the fact that, in every other KingFast F3 Plus SSD, there are 16 packages of NAND flash memory contained, whereas there are only 8 within the counterfeit F3 Plus SSD that we received”.

Am I reading that correctly? That would seem to blow out the water any credibility that this slipped past Kingfast’s QA.

I doubt very much that OCZ has the capability to bin NAND, but in any case why brand defective NAND and then put it on the market?

Mircon bin NAND and then brand and sell it accordingly in a different channel. This sounds very much like OCZ selling NAND from RMA’d drives to try and cover the losses of their industry record breaking RMA return percentage.

The sooner OCZ go bust the better.

 

[Railgun]

Who cares? It's not like every NAND chip will be bad. And hardly OCZ's fault that someone else covered these up. If they sell it, they sell it. How is it their problem if they sell something and someone else uses it in a manner that someone finds questionable.

 

[Ao1]

Who cares?

Anyone that buys a SSD with OCZ branded NAND that has been put back into the channel for this type of abuse to occur?

 

[Railgun]

What I'm saying is how is that OCZs fault that someone is hiding that?

 

[groberts101]

my responses in red

“Of particular interest is the fact that, in every other KingFast F3 Plus SSD, there are 16 packages of NAND flash memory contained, whereas there are only 8 within the counterfeit F3 Plus SSD that we received”.

which easily explains the lower speeds using incompressible data/random workloads moreso than the nand itself being inferior.

Am I reading that correctly? That would seem to blow out the water any credibility that this slipped past Kingfast’s QA.

I agree completely. I seem to recall some kind of "architecture switch" not all that long ago from another manufacturer. :whiste:

I doubt very much that OCZ has the capability to bin NAND, but in any case why brand defective NAND and then put it on the market?

What proof do you have that the remarketed nand was "defective"? There are many more modes of failure for an SSD which have nothing to do with the actual nand dies themselves. Such as: previously used/heavily written nand which may/should not be fit for reuse on a new PCB, bad solder joints in far more than one location, defective controller chips.. etc. I surely wouldn't be throwing away any chances at recouping some margin if it can be used elsewhere.

Mircon bin NAND and then brand and sell it accordingly in a different channel. This sounds very much like OCZ selling NAND from RMA’d drives to try and cover the losses of their industry record breaking RMA return percentage.

I don't mean to be nasty or offend.. but if you really actually think that all the other manufacturers just throw their nand in the trash bin to be incinerated while singing Kum By Yah as $$$ signs come out the smoke stack?.. I'm thinking you're possibly.. just maybe.. being a bit naive. That stuff ain't so cheap that they just write it off to the trashbin when any of the above mentioned issues resultantly crop up into RMA's. And if it's as much as you guys think it is?.. that would be a lot of wasted ching.

The sooner OCZ go bust the better.

Speak for yourself and the other handful of hateful and resentful members around here. I personally hope they hang in there if only for the simple fact that it will really piss all you guys off if nothing else. :biggrin:

Plus.. I need more of their crappy drives to run my crappy business really really fast all the way to my crappy bank. Although I'm not exactly "extremely rich" just yet.. these drives sure ain't hurtin' my chances at living the dream either.

 

[bradley]

With the growing list of bad tech companies out there, including OCZ, we Anandtechers must be continually pissed. I personally only ever cared about the now bankrupt tech companies with amazing histories, such as: Commodore, 3DFX, Fairchild Semiconductor, Wang Laboratories, Silicon Graphics, Atari, Polaroid etc.

My only advice for bargain hunters, you can usually match or better OCZ's customer incentivized pricing lol? with higher quality SSD drives made by: Samsung, Crucial, Plextor, Intel by simply visiting deal forums and waiting a week, sometimes two.

 

[JellyRoll]

It will be interesting to see which company people will blindly follow, regardless of tens of thousands of unsatisfied customers (construed as hateful and resentful members), after OCZ is done.
Make no mistake, they are done. It is all about selling off IP and stock dilution now, so that the board members and executives can suck out every bit of bonus money before the ship hits bottom. This is a common silicon valley tactic...

 

[Ao1]

my responses in red



Speak for yourself and the other handful of hateful and resentful members around here. I personally hope they hang in there if only for the simple fact that it will really piss all you guys off if nothing else. :biggrin:

Plus.. I need more of their crappy drives to run my crappy business really really fast all the way to my crappy bank. Although I'm not exactly "extremely rich" just yet.. these drives sure ain't hurtin' my chances at living the dream either.

So to keep on track with the article that was linked it is preposterous for Kingfast to imply they did not know they were using “fake” NAND unless it could be considered reasonable that someone in QA could have missed the fact that the PCB was missing 8 die packages. (Not to mention it probably required a f/w tweak)
Maybe the NAND was not stripped off RMA’d drives and it was just sold as surplus inventory due to OCZ’s dramatic drop in sales.
I do speak for myself by the way when I say good riddance to OCZ. The world will indeed be a better place without them. And just for the record it is not OCZ that have driven down SSD prices. If you check carefully you will see that OCZ have always responded to price drops by other companies like Intel and Samsung.

 

[Hallo32]

removed

 

[tweakboy]

Shame on OCZ. Get out of business already and stop the pain.