OCZ SSD dead :( what do I do?

Shmee · Mar 1, 2012

Any news with the RMA? I wish you luck with the process!

On another note, yes, the sf12xx series drives generally are less reliable, but the newer sf 2xxx series and the ocz octane (indilinx everest) seem to be quite a bit better.

And just to clear things up, any modern SSD will be much faster than any modern HDD, both in sequentials, and even more so in the random reads and writes, where SSD's excell. Does that mean that a good HDD wont do? No, not necessarily, but a good SSD will perform much better in circumstances with lots of reads and writes, such as with mulitasking, or loading many small files at once, like during boot.

ss284 · Mar 1, 2012

zCypher said:
Just outta curiosity, where are these "OCZ failure rates" from? Link please.
The only links I've seen posted so far, only have to do with RETURN rates which are NOT the same as failure rates by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm assuming this is the link you were referring to:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-7/components-returns-rates-5.htm

While return rates are not the same as failure rates, they are very very strongly correlated. Then again I might be biased because my early adoption of a vertex 2 lead to three RMAs. OCZ is junk.

groberts101 · Mar 1, 2012

maybe.. but my junk is faster than your junk.

Plus I paid less for it. Bonus.

although, I've only owned 40+ so far and they might have all been out of a "good batch". lol

Shmee · Mar 1, 2012

groberts is just lucky lol.

kbp · Mar 1, 2012

Look - all 2xxx sandforce drives have had some sort of problems. OCZ took the "grunt" because they were the first to market. Too soon to market? PROBABLY.
With that being said, and now, most all firmware issues have been resolved. Lots of 2xxx sandforce based drives available now from many vendors.

frostedflakes · Mar 1, 2012

Sunburn74 said:
Vertex 2s have been extremely problematic drives. I've read a ton of reports on the web of mysterious failure to be recognized by bioses typically after about 6mo to 1 year. I'm not surprised at all and would ask OCZ to exchange the vertex 2 for an agility 3 or try to sell off the vertex 2.

Yeah I have one that's still going strong after 15 months, but it's pretty disconcerting how many reviews you see on NewEgg from users whose Vertex 2 drives failed after months of flawless operation. Keep waiting for it to brick on me. I don't store anything critical on the SSD, just OS/programs, and I make regular backup images of the drive (only to save me the hassle of having to reinstall Windows and all my programs and get everything configured how I like it). I wouldn't be too heartbroken if it died, especially if OCZ upgraded me to an SATA 6Gbps drive like the Agility 3 or Vertex 3 when I sent it in for RMA.

I don't sleep my computer very often, that might be why my Vertex 2 is still functioning. I don't disable sleep either (although I probably should...), but most of the time my computer is running something in the background so it's rarely idle long enough for it to sleep.

Railgun · Mar 2, 2012

I've had four Vertex 3 drives going strong for a year now. In the same box in RAID 0 so they're all getting hit identically. I would have to agree that those early adopters were hit with a not so ready product. That's the downside of being said adopter.

groberts101 · Mar 3, 2012

Railgun said:
I've had four Vertex 3 drives going strong for a year now. In the same box in RAID 0 so they're all getting hit identically. I would have to agree that those early adopters were hit with a not so ready product. That's the downside of being said adopter.

Can't disagree with that one too much.

I'd even go so far as to say that Sandforce should not have released those chips when they did. Not a very good reference design when they power down, panic lock, and disappear, now is it? lol

Binky · Mar 3, 2012

I've had one out of three Vertex1 drives fail. The OCZ RMA process was very quick and I got a brand new drive as a replacement. For me, their RMA service was top notch.

groberts101 · Mar 3, 2012

Binky said:
I've had one out of three Vertex1 drives fail. The OCZ RMA process was very quick and I got a brand new drive as a replacement. For me, their RMA service was top notch.

be sure to just use the now-available destructive flashing process to bring them back to life if you should have any more issues with them. They VERY rarely actually flat out die. They just get panic locked and can be jumpered back to life without any associated shipping costs needed from the end user.

Puffnstuff · Mar 3, 2012

OCZ was quick for me as well only taking one week from receiving my dead drive. Now seagate has been the best by offering me advance rma for the same price that normal shipping alone would cost. For that I got a new drive with the packaging and prepaid shipping label back to them.

sequoia464 · Mar 3, 2012

groberts101 said:
be sure to just use the now-available destructive flashing process to bring them back to life if you should have any more issues with them. They VERY rarely actually flat out die. They just get panic locked and can be jumpered back to life without any associated shipping costs needed from the end user.

Is this for a Vertex1 or the Sandforce Vertex2's?

Rvenger · Mar 3, 2012

Wow, I now have all OCZ SSDs in my main system. This is making me nervous.

ss284 · Mar 6, 2012

groberts101 said:
be sure to just use the now-available destructive flashing process to bring them back to life if you should have any more issues with them. They VERY rarely actually flat out die. They just get panic locked and can be jumpered back to life without any associated shipping costs needed from the end user.

The data loss is the problem. An unreliable SSD can be free and it would still be crappy and unusable for any real work. The hassle and risk for saving 20 bucks is not worth it for me.

Elixer · Mar 6, 2012

groberts101 said:
be sure to just use the now-available destructive flashing process to bring them back to life if you should have any more issues with them. They VERY rarely actually flat out die. They just get panic locked and can be jumpered back to life without any associated shipping costs needed from the end user.

Oh really, I thought they said that they wouldn't release this kind of tool...
Doing a quick skim through their forums, I don't see it, mind posting a link ?

I had 2 drives do the panic lock and both times they were very good with their RMAs.

groberts101 · Mar 6, 2012

Elixer said:
Oh really, I thought they said that they wouldn't release this kind of tool...
Doing a quick skim through their forums, I don't see it, mind posting a link ?

I had 2 drives do the panic lock and both times they were very good with their RMAs.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...-Agility-Solid2-Onyx-1-7-Destructive-updaters

also be sure to look at the drives nand ID with the tool to see if your drive may be applicable to the 1.7 turbo firmware(in the stickies of the Vertex section). Free speed gains are always nice.

To anyone else having issues with these drives?.. newer bios, increased SB voltage, fewer sleep/hibernate transistions, d-flash, and backups are all your friends.

I've often thought about asking those who feel they want to get away from these Indlinix based drives to sell them to me at e-bay pricing since my various systems have no issues with them at all. I even recently bought a 60GB Vertex from another forum member(on another site) who was absolutely convinced that his unit was defective because he was losing data on ocassion similar to others here, as well. D-flashed it to a turbo model(that's why I bought that particular one).. tested the living P outta' it on 3 different systems.. d-flashed it once more and put it on my mothers system about a month ago. No problems whatsoever. Go figure.

Elixer · Mar 6, 2012

groberts101 said:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...-Agility-Solid2-Onyx-1-7-Destructive-updaters

also be sure to look at the drives nand ID with the tool to see if your drive may be applicable to the 1.7 turbo firmware(in the stickies of the Vertex section). Free speed gains are always nice.

To anyone else having issues with these drives?.. newer bios, increased SB voltage, fewer sleep/hibernate transistions, d-flash, and backups are all your friends.

I've often thought about asking those who feel they want to get away from these Indlinix based drives to sell them to me at e-bay pricing since my various systems have no issues with them at all. I even recently bought a 60GB Vertex from another forum member(on another site) who was absolutely convinced that his unit was defective because he was losing data on ocassion similar to others here, as well. D-flashed it to a turbo model(that's why I bought that particular one).. tested the living P outta' it on 3 different systems.. d-flashed it once more and put it on my mothers system about a month ago. No problems whatsoever. Go figure.

Oh, this is vertex, not vertex 2... no wonder why I couldn't find it.
I guess I missed that part.

VirtualLarry · Mar 6, 2012

groberts101 said:
I've often thought about asking those who feel they want to get away from these Indlinix based drives to sell them to me at e-bay pricing since my various systems have no issues with them at all. I even recently bought a 60GB Vertex from another forum member(on another site) who was absolutely convinced that his unit was defective because he was losing data on ocassion similar to others here, as well. D-flashed it to a turbo model(that's why I bought that particular one).. tested the living P outta' it on 3 different systems.. d-flashed it once more and put it on my mothers system about a month ago. No problems whatsoever. Go figure.

I've been pretty successful for the last three months on some OCZ Agility 30GB drives that I picked up cheap at Newegg. Performance == so-so (but still "SSD class"), no problems with reliability that I've seen.

I really wish Intel would release the 11.5s with the RAID-0 trim support. I would love to try out RAID-0 with these drives again.

(Actually, scratch that, I forgot that I recently upgraded to an AMD platform. Wonder if their RAID drivers will ever support TRIM in RAID-0?)

groberts101 · Mar 6, 2012

Elixer said:
Oh, this is vertex, not vertex 2... no wonder why I couldn't find it.
I guess I missed that part.

yeah.. I wondered that prior to my response but forgot to ask if you knew the above reference was for the Indy based drive. Now we both know. lol

And you're right.. LSI/Sandforce's IP will never allow release of uitilities or firmware tools that will give access to base code on these drives for fear of reverse engineering and hacking. This is also the reason that various vendors using these controllers will rarely allow a hard file DL of firmware. Mostly, if not all, server based stuff so far.

While I can't say that I really blame them for lack of base-code access.. but I sure would like to get my hands on some tweaked firmware code for the first gen SF drives. Which of course would still require an engineering based tool to access/flash the controller. "Way beyond me" kinda stuff there. Not to mention that WA would be quite high even if the end user could pull it off. But man.. it sure would be damned fast with no throttling for the 2 years it still had some PE/c life left in it! lol

Oh well.. it still remains "SE/reimage every time I throttle".. for now. Manual OP sure doesn't hurt either.

groberts101 · Mar 6, 2012

VirtualLarry said:
I've been pretty successful for the last three months on some OCZ Agility 30GB drives that I picked up cheap at Newegg. Performance == so-so (but still "SSD class"), no problems with reliability that I've seen.

I really wish Intel would release the 11.5s with the RAID-0 trim support. I would love to try out RAID-0 with these drives again.

(Actually, scratch that, I forgot that I recently upgraded to an AMD platform. Wonder if their RAID drivers will ever support TRIM in RAID-0?)

They are great little controllers for the entry level if the user works around the weaknesses correctly. They just need about 10 consecutive hrs of "alone time" due to weaker on-the-fly GC to get it right, is all. Which of course you found out the hard way.

I like just about any drive with the ability to overclock the processor and some nand id/configs are damned good even compared to todays standards. I've still got a cherry little Vertex 30 that can R/W at 255/170MB/s and it blows Intels older/smaller models out of the water for a scratch drive/USB 3.0 portable.

And no AMD drivers will allow trim pass-through for now either. We either buy a drive that doesn't leverage trim as much.. ones that can be manually trimmed via utilities/toolboxs.. or idle the P out of em. Nice thing is that we'll not be talking about similar concerns at this same time next year.

Same place.. different bat channel. Err... hell.. maybe it's just the opposite? That one didn't turn out like I thought after the reread. LOL

walloyyy · Mar 12, 2012

iluvdeal said:
Was this replacement drive a brand new drive or was it a refurb? I know for hard drives they can refurbish RMA'ed drives and use them as warranty replacements later on, I'm wondering if the same thing happens with SSDs.

They actually sent me a brand new drive OCZ Vertex 3, I'm happy with the performance so far!

Charlie98 said:
Just curious... did they trade you Vertex2 for Vertex2?

Vertex 3

walloyyy · Mar 12, 2012

Shmee said:
Any news with the RMA? I wish you luck with the process!

On another note, yes, the sf12xx series drives generally are less reliable, but the newer sf 2xxx series and the ocz octane (indilinx everest) seem to be quite a bit better.

And just to clear things up, any modern SSD will be much faster than any modern HDD, both in sequentials, and even more so in the random reads and writes, where SSD's excell. Does that mean that a good HDD wont do? No, not necessarily, but a good SSD will perform much better in circumstances with lots of reads and writes, such as with mulitasking, or loading many small files at once, like during boot.

The RMA went really smooth and quick. They sent me a replacement Vertex 3 instead of another Vertex 2! It was a hassle restoring everything but the computer is working faster than ever

Shmee · Mar 12, 2012

congrats on your new vertex 3!

exdeath · Mar 13, 2012

Id rather take a risk with SSD RMA than have my computer freeze every time I flick open the start menu. HDDs FTMFL.

That said, 6 SF2281 drives here (OCZ, Patriot, Mushkin), no problems with any of them.

KentState · Mar 16, 2012

How long does the RMA process take? They've had my drive for more than a business week and a new one has not been shipped out.

OCZ SSD dead :( what do I do?

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