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OCZ Vertex 2 120GB SSD -- 176.99 AR Newegg Shell Shocker until 10am PST

Bought this 2 weeks ago when it was the Shellshocker for $170 (well, it was the 2.5" drive). I've been extremely happy with it so far in my Win 7 x64 system. According to comments in forums, etc., some people seem to have immediate issues with these drives, but I haven't had any.
 
Bought this 2 weeks ago when it was the Shellshocker for $170 (well, it was the 2.5" drive). I've been extremely happy with it so far in my Win 7 x64 system. According to comments in forums, etc., some people seem to have immediate issues with these drives, but I haven't had any.

If the trend in recent feedback is any indication, the chances of having to RMA the drive one (or more) times looks to be a little high for my taste...even though I have money burning a hole in my pocket to upgrade to an SSD...I'm just not gonna pull the trigger.
 
The recent switch to the 25NM Nand is the most troublesome issue, as there is a long thread in the Storage forum here. They are using less NAND chips, thus lower number of throughput channels = lower performance.
 
The recent switch to the 25NM Nand is the most troublesome issue, as there is a long thread in the Storage forum here. They are using less NAND chips, thus lower number of throughput channels = lower performance.

Yes, OCZ is being very sneaky here. I would avoid buying OCZ SSDs simply out of principle, that sort of anti-customer behavior should not be rewarded.
 
The ocz would be faster, but you'd need to be the most tweeked out tweeker to notice. When the ocz is being the rma'd, the Kingston would be faster then.

HA truth.

I kept the kingston instead of going OCZ simply because there were FARRRR too many complaints about dead drives that occur within a few months. It is one thing for it to be DOA and keep rmaing until it works, its another to have it abruptly fail over a few months. sure OCZ sees to keep replacing them which is good customer service, but dealing with non critical constant data loss is annoying simply because i don't want to reinstall windows + my apps over again.
 
The Kingston for a $125 AR is the better deal. I tweaked mine out using the tweaktown dot com SSD tweaks and am getting ATTO #s higher than the manufacturer specs. Kingston customer support is top of the line too. I had to RMA some OCZ ram once and it wasn't a good experience. In fairness, that was a long time ( 8 yrs? ) ago. The JMicron controller in the Kingston is 2nd generation, supports TRIM and is a world away better performance wise than their initial effort. For a buck a quarter, that's a great deal for a 128GB SSD.
 
DO NOT BUY THIS!

They changed the chips used and the performance went to pure crap.

http://www.guru3d.com/news/ocz-vertex-2-with-25nm-nand-flash-reported-slower/

You can see tons of people with new drives having problems where both the read and write speed are greatly suffering compared to what is advertised as well as what was possible before. Also you lose an additional 5GB. Instead of the drive being 120GB it is only 115GB.

Just read the link I provided and search different computer forums for more information.


OCZ has now made a public statement regarding this.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?84821-New-update-on-the-25nm-OCZ-SSD-drives

Basically they acknowledge that there has been a change even though nothing was speicified and that you can pay MORE money on top of what you have already paid to get the older type drive which performs the way it should!!!

Guys please do yourself and others a favor. Avoid OCZ drives and spread the word!
 
Alright, so I finally jumped on an SSD, it was a previous hot deal for the Vertex 2 back in early January. At the the time, folks here were praising the deal and there was no talk of switched NAND or failure rate! The drive installed and has been/is working fine. I just recently ran AS-SSD bencjhmark and the read/writes are close to as advertised. The machine sleeps and wakes fine and all seems well.
Now the more I read on the drives, the more paranoid I get 🙂

So, should I be worried about this as it's my system drive? Should I be trying to swap it out? what do folks recommend?
 
Alright, so I finally jumped on an SSD, it was a previous hot deal for the Vertex 2 back in early January. At the the time, folks here were praising the deal and there was no talk of switched NAND or failure rate! The drive installed and has been/is working fine. I just recently ran AS-SSD bencjhmark and the read/writes are close to as advertised. The machine sleeps and wakes fine and all seems well.
Now the more I read on the drives, the more paranoid I get 🙂

So, should I be worried about this as it's my system drive? Should I be trying to swap it out? what do folks recommend?

I got in on the same deal to which you're referring, and my drive is working fine - it's a 34nm drive, not a 25nm drive. I'd imagine you too have a 34nm drive if yours was shipped at the same time. If it's working well for you, I wouldn't recommend swapping it out. I know there are lots of reports of failure out there, but it's important to remind yourself that it's people who have PROBLEMS who are going to be filling up the forums - not the people whose drives are working smoothly. Now, I do think the OCZ drives have a higher failure rate than they should, and probably higher than other brands, but I don't think the problem is so big that you're more likely to have an issue than not - it just seems that way because most of the posts out there are by people who are having problems. Bottom line: if it's working well for you, don't think twice about it.
 
I got in on the same deal to which you're referring, and my drive is working fine - it's a 34nm drive, not a 25nm drive. I'd imagine you too have a 34nm drive if yours was shipped at the same time. If it's working well for you, I wouldn't recommend swapping it out. I know there are lots of reports of failure out there, but it's important to remind yourself that it's people who have PROBLEMS who are going to be filling up the forums - not the people whose drives are working smoothly. Now, I do think the OCZ drives have a higher failure rate than they should, and probably higher than other brands, but I don't think the problem is so big that you're more likely to have an issue than not - it just seems that way because most of the posts out there are by people who are having problems. Bottom line: if it's working well for you, don't think twice about it.

Good points. The only reason I was worried is that according to this :
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?84821-New-update-on-the-25nm-OCZ-SSD-drives
the drives with an "E" are the 25nm drives, ie the problem ones? The part # on my box matches the one shown= "2VTXE120G"
Looks like they were switching these earlier than folks knew!
Probably why those deals started showing up.
anyway, as you noted, the drive works and most folks who don't have problems don't bother to post so I'll ride it out.
I have used OCZ warranty service before and they do stand behind their products. I just don't like the "switch process without telling" crap.
 
Looks like I "lucked out" so to speak: In that support thread they mention that the "E" drives are 25nm and my PN has the "E". But after reading the threads at their forum, one of their supports guys stated that: "You also show 111.79GB, which means you don't have a 25nm drive, you have a 34nm drive."!
Mine does read 111.79GB in AS-SSD Bench and my scores match what folks are getting with the 34nm drives.
so hopefully I won't have the high failure rate worries. Glad I got what I paid for.
 
wow, thanks for the link http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?84821-New-update-on-the-25nm-OCZ-SSD-drives

I don't want to troll on the whole thing, but this was the funniest.

Tony the moderator was arguing to a customer about the life expectancy of the product...

some of the new 25nm is 4.5PE/c, some of the is 34nm 3.5PE/c....i think this general argument regarding PE/c is mute now.
this is a textbook logic fail, and i think is listed here as a categorical syllogism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllogism
 
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Any company that "silently" updates their product (read: no change in model number) won't be getting my money. This is pretty shady on OCZ's part....not hot IMHO.
 
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