I haven't had any issues with any SSDs:
1 x Intel G1 80 GB
3 x Intel G2 40 GB
2 X OCZ 64 GB Agility II drives
1 x Microcenter (Adata) 64GB SSD - updated with Adata firmware
In all cases, I updated the firmware right away, and then never touched it. Most of these are running in XP, so I prefer the Intel drives, as they maintain their full speed in XP. the Sandforce drives slow down noticeably after a short period of time. Even my Intel G1 has held up better in XP and the OCZ drives.
Edit - I just received my first Intel 40 GB 320 today. This is going into an XP system, so I went with Intel and the SSD toolbox.
Not really. To the end user, all they care about is whether it works or not out of the box.
If it doesn't work when they pop it in, it's classified as DOA.
It if fails due to user error (whether due to ESD or failed firmware upgrade attempt), then it should not be posted here- or if they decide to, I'm fairly certain the typical AT member will be honest in where the blame lies.
Samples? Who gets those except for reviewers?
From online vendors where most do their shopping, they get OEM or retail drives.
There's no need to classify it any further. It works, or it doesn't, or it was working for a few weeks then took a crap.
My drive locked up recently; I went to the OCZ forums and found to my surprise a very large number of folks with the same issue.
Has anyone done an investigation/article on what is going on?
OCZ is willing to help get drives running again, via special firmware that completely resets the drive to a 'factory' fresh state, but of course all data is lost.
If I had known that some latent bug was present, I would have updated my firmware a bit more regularly...
The Sandforce drives slow down in which way, reads and writes, or just writes...? That is kind of curious, since one of the strong points of the Sandforce drives was that they had excellent GC.