SSD warranty - is it black and white or are there shades of gray?

[RU482]

When it comes to an SSD warranty, it makes sense that if a drive flat out fails (i.e. becomes non responsive) during the warranty period, that the manufacturer should replace it (black and white, seemingly)

The gray area is what I am wondering about.

Example, I buy a drive that has a 2 or 3 year warranty.

After a year of general usage, the drive is at 50% health. Should a replacement be covered under warranty?

I'm curious what the general consensus on this is, and would like to hear about any experiences you have had.
thanks

 

[razel]

A warranty is a feature that you buy and is a contract. What they will replace is defined. There is no consensus. If you buy something and is at 50% of it's usefulness but is still within warranty, it is not covered by the warranty. They will not replace it since it still works. If you bought a car and it's 50% of it's life, the manufacturer will not replace it with a new one. If you bought shoes and the soles are 50% gone, you won't get a new one. If you ate a sandwich and finished half of it, you won't get a new one... WELL... you probably can if you claim there were pubes in it.

 

[Zap]

After a year of general usage, the drive is at 50% health. Should a replacement be covered under warranty?

Nope. Warranty will cover any actual failures. You are talking about wear/tear.

 

[pcslookout]

All I care about is cross shipping Intel doesn't so I didn't go that way this time. Oh well. To me a 3 year warranty is good enough as well but if you can get 5 that is even better. Western Digital Raptors seem to last forever going on 4 to 5 years with my old one.

 

[RU482]

Nope. Warranty will cover any actual failures. You are talking about wear/tear.

analogy to what I am talking about would be warped rotors on a 6 month old car with 5k miles that was driven properly.

50% "wear and tear" is a bit excessive, especially when compared to some other brands like crucial and intel. OCZ is what I am dealing with...I've got about 30 drives (system pulls) on my desk, all approx 1 year old, ranging in health from 4% to 90% (most around 60-70%). Comparitively, I've got a gen 1 intel that has gone through 4x the system writes and is 99%.

 

[Elixer]

analogy to what I am talking about would be warped rotors on a 6 month old car with 5k miles that was driven properly.

50% "wear and tear" is a bit excessive, especially when compared to some other brands like crucial and intel. OCZ is what I am dealing with...I've got about 30 drives (system pulls) on my desk, all approx 1 year old, ranging in health from 4% to 90% (most around 60-70%). Comparitively, I've got a gen 1 intel that has gone through 4x the system writes and is 99%.

For what it is worth, I think that life left is a guesstimate. A guy in another forum with all new units, had them from 85%-99%. My brand new unit was at 94%.

Was reading around in the OCZ forums, and one of the mods said that once it hits 0,it will reset to 100%. LOL

 

[Binky]

You get a replacement if it fails, not if some program guesses how much health it has left. I've got an OCZ drive that is reporting 7% life left. It's never had a single problem. There's also an initiative on another forum where they are intentionally using drives to death to see how many writes they can take. They appear to be lasting far longer than the conspiracy theorists had predicted.

Google: SSD Write Endurance 25nm Vs 34nm

 

[KingFatty]

Heh, if you tried to get the 50% health covered under warranty, I bet the company would say "here's your problem right here, the health meter is off" and just reset the meter to say 100%. Then you'd get the same drive right back, thinking they gave you a refurb etc.

Actually, how would you know if the problem is definitely the health of the drive, instead of the accuracy of the health meter?

 

[MehmetN]

OCZ drives (especially those with SandForce 2 controllers, to be fair I do not know about the others) do not play ball with platform. My brand new Agility 3 has loads of problems from wildly off temperature reads to life expectancy swinging to extremes from one wipe to another (had to wipe it 5-6 times now to try different things and see the end of BSODs).

I'm not sure whether this is covered by warranty even, let alone a 50% life reported (See Edit; I now know that BSOD/MIA disks are actually covered by warranty as should be expected).

Moral of the story, if you're not getting daily BSODs and drive falling into the ether (platform can't find the drive) you are lucky and just enjoy your extremely good performing drive. Or I'd just call OCZ and ask them whether this is covered or not - dealers would be more cautious to OK a return but OCZ directly might be able to direct you towards the right path.

Cheers...

Edit: don't get me wrong, I absolutely love OCZ Agility 3. I know (now) that the problem is known, they are trying (unsuccessfully for some to date) to fix it, it is platform deviance related (within specs but a bit off, that is) and not very wide spread. Their support is not the best but I can't just dis them for something like that especially since if you return a BSOD'ing and disappearing disk they just replace it.

 

[Mark R]

If the drive fails during the warranty period, the level of usage the drive has received is irrelevant (unless it provides evidence of abuse or incorrect usage - e.g. using a consumer grade drive in a highly loaded database server).

So, if your drive is at 50% lifetime remaining, and fails within the warranty period, then the manufacturer should honor their warranty - which would mean, repair or replace the drive (at their discretion). As the drive would likely be replaced for one with new flash, the "upgrade" would be a small bonus.

 

[DirkGently1]

When it comes to an SSD warranty, it makes sense that if a drive flat out fails (i.e. becomes non responsive) during the warranty period, that the manufacturer should replace it (black and white, seemingly)

The gray area is what I am wondering about.

Example, I buy a drive that has a 2 or 3 year warranty.

After a year of general usage, the drive is at 50% health. Should a replacement be covered under warranty?

I'm curious what the general consensus on this is, and would like to hear about any experiences you have had.
thanks

A replacement for what? Why are you replacing it in that scenario? Because it's been used??

Can'tTellIfSerious.jpg

 

[paperwastage]

A replacement for what? Why are you replacing it in that scenario? Because it's been used??

Can'tTellIfSerious.jpg

i think an analogy would be batteries for laptops

I buy a new laptop from dell with a 9 cell battery. Warranty covers everything for 3 years. Inside the warranty, it says if battery goes below 66% capacity within the 1st year, i get free exchange. If not, i don't. Battery not covered in years 2,3 (unless it totally dies), because it's a wear and tear item

I don't think there is a similar provision in the SSD warranty contract about [falling below x% wear in 1 year = replacement], only that [if it dies within warranty period = replacement]

those SSD life calculations are theoretical too, while battery capacity is usually accurate

 

[fuzzymath10]

Regarding batteries, usually it is an extra cost to cover battery wear. It is expected (and not covered usually) that the battery wears down.

That said, I've thought about killing my OCZ Onyx with tons of writes so that it could die within 3 years on purpose. Not sure if they'll like this, but SMART data says I'm at 4000/5000 PE cycles on average (with some cells already past 5000), which translates to 900GB of writes. My Intel SSDs have double that written to them, and average only 300 PE cycles which is quite sad.

 

[Old Hippie]

All I care about is cross shipping Intel doesn't so I didn't go that way this time

They do prepaid cross shipping.

It costs 25.00 and I've done it 3 times with Intel SSDs.

What's your defination of cross shipping?

 

[paperwastage]

Regarding batteries, usually it is an extra cost to cover battery wear. It is expected (and not covered usually) that the battery wears down.

yeah, that's my point. both SSDs and Batteries are "wearable" items that do degrade over time.

Batteries (well, under Dell), come with a standard 1 year warranty.

If the wear goes below 60% capacity within that year[since the standard wear level ~ 20%/year or so. The battery isn't performing as it should be = bad battery], or the battery doesn't work within that year, you can complain to dell and get them to send you a new battery.

They also have this extended replacement (that you pay extra) for more than 1 year coverage
http://www.dell.com/downloads/globa...pport_Q2_Extended_Battery_Service_English.pdf

SSDs though, have no comparable "capacity" level that you can use to complain to the manufacturer. Hence, the manufacturer will only replace if it's totally dead

 

[Yellowbeard]

In the case of SSDs, keep in mind that SMART reporting is not standardized well at all. Take any report based on SMART data with a grain of salt.

 

[RU482]

In the case of SSDs, keep in mind that SMART reporting is not standardized well at all. Take any report based on SMART data with a grain of salt.

I'm definately noticing that as I evaluate drives from different manufacturers. There is absolutely no consistency. In fact, compare two drives from the same manufacturer, but different models, and the smart info is completely different.

 

[Zap]

analogy to what I am talking about would be warped rotors on a 6 month old car with 5k miles that was driven properly.

Your analogy is wrong. A better analogy would be that the rotors are fine but the brake pads show wear. Why? Because what you are describing with your SSD is wear, that comes with using a product as intended. Here's another analogy. Let's say you have performance tires on your car (performance tires have no mileage guarantee). If after a couple months the tread is separating from the belts, you may have a valid reason for a free replacement because that is a defect. However, if the tire is halfway down to the wear bars, you will not get a free replacement, because that is from using the tires.

 

[Binky]

I'm still not convinced that these so-called "health" scores are meaningful. The tests going on over in the extremesystems thread I mentioned are showing that the wear indicators run out LONG before the drive actually fails.