Let's count Newegg customer reviews of current SSDs - Who will help?

I was skimming through the 3 drives they have on Newegg. 2 failures of 151 reviews. One not detected in BIOS and one who died later on. 1.3% failure rate.

I could have missed something but lol that is some insane reliability right there

 

That looks very impressive.

If you want to have a good laugh check out the Agility 3 reviews...
Newegg.com - OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Can't believe Anand would actually claim that Sandforce has improved reliability.

 

Anandtech and Tom's Hardware have been biased for awhile..

Yet another reason why I will only buy Intel SSDs from now on..

 

Not quite following that... going by the Newegg numbers Samsung 470 looks more reliable than Intel.

 

Sounds like they have no clue of about the ACPI issue that has been there since SF 1XXX.

I recommend that you don't use the SSD which would gurantee solve all the problems.

 

It's not just Anand, everyone is giving OCZ/Sandforce special treatment these days. Even StorageReview, which used a strictly disapproving tone when it came to the 25nm fiasco, has said virtually nothing about reliability or compatibility issues when it comes to their reviews of SF-2xxx drives.

As for AT, his readers are attacking his recent SSD articles pretty harshly for this bias as well, to which he's simply responded that he hasn't personally come across the issue. So much for investigative journalism.

It'd be nice if one of the major hardware review sites would grow a spine and make use their clout and industry connections to get the SSD makers to divulge meaningful data on failure rates. An SSD article like that would certainly draw much higher reader rates than yet another SSD review.

 

An informed SSD buyer show follow NBR for reliability, all the rest reviewers for fun and beauty graphs.

 

One must take factory production in account Phil. All products have a certain degree of failure rate, even though the factory use state of the art equipment. And for the newest gen SSDs, Intel and Crucial stands pretty far away from the SF SSDs in terms of reliability. As for every SSDs, Samsung is probably the best, closely followed by X25-M and C300, and then we get a big bump up to this gen where the most reliable SSDs are pretty far away from last gen like Peon pointed out earlier in this thread. From single digit to double digit percentage

Wonder if it is the transision to 25nm that did it? M4 and Intel are using the same type of controller as C300 was using, and C300 had like 3% failure rate. But then again Intel 510 is 34 nm so I`m a bit confused.

And WOW @ the Agility 3 reviews. It is really bad. Almost like a temporary ban of SF controllers should be in place before they are allowed to enter the SSD market again. HDD/SSD failures is not fun to go through. Your laptop is pretty much useless without it.

@Tsunade: Congrats with the moderator status.

 

Not doubting Samsung's reliability, but very few places sell Samsung, and their amount sold are nowhere near the amount Intel sells (not counting OEM SSDs). The more SSDs you sell, obviously the higher failure rate you are going to have. Intel and Crucial have done a good job with the numbers they sell and their failure rates. Some places have Samsung SSDs more expensive than Intel, which probably further contributes to the less Samsung retail SSDs sold.

I can only assume people buy SF SATA 3 drives cause they are cheap, must be ignorant to the fact SF is...less reliable than other drives.

 

I don't believe that to be quite true. I think that once there are more than ~ 150 reviews the spread should be relatively even.

What's more important is how long a drive has been selling.

 

Nope, they are not cheap. People go on the many reviews that rank them as the fastest SSD you can buy, and ignore reliability issues (which are not mentioned in those reviews, or they don't actually do enough research).

It's much more obvious now to me, but when I was looking a couple of months ago (before the M4 came out), I was thinking about buying an SF2 drive.

 

Sorry I meant cheaper compared to competitor SATA 3 SSDs like the 510 series offered by Intel.

 

Sometimes, SF drives are the cheapest. I've seen the Vertex 3 120 GB on sale for $199 at 2 different retailers in the past month.

For someone who doesn't already know the ins and outs of SSDs and is doing their research by reading reviews, that would seem like a sweet deal. After all, those sites rank the Vertex 3 as the 3rd fastest 120 GB SSD, right behind the MAX IOPS version and the Intel 510.

 

I don't mean to nitpick, but I think you'll find the Crucial M4 is also SATA III, and a competitor. But, I take your point that the 510 is expensive.

 

Phil and all the one's that are helping out, great job and idea. Don't let the one's telling you your doing it wrong deter you. There is no way to get this perfect, it's a great buying tool.

I have one thought though. What about the drives that have been recalled? Can we put an astrick stating that the problem has been fixed? Just curious....

Glad to see my Samsung 470 is doing good. As the results prove, I would not own another SF SSD. My Corsair F-Series was awful compared to my Intel's, Samsung, Patriot SSD's.

 

Thanks for the heads up. Appreciated.

The only drive I know of that has been recalled in Corsair Force 3. I doubt the reliability will be up to Samsung/Intel standards after the recall but we can check if it improves a lot.

 

Someone mentioned the lack of Samsung SSD's out there? I was under the assumption that Apple, Panasonic and IBM use Samsung made SSD's? I realize they most likely are not the 470, except for maybe the newest one's, but they do have a pretty good history in making SSD's.

I didn't see Adata drives. Or am I missing something?

It would be very interesting to see how these numbers all pan out compared to the reviews on Amazon??? Amazon sells ALOT of SSD's.

 

Amazon would be interesting too, although I thought they don't have the same quality of reviews as Newegg? I could be wrong though.

Sometimes I see products that haven't even been out have 5 reviews on Amazon already. Of people who have never touched the product, just read reviews.

Dell, Apple, Sony, and other as you mention, often use Toshiba and Samsung OEM products yes.

 

Well you still have the relevant information for the Samsung 470. Glad to help

Mr. Mysterious

 

A dutch user posted a story of how he is now on his third Vertex 2 240GB, after his first two failed.

So I took some time to brwose through the Vertex 2 reviews. Vertex 2 now has 98x 1 star reviews. Pretty shocking...

" I own a small computer services company in Colorado. Over the last 12 months we have installed over 30 of these (and similar OCZ) drives. At least one out of four of these drives has already failed!"

"I purchased 4 of these drives for e6400 and e4300 and e4310 laptops and they have all failed. OCZ is happy to RMA the drive but they all fail within weeks when you put them in these specific laptops. Sigh."

" 2 drives, 2 failures in less than 4 months."

"This is the second of two OCZ sandforce (vertex 2, agility 2) drives to die on me."

 

Actually, I think the percentage of 1 star reviews for the Vertex 2 went down. From what I recall, it was closer to 40% back when this thread was started, but then that was also at the height of the 25nm fiasco.

 

If you want to have a good laugh check out the reviews for the OCZ Vertex Plus on Newegg.

I think they are going to set a new record.

 

Wow. Those are incredible numbers for the 1 star reviews.

 

What is this, really OCZ have to see this mind-blowing fastest SSD. It's looks like you have fastest car and when car reach his top speed then boom, show over.

 

I'm not sure why OCZ even bothers to sell drives anymore. Someone needs to put them out of business.

 

You have to keep in mind this type of survey will have sample bias... you can't use this to measure the likelihood of a part failure. However, it probably would be accurate in determining relative failure rates. I would be willing to take from the data that OCZ failure rates are between about 5:1 and 8:1 compared to other brands. Someone who is upset is much more likely to voice their concern than someone who is content to voice praise.

Hopefully someone has already touched on this point. Just thought it was important.