Ocz

The replacement for my replacement OCZ Vertex 2 Extended 120GB drive just died. That's right. I've already RMA'd two of these drives and now my 2nd RMA is dead. 3 drives total... dead. I purchased the first one in September 2010 - it died before November rolled around. Its replacement died in July 2011. I'm not an idiot, so the next drive that OCZ sent me was relegated to backup duty. It has barely been used and today I was going to install it in my Home Theatre PC as I recently got rid of one of my other SSDs. Well, it's fricking dead. OCZ should be ashamed of themselves.

How would you handle this? Part of me just wants to toss the drive out the window and say good riddance. The other part of me wants to see if I can't get a Vertex 3 from OCZ - I definitely think I deserve one at this point. I have NO interest in getting a 4th V2EXT, however.

 

Vertex 2, Vertex 3, same crap. Buy Samsung, Crucial or Intel.
Vertex 3 120GB Atleast 27% unhappy customers.

Vertex 3 240GB Atleast 42% (Hoooly crap, even worse than before) unhappy customers.

 

Ugh. For some reason I thought the newer drives were doing better.

 

Sandforce is a gamble. They have always been prone to errors and countless firmwares that were supposed to fix the problems but never did. If you absolutely want Sandforce driven SSDs, you best gamble would be the newest Intel 520 SSD.
They are known for superior reliability and unlike other OEMS, they make their own firmware for the SF controller. We don`t know yet how it will turn out, but Intel say it will be like the 510 and 320 series i.e outstanding reliability.

 

Cloudfire, I think the OP is thinking about trying to pry a Vertex 3 out of OCZ for free as a warranty replacement, not spending money on a new one at retail...

I would say go for it. There's nothing to lose, and you can always ebay it for more than a Vertex 2 would fetch.

 

I thought that you would get a cash refund if x drives fails. Oh well say you demand a Vertex 3 and sell it. Pay the extra for one of the above brands and never ever buy a OCZ again. Those crooks

 

The older OCZ drives are a gamble. Actually it is unfair to put the spotlight on OCZ...a more fair statement is: Any Sandforce based SSD with 25nm nand is a gamble...this includes OCZ Vertex (non max iops), Corsair Force, Patriot Pyros etc

THere may be a reason why OCZ went out and bought indilinx...I've been hearing good things about their new OCtane SSD's with the latest Indilinx controller

 

I do agree with you about the failures, but Kingston on the other hand with their SF SSD have a lot less failures than the other ones. Don`t know why though
Newegg.com - Kingston HyperX SH100S3B/120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

And no, OCZ deserves every bit of bad spotlight
There are ton of other reasons why you should avoid that scummy OCZ company, like the nm scam, millions of promises broken, hard to deal with RMAs because they refuse to do it "because firmware xxx that comes out next week will fix it" which it don`t.

 

ask for vertex 3 replacement, then sell out immediately ...

BTW there's SSD subforum for SSD related questions

 

The consumer protection laws must be very strong where you live, because I've never heard of such a thing. Otherwise, pretty much everyone with a laptop containing an Nvidia 8000M series GPU could've gotten a full refund a few years back, but the best I've heard of is a free upgrade to a newer, faster model.

Asus, Sony, Lenovo, HP, Dell, etc. must be crooks too

 

They are
I live in Norway and we have this law where you can get a replacement from the OEM two times. After that you can demand a full cash refund. I thought this was a practice all around the world, thats why I asked

 

I have an OCZ Vertex (Indilinx Barefoot controller) 250Gb that also died about 2 months after the first RMA. About 2 weeks after an OS installation, I'd start to get file errors, orphaned files, etc. I'm still waiting for the 2nd RMA to come back, and now that the drive is EOL I've no idea what plans they have for it.

Given that (to me) the main idea for a hard drive is reliability this makes the drive almost entirely useless to me. Give OCZ a miss and do yourself a favor, go for another brand.

 

I thought the Vertex had sandforce controllers?

 

You're thinking of the Vertex 2 and Vertex 3. The original Vertex has an Indilinx controller.

 

Yes, I gave the drive (both the original one and RMA'ed one) many tries; I installed Win 7 probably 5-6 times and each time the orphaned files would start to appear about 1-2 weeks after first installation.

The drive has something like 10 months left in the warranty (I couldn't be bothered to do anything about it until recently), and once THAT warranty runs out, OCZ will no longer be responsible for exchanging it. So I end up with nothing for a drive I spent almost 1 grand on in 2009.

On the other hand, I have 1 Intel Gen1, 2 Intel Gen2's, and 2 more Intel 320 (300GB each) SSDs that all have given me not a single problem at all. The Gen1 (bought BEFORE the Vertex!) is still running like I just bought it in one of my older laptops. The 8MB issue, whatever it is, is greatly overblown.

Pick your poison but to me the choice is clear. Avoid OCZ like the plague.

 

oh I see. Well, I bought a Crucial M4 256 for $339 shipped earlier today, so hopefully it is as reliable as I've been reading

 

Welcome to the club of people who are fed up with OCZ. After experiencing DOA and unstable drive after drive I cashed out two years ago and haven't looked back.

They exited the RAM market a while ago too (leaving me without the ability to use that lifetime RMA advertised on my OCZ RAM). Too bad they won't exit the SSD market.

 

If you have time and patience, try filing a small claims suit. Unless if you live close to their office (in which case they might send out a lawyer, assuming they even have one), they'll probably just settle, meaning full refund for you.

I really wonder how they would handle an RMA for memory nowadays. They can't exactly get out of their legal obligations just by saying "we don't have any left in stock", so would they just give a full refund?

 

OCZ Vertex drives fail on me about as often as I change underwear. Like once a week.
Bought three: 50, 60, 120.
60 and 120 failed, sent them in
60 and 120 failed again, sent them in again and am awaiting their return
The first one is still working and is the first one I bought (50 meg)
All are Vertex 2.

I'm not even sure it is ethical to put them on eBay upon their return. Is it OK to sell something you know will fail? Seriously, this is comically bad. How do they stay in business?

 

Glad i read this, I was getting ready to jump on one for my 17" notebook. I know their ram is crappy too. i will look elsewhere.

 

Lucky me. A Vertex 3 will be on the way as soon as my Vertex 2 gets processed. I would almost feel bad selling it to some poor soul over ebay (plus there is karma to think about). Maybe I'll just put it in a spare laptop.

 

Well Crap! Just ordered one yesterday.

Thinking now I got suckered by the Newegg/OCZ rebate and free usb drive offer for 120 vertex 3 for $139 -- no returns for cash only 30 days replacement.

What is the general concensus:

Try it first to see if I am in the lucky 66% or
Just ebay it as "new in box"?

I knew that I would probably have some hoops to jump through and tweaking to get it up and running/stable but multiple DOA's from people that seem to know what they are doing are really starting to concern me. I never had any problem with the six to eight sticks of OCZ memory I bought over the years, other that one bad stick which they upgraded and replaced with a pair.

I thought the problem if not solvable by a bios/firmware update was with some obscure configuration issue, or various incompatibilities with the wide range of unskilled users jumping on the SSD DIY bandwagon., or OC'ers with unstable systems.

So for almost $1 a gig storage cost vs phenom speed and a free usb drive which I needed anyway, I was kind of considering it a pending challenge as a opposed to a sure losing hand.

Opinions?

 

That's what OCZ will tell you. It is all crap. Sometimes (rarely) it is indeed the case, but I know plenty of people, very skilled with stable, non-OC, pretty normal configurations that get BSOD out their a** with SF drives. Their "support" is the WORST I have ever experienced in any company, by far.

As for myself, the Vertex 2 I own had issues since day 1 in my then 2-year-old system. OCZ told me I HAD to buy a new system to use their POS drive (multiple CS people there told me this...). I should have returned it, but got it working instead (and it works to specs). Now I know better. And I'm one of the lucky ones whose drive still works over a year later... Intel/Crucial/Samsung ftw. I've installed several Crucial and Intel drives for myself and friends/coworkers, never a single issue. 2 Vertex drives, 2 issues.

 

OCZ has had nothing but crap for products since 2009-2010 when I ordered a few OCZ Agility (maybe a few Vertex?) drives. All of them had issues within the next few months. All. Instabilities, firmware bugs, dead or dying products. All. It's a miracle those clowns are still in business.

As for NewEgg's no refund policy, well, there's a reason I almost never order from them anymore. NewEgg knows these drives have a crap return rate and they're protecting their bottom line.

Just out of curiosity I looked that up a minute ago. Take a look here. If they didn't have that sort of refund clause they'd be opening themselves up to a class action lawsuit from anyone who bought memory from them -- and damages would probably be enough to put them out of business.

 

FrxacK! Come on aren't there any OCZ Vertex 3 users out there that got theirs up and running and don't have constant BSOD's or stuttering?

If not then I guess when it arrives it goes to Ebay NIB UPC removed, no returns....

Glad I posted here, cuz afterwards I checked my order to see if I could cancel it out (couldn't, already shipped...) but then I found that they tried to screw me out of the free usb drive. I showed up in my original order when I confirmed it, but not on the copy that they sent me.

Called them on it and they are shipping me one with no additional shipping charge. So at least I will get a free usb drive out of the deal.

 

I purchased a vertex 3 for my girlfriend the entire notebook would freeze from time to time for an entire week. The minute crucial M4 went on sale, I bought the M4 and returned the vertex 3.

 

Ok still not one happy OCZ vertex user anywhere on this forum? What are we now like naught to 8 or more?

Or is it that the people who got one to work have better things to do than post on this forum?

 

I know a few, not necessarily all on this forum. It isn't a guaranteed fail drive, but darn close to it.

 

Most/all of the current OCZ drives are based on the SandForce 2281 controller, and that controller is KNOWN for having F4/F7 BSOD issues. It should have been recalled, and the company shut down, ages ago. OCZ and other manufacturers need to find some other supplier for their controllers. It's sad, really, since even Intel is starting to use SF...and early reports suggest Intel did NOT fix the BSOD issue with their flavor of firmware.

If it is a SandForce controller you are going to find consistent reports of highly similar BSOD problems across the net. Plenty of posts about it, plenty of NewEgg reviews or Amazon reviews, and plenty of stories told from one geek to another. You do not see that with other controllers like Intel's or Marvell's or Samsung's, though I will say the Intel 8MB issue does hurt the perceived reliability of their drives.

All I can say is that my initial research into current drives leaves me dreading SandForce, questioning Intel, and trusting Crucial's M4 and it's Marvell controller more than I would trust any other.

 

I agree with everything you say Greg. Sandforce AND OCZ have a terrible history.

OCZ have ditched Sandforce btw. They now use their own controller, Indilinx Everest. While Sandforce is probably going through a lot of changes now that LSI bought them plus Intel got onboard the ship and started cooperating with them

 

Yeah and strangely, the update that fixed some (but not all) of the BSOD issues came after Intel jumped aboard Sandforce's ship. Whether those occurrences are related is up for debate though. I'd still recommend non SF Intels, Samsung and the M4 SSDs first and foremost though as all issues with SF haven't been resolved yet. Less people experiencing the BSODs, but you're still taking a chance if you go with Sandforce.

 

From what I've heard, the issue wasn't fixed until as much as a year after Intel jumped aboard. According to Intel, they've been working with Sandforce for the entire time Sandforce has been working on the SF-2281, meaning from 2010 till now.

 

I have a 240gb Vertex Plus that I picked up on sale for $199 and I haven't had any problems with in the 3 months I've owned it. I only bought it because it was cheap for its size and non-Sandforce, though.

 

It's still OCZ though . Looking at the drive on NewEgg there's a good 2-3 legitimate complaints about the drive out of ~15 reviews.

 

I covered some of this here - http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...sd-520-includes-sandforce-23.html#post8299579

 

Well I installed the OCZ Vertex 3 yesterday....

A few hiccups unrelated to the drive at all -- mostly about learning how to do a HDD install on a hp laptop to rid myself of the bloatware and tracking drivers on fresh install win 7.

I was really expecting more of a fight but actually pretty simple considering what I was expecting. Bumped my WEI (not that it means much) right to 7.9! Ran AS SSD as quick benchmark and although not perfect like online reviews claimed, its in the highend.

No major tweaking outside of abc guide in OCZ forums. Still using a MS ahci driver in fact.

More important things to do right now, but I am crossing fingers and so far pleased.

First attempt on uploading attached file...hope its visible.