OCZ is developing junk

[reynoldsjrmy]

Hi,

I'm going to wade in here (into what appears to be somewhat anti-OCZ shark infested waters) and agree with berts.

I have had three OCZ SSDs.

First a Samsung based OCZ Summit 120GB - no issues at all and once Samsung released the 19C fw with trim support it's remained a solid performer without any fuss.

Second a Vertex LE, Sandforce based 120GB - no issues at all.

Third a Vertex 3 240GB - a few instability issues with earlier versions of the fw but I was able to work around all of them. I could aslo invoke instability issues during testing. The latest 2.15 fw, which I understand has had input from Intel, appears to have sorted out the overwhelming majority of instability issues. (Curious, isn't it, that compatibility issues with SF should get resolved shortly before Intel is due to release an SF based product)

There is no doubt that OCZ has suffered at the hands of SF's apparent lack of validation/quality assurance but OCZ's commitment to resolve issues on behalf of its customers has also been apparent. I'm sure they will have learned a valuable lesson that they will be sure to try and avoid with the upcoming Octane launch.

I also have an Intel 160GB G2, which has also been faultless.

I suppose folks will now see me as an OCZ fanboy, but regardless, I reserve the right to be objective based on my experience.

Regds, JR

 

[groberts101]

lol.. don't waste your breath JR.

They should just name these kind of threads around here.. "come on in to yet another OCZ flamer thread". It's like a bitchfest around this place sometimes and all these types do is to show up to vent about things that they have little or no personal experience with. They go to newegg and read all the expert opinions and have it all figured out in no time flat.

No firsthand experience is usually required to become an expert around here(or Newegg apparently). Luckily.. most of the smarter folks can figure out who is here to actually help and contribute.. and who is here to bitch, vent, and stab at others.

Oh.. PS.. I've owned and tested some of the other mentioned drives. Not like they were perfect either and I even killed 1 out of 3 Intel drives. Must be a massive problem with 33% failure rate like that, eh? :hmm:

 

[VirtualLarry]

Knock on wood, but the two OCZ Agility (Barefoot) drives that I installed in a RAID-0 a few days ago are still running.

 

[Rebel44]

The problem with all these SSDs is that nobody really knows what you are getting, since if you open the SSD to look, you void the warranty.

1k writes is pretty much bottom of the barrel, I expect those to have a 1 year warranty max, but still, it is faster than a HD, so for a OS only drive, it will work out pretty well for them.

EU and some other countries have mandatory 2 year warranty minimum.

Whenever I buy HDDs/SSDs they always have 3 year warranty - so for me either they die sooner and it will be replaced or I wil get my money back, or they will last over 3 years and it wont be real problem for me.

 

[tweakboy]

It's not junk. Their one of the more high quality companies out there. gl

 

[randomrogue]

Please stop buying OCZ drives. They're garbage.

 

[frostedflakes]

When people say OCZ drives are garbage, what they really mean is SandForce. Corsair, OWC, all SandForce vendors have the exact same BSOD problems and other firmware bugs. Not sure why OCZ is the only one that seems to receive all the bad PR, maybe it's because they're the largest SSD vendor, which makes them an easy target. And it doesn't help that they've done some stupid stuff in the past that hurt their reputation (such as silently transitioning from 3Xnm to 25nm flash, that was kind of shady and they deserve all the ridicule they received for that IMO). But the SandForce issues are not a problem exclusive to OCZ.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

When people say OCZ drives are garbage, what they really mean is SandForce. Corsair, OWC, all SandForce vendors have the exact same BSOD problems and other firmware bugs. Not sure why OCZ is the only one that seems to receive all the bad PR, maybe it's because they're the largest SSD vendor, which makes them an easy target. And it doesn't help that they've done some stupid stuff in the past that hurt their reputation (such as silently transitioning from 3Xnm to 25nm flash, that was kind of shady and they deserve all the ridicule they received for that IMO). But the SandForce issues are not a problem exclusive to OCZ.

Because all their drive series are crap when compared to others. Virtually all of OCZ's SSDs have had some major problems even if some here in denial say otherwise. Look at their Solid, Agility, and Vertex lines. Look at the new Vertex Plus, too. All have major problems in one way or another, and its OCZ that's SandForce's main partner and the one that's probably pushing them to put out new controllers every few months with all these problems. Like you said, the fact that they're a shady company doesn't help them either.

Corsair are morons for using SandForce, too, but since their drive series aren't anywhere near as popular I don't give them as much crap. In any case, they should've gone with Marvell like Crucial and Intel.

 

[frostedflakes]

I don't remember any major issues with most of the Indilinx based drives OCZ and other vendors sold. They may have had some firmware issues and other bugs, but it's not like Intel and Crucial drives haven't had a few of those as well, IIRC both the C300 and m4 had a couple pretty major firmware problems early on that were eventually remedied (remember reading about v0002 firmware for C300 potentially bricking drives, for example). None have held a candle to the SandForce problems experienced by all vendors, though.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

I don't remember any major issues with most of the Indilinx based drives OCZ and other vendors sold. They may have had some firmware issues and other bugs, but it's not like Intel and Crucial drives haven't had a few of those as well, IIRC both the C300 and m4 had a couple pretty major firmware problems early on that were eventually remedied (remember reading about v0002 firmware for C300 potentially bricking drives, for example). None have held a candle to the SandForce problems experienced by all vendors, though.

Yeah, but were those ever relevant? Not really. They were barely faster, in some cases slower, than 7200RPM HDDs. They had the big random and access times advantage over HDDs, but for sequential transfers at many times they were slower. They weren't very cheap, either.

The m4 didn't have any real issues, but the C300 did have one (which you mentioned). You could say the same about Intel with the 320 series and the 8MB bug, but again, nowhere near comparable to the problems OCZ has had. Crucial and Intel actually stand behind their products and deliver fixes quickly and in general aren't anywhere near as shady. In the case of Crucial they're also great in bang-for-buck and performance.

EDIT:

Talking about Indilinx, isn't the new Vertex Plus series based on it? You can find shining reviews for that drive here.

 

[fuzzymath10]

The indilinx drives are most certainly faster than a spinning drive. My only issue was huge write amplification which has nearly killed my Onyx. They even had firmware v1.7 for on their Vertex page for months before it was put on the Onyx page, yet the package worked fine for my Onyx when I downloaded it from the Vertex page. That two months put a ton of extra writes that could have been avoided.

Basically, the Indilinx drives as of this summer are what I consider to be reasonably decent.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

The indilinx drives are most certainly faster than a spinning drive. My only issue was huge write amplification which has nearly killed my Onyx. They even had firmware v1.7 for on their Vertex page for months before it was put on the Onyx page, yet the package worked fine for my Onyx when I downloaded it from the Vertex page. That two months put a ton of extra writes that could have been avoided.

Basically, the Indilinx drives as of this summer are what I consider to be reasonably decent.

You didn't actually read anything I wrote before replying, right?

I said they were much faster when it come to access times and random speeds, but in many cases fell behind 7200RPM HDDs when it came to sequential/transfer speeds.

Would you consider these Indilinx drives decent? If so, we may have differing criteria on what 'decent' is.

 

[Idontcare]

Yeah, yeah, sure. OCZ has no problems. 50% of the reviews on all websites are lying, as are forum posters talking about their issues even though OCZ themselves recognized them. Sure...

OCZ SSDs are unreliable junk in comparison to most everything Crucial, Intel, Samsung, and Kingston have put out. Until they fix all their issues I'm not gonna be getting anything with a SandForce controller. I'd rather get something that actually works for the vast majority of people and go with a controller by Marvell, Intel, Samsung, or Toshiba. I'd advise everyone else do the same; we shouldn't be Beta testing for OCZ/SandForce.

It's your testimony against that of the other half of users. Besides, why the hell would you buy them anyway? They're only $10-15 cheaper.

I don't really get the overly-emotional investment you are demonstrating here by virtue of the vitriol dripping from your posts (this is just one of your posts in this thread, but the thread is replete with many more).

Your objectivity seems impaired by your own emotion-based intense dislike for OCZ. You might not recognize it, you may even think you are demonstrating the exact opposite representation of your character, but it is to the detriment of your own credibility as well as the position you present when you go so overboard in your zeal for attacking OCZ.

You make it easy for others to dismiss your posts.

I own both an Intel G2 as well as an OCZ V3, I've had no problems from either. If OCZ drives really were crap then I should have experienced notable problems with it given that my reference point for stability and performance is that of the much venerated Intel G2.

I don't dismiss that others have had issues with the V3, but others have had issues with the G2 as well. Unless you own them and can speak to them from first-hand experience, all you are doing is bandying about hyperbole and rhetoric based on your prejudice and bias coupled with second-hand anecdotal testimony you've encountered on the internet.

To what end then? If your goal is to merely warn off others then why not let the same second-hand anecdotal info you've encountered do the job for you in that regard? If it is to be combative, argumentative, and inflammatory...well then I suppose its "Mission Accomplished" for you.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

I don't really get the overly-emotional investment you are demonstrating here by virtue of the vitriol dripping from your posts (this is just one of your posts in this thread, but the thread is replete with many more).

Your objectivity seems impaired by your own emotion-based intense dislike for OCZ. You might not recognize it, you may even think you are demonstrating the exact opposite representation of your character, but it is to the detriment of your own credibility as well as the position you present when you go so overboard in your zeal for attacking OCZ.

You make it easy for others to dismiss your posts.

I own both an Intel G2 as well as an OCZ V3, I've had no problems from either. If OCZ drives really were crap then I should have experienced notable problems with it given that my reference point for stability and performance is that of the much venerated Intel G2.

I don't dismiss that others have had issues with the V3, but others have had issues with the G2 as well. Unless you own them and can speak to them from first-hand experience, all you are doing is bandying about hyperbole and rhetoric based on your prejudice and bias coupled with second-hand anecdotal testimony you've encountered on the internet.

To what end then? If your goal is to merely warn off others then why not let the same second-hand anecdotal info you've encountered do the job for you in that regard? If it is to be combative, argumentative, and inflammatory...well then I suppose its "Mission Accomplished" for you.

It's dislike based on looking at them objectively. And you may well be of the half that doesn't have problems, but getting failure rates and general problems of that high of a number means you have a lot of issues to work out.

OCZ in recent years has been a very mediocre company, and you can see that from the many issues people had with their "Gold" and Platinum" series DDR2 memory, their StealthXStream and ModXStream power supplies, and their Vertex, Agility, Solid, and Vertex Plus lines. Saying otherwise is just turning a blind eye.

You personally owning a product proves nothing. We've had this conversation before, and the only one making inflammatory posts is you. All you've done is ramble on about how it depends on the person (it doesn't if so many people are having problems), how you can't make judgement on the drive if you don't have it (complete BS, and the reason to not buy it in the first place is because of the well-known reliability issues), and how somehow my objectivity is being "tarnished" by making "overly-emotional" posts, which ironically is what you're doing right now.

I already mentioned objective reasons, and you can see them all over the 'net.

 

[Idontcare]

It's dislike based on looking at them objectively. And you may well be of the half that doesn't have problems, but getting failure rates and general problems of that high of a number means you have a lot of issues to work out.

OCZ in recent years has been a very mediocre company, and you can see that from the many issues people had with their "Gold" and Platinum" series DDR2 memory, their StealthXStream and ModXStream power supplies, and their Vertex, Agility, Solid, and Vertex Plus lines. Saying otherwise is just turning a blind eye.

You personally owning a product proves nothing. We've had this conversation before, and the only one making inflammatory posts is you. All you've done is ramble on about how it depends on the person (it doesn't if so many people are having problems), how you can't make judgement on the drive if you don't have it (complete BS, and the reason to not buy it in the first place is because of the well-known reliability issues), and how somehow my objectivity is being "tarnished" by making "overly-emotional" posts, which ironically is what you're doing right now.

Ah yes, more impassioned objection that makes no sense. I expected nothing less.

I already mentioned objective reasons, and you can see them all over the 'net.

Cuz the internet is full of objective user-based assessments and data-driven opinions And it would be a disservice to the masses if you didn't repeatedly, incessantly, bring it to their attention. We get it.

Carry on then, there's an internet out there of people who need to be beat into submitting to your viewpoint. Don't let me get in your way.

 

[fuzzymath10]

Indilinx sequentials were comparable to Intel.

70MB/sec bothered few Intel users (myself included), and since we seem to agree that Intel makes good SSDs, sequential speeds should not be a reason to fault Indilinx drives. They perform like a decent SSD in all practical metrics once they fixed the huge WA. If anything, the 40GB Intel SSDs are very poor in sequential writes without getting too much attention because it still performs as expected for an SSD.

 

[AdamK47]

The majority of the OCZ hate is unwarranted. OCZ is one of the first and best known companies to use the Sandforce SF-2281 controller and that's why people like to parrot the hate. If the problems with SF-2281 never existed, there wouldn't be as many people falling in line with this kind of thinking. People fail to realize that many other companies also use the Sandforce SF-2281 controller. OCZ was the first company to release a fix for the BSOD problem with their firmware 2.15 release because of their work with Sandforce to try and fix the problem. Since that release, I haven't had any BSODs related to my 120GB Vertex 3. Although, I rarely encountered the problem in the first place.

The use of cheaper NAND has me interested. Current SSDs are still expensive on a dollar per gigabyte basis and I don't see the prices dopping considerably anytime soon. I can see people using an SSD with cheaper NAND for doing a lot of reading vs writing. If they can produce a significantly chaper 1TB SSD, I just might get three of them in RAID-0 to replace all my spindle drives. The spindle drives could then be used as backup for the SSDs.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Ah yes, more impassioned objection that makes no sense. I expected nothing less.



Cuz the internet is full of objective user-based assessments and data-driven opinions And it would be a disservice to the masses if you didn't repeatedly, incessantly, bring it to their attention. We get it.

Carry on then, there's an internet out there of people who need to be beat into submitting to your viewpoint. Don't let me get in your way.

Of course, I'm just making all of this up as I go along. In reality OCZ's 3 Series drives don't have a BSOD issue, they don't have problems of not getting recognized by motherboards, nor problems with freezing/crashing. The Vertex Plus series is great as well, rock solid. It doesn't have problems with premature failure or file corruption. This must mean that it's all a conspiracy: are Intel or Crucial paying these reviewers to give the drive a bad rep? :hmm:

 

[Voo]

Of course, I'm just making all of this up as I go along. In reality OCZ's 3 Series drives don't have a BSOD issue, they don't have problems of not getting recognized by motherboards, nor problems with freezing/crashing.

No, you're just confusing SandForce (because as you'll note all of the above are firmware/controller problems) with OCZ which doesn't make any sense.

Every other seller of SF drives has similar problems.. so yes, you irrationally focusing on only one - although the largest - doesn't show you in any good light.

 

[Itchrelief]

Of course, I'm just making all of this up as I go along. In reality OCZ's 3 Series drives don't have a BSOD issue, they don't have problems of not getting recognized by motherboards, nor problems with freezing/crashing. The Vertex Plus series is great as well, rock solid. It doesn't have problems with premature failure or file corruption. This must mean that it's all a conspiracy: are Intel or Crucial paying these reviewers to give the drive a bad rep? :hmm:

Hey, why pay when people do it for free? Jesus.

We need a list of the currently "hip to bash" list.
OCZ, Bulldozer, what else?

 

[dguy6789]

+1 Anecdote: Have had an OCZ Vertex 3 240GB since launch as the only drive in my laptop(my primary computer) and it has been completely flawless, couldn't imagine a drive working any better.

 

[nanaki333]

the latest Indilinx vertex plus had a major issue that required a firmware update

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

No, you're just confusing SandForce (because as you'll note all of the above are firmware/controller problems) with OCZ which doesn't make any sense.

Every other seller of SF drives has similar problems.. so yes, you irrationally focusing on only one - although the largest - doesn't show you in any good light.

I'm not. I already answered this. If you haven't followed the thread then don't bother replying.

OCZ has been known to work more closely with SandForce than the other manufacturers. They've always been first-to-market with whatever new high-performance SandForce controller comes out. Since they work closer with them than the other manufacturers plus they have the most used/popular drives I'll point to them mainly.

I already mentioned I don't like Corsair using their controllers either, but the fact is that their Force series isn't anywhere near as popular, nor are Corsair the ones always pushing SandForce to come out with new controllers even if they have serious reliability issues. They still use them, so it's a bad decision. It also doesn't help that like I said earlier OCZ is in general a shifty company. Many people complain about getting an RMA for defective drives to be a PITA, which also doesn't help. Most of the blame as far as SSD manufacturers go falls on OCZ, just like most of the blame would fall on Crucial/Micron if they used a new Marvell controller with shoddy reliability.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Hey, why pay when people do it for free? Jesus.

We need a list of the currently "hip to bash" list.
OCZ, Bulldozer, what else?

Yes, because pointing out products with obvious flaws translates to "hip to bash".

And yes, Bulldozer is crap as well. It's because of people like you that say "suck it up" and don't call them out on it that they don't improve anything. What's the incentive to improve if people will simply dismiss whatever problems it has?

 

[=Wendy=]

@LOL Wut Axel
You should state you're only expressing your own opinion, and not facts, because the actual facts and reality are a million miles away from your opinion.

That's just my opinion, of course.