Are OCZ Vertex 4 SSDs still bad?

[Fayt19]

I was going to buy a 128GB Samsung 830 SSD for $99 but then I saw that the OCZ Vertex 4 SSD has almost 3 times the write speed and 10k faster read speed.

Should I go for the OCZ Vertex 4 or are they still bad SSDs?

 

[ShuttleMunky]

As far as i know, Vertex 4 does not use the bad reputation SandForce controllers as Vertex 3. They use indilix(?) or something like that. Someone else i think should school us about the controller...

 

[Forceman]

A large part of the problem was OCZ themselves, in addition to the drives - I'd still stay away. The speed difference is meaningless in real-world use.

 

[jwcalla]

It seemed to have some interdasting results one you pushed past 50% capacity. I'm figuring OCZ was trying to work the benchmark numbers over. Some of this may have been mitigated in the v1.5 firmware update.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vertex-4-firmware-benchmark,3245.html

 

[Outamyhead]

Samsung's 128GB are $90 http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1709693, no troubles with mine since March, and that's the second time Samsung have won me over with good reviews.

 

[Fayt19]

I was going to get the Samsung 830 but the Vertex 4 is like twice as fast and about the same price. thats why im asking

 

[jwcalla]

Samsung 830

/thread

 

[pjkenned]

So having a few of both the 830 and Vertex 4's at this point, I would not say the Vertex 4's are bad drives. If I were to colo a server where I didn't have access to the machine, I would go Samsund 830 (or Intel 320). On a home workstation, Vertex4's are pretty good.

 

[Forceman]

I was going to get the Samsung 830 but the Vertex 4 is like twice as fast and about the same price. thats why im asking

It's only twice as fast in bullshit benchmarks. In real-world use, you will never, ever, be able to tell a difference. You would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the Vertex 4 and a SATA 2 SSD unless you routinely move large files between SSDs (moving to a HDD is HDD limited). The seek time is still zero, no matter how the sequential is.

 

[silent-circuit]

830, M3, M4... any of these are better options than any OCZ drive.

 

[infospace]

I was going to get the Samsung 830 but the Vertex 4 is like twice as fast and about the same price. thats why im asking

Plextor M3 or M5 if you can wait another 10 days

 

[mwroobel]

Personally, I don't trust OCZ as a company anymore. I am buying Samsung 830's for myself and at work where we need MLC drives.

 

[Bbq]

Let's say there are two companies.

One offers excellent support, excellent RMA's if needed, fast and timely communication, and a product that is well designed and engineered, using proven and high quality nand. This company customized a firmware for an existing controller for added reliability and performance, and released the product, which has been tested to be very reliable and fast.

The other offers mediocre support, insists on you flashing firmwares to solve any problems that may or may not be related to the firmware, changes product components for cheaper and slower ones without notifying potential customers, uses sub-par nand on some products without labeling it, and has the highest failure rate in the industry. This company releases a new product with a new and unproven controller (that they initially claim is theirs, but is in fact a Marvell chipset with their firmware) and claims it is the second coming of the christ without providing any documentation or evidence about this.

Which would you buy ?

Answers[#1: Intel and the 520 #2: OCZ and the Vertex 4 ]

 

[daglesj]

It's only twice as fast in bullshit benchmarks. In real-world use, you will never, ever, be able to tell a difference. You would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the Vertex 4 and a SATA 2 SSD unless you routinely move large files between SSDs (moving to a HDD is HDD limited). The seek time is still zero, no matter how the sequential is.

Indeed, I've got 200MBps SSDs and 500MBps SSDs and for general use I cant tell the difference.

It's all in the access times. How many applications you run that are larger than 50MB? Not as many as you think.

 

[carnag3]

I have a Vertex 1 that dies to the point of destructive reflash once every 3 months. 2x Samsung 830's are on their way to me.

 

[mephistopoa]

I would say stay away from OCZ ssds. I used them a lot, many clients using vertex 2 including myself and several coworkers (due to me imposing SSDs for everyone) then after 12 months suddenly several drives started to fail at around the same time.

Same behaviour on all of them, sudden drops from bios and never came back alive. I've got at least 6 drives faulty during the last 4 months, comparing to the amount of SSDs we used, turned out to be close to 10%.

I've never seen any storage device with such a high failure rate after 1 year, so from now and on, I'm sticking to Intels 520 (5 year warranty) and I'm begging tests on the Intel 330.

 

[mazdaboi]

Been using a 90GB VERTEX 3 as a secondary drive for just games ( BF3, D3, WOW, Skyrim) for the past year, No issues. Originally it was OS, Office and BF3, But didnt care about the fast boot times so now its a dedicated game drive. Again my computer never shuts down, it runs constantly. No issues.

 

[mephistopoa]

By the way, I use M4s and all of them working fine so far.

 

[magnetik]

while everyone is piling on the vertex , let me add that I have been using 3 OCZ V3 max iops 128's in R0 since release and haven't had the issues others have had with the Sandforce. Quite the opposite actually. I actually bought another one yesterday while onsale to fill out my 4in1 5.25" bay. I believe a big chunk of isssues were due to Sandforce 2281 which has since been patched. OCZ wasn't the only manufacturer that dealt with the issue. I'm not saying people aren't having legit issues.. just that I haven't seen them in my setup.

 

[Astral Abyss]

while everyone is piling on the vertex , let me add that I have been using 3 OCZ V3 max iops 128's in R0 since release and haven't had the issues others have had with the Sandforce. Quite the opposite actually. I actually bought another one yesterday while onsale to fill out my 4in1 5.25" bay. I believe a big chunk of isssues were due to Sandforce 2281 which has since been patched. OCZ wasn't the only manufacturer that dealt with the issue. I'm not saying people aren't having legit issues.. just that I haven't seen them in my setup.

My experience has been similar to yours. I have been running 3 of the original OCZ Vertex 1 60GB drives in RAID0 for 3 years without a single issue. I bought my wife an OCZ Agility 3 120GB drive for Christmas last year and it's been working wonderfully, even after upgrading her system, wiping the drive, and reinstalling Win7. No issues at all.

After my recent upgrade, I'm now running 2 Corsair ForceGT 240GB drives with the same SandForce controller everyone suddenly complains about and I'm having zero issues. In fact, I'm extremely satisfied with them.

 

[jwcalla]

It's not just the SF thing that raises eyebrows. After all, there are tons of SF drives out there but people aren't giving Kingston and Patriot a ton of crap, even though I'm sure their drives were no less affected by those SF issues. I think the biggest concern is the sense that OCZ just comes off as shady. They swapped NAND on the Vertex 2 w/o changing model numbers and without explaining that performance and capacity was negatively affected. That was a kick in the balls to consumers and I still remember the sheetstorm that erupted on the Internets. A lot of people have had poor RMA experiences. And from the looks of it, this 1.4 firmware update on the Vertex 4 certainly raises some questions about OCZ.

Now, in fairness, I have a Vertex 2 (before the NAND switch) and have never had any problems. Back when I bought that SSD, there really weren't a lot of vendors out there with good drives. Now look at the situation... there are a lot of really good drives from a variety of great vendors at really competitive prices. So why bother with OCZ anymore?

 

[mephistopoa]

My experience has been similar to yours. I have been running 3 of the original OCZ Vertex 1 60GB drives in RAID0 for 3 years without a single issue. I bought my wife an OCZ Agility 3 120GB drive for Christmas last year and it's been working wonderfully, even after upgrading her system, wiping the drive, and reinstalling Win7. No issues at all.

After my recent upgrade, I'm now running 2 Corsair ForceGT 240GB drives with the same SandForce controller everyone suddenly complains about and I'm having zero issues. In fact, I'm extremely satisfied with them.

It is not the controller, it is the manufacturer.

As I've written before, Intel 520 are just fine.

OCZ failed miserably on my home machine, work and for several clients.I used to have a raid0 of vertex2 for a bit longer than an year, then boom, no more...Now a single Intel 520 in place and at work a M4 in place of a single vertex 2

 

[mephistopoa]

It's not just the SF thing that raises eyebrows. After all, there are tons of SF drives out there but people aren't giving Kingston and Patriot a ton of crap, even though I'm sure their drives were no less affected by those SF issues. I think the biggest concern is the sense that OCZ just comes off as shady. They swapped NAND on the Vertex 2 w/o changing model numbers and without explaining that performance and capacity was negatively affected. That was a kick in the balls to consumers and I still remember the sheetstorm that erupted on the Internets. A lot of people have had poor RMA experiences. And from the looks of it, this 1.4 firmware update on the Vertex 4 certainly raises some questions about OCZ.

Now, in fairness, I have a Vertex 2 (before the NAND switch) and have never had any problems. Back when I bought that SSD, there really weren't a lot of vendors out there with good drives. Now look at the situation... there are a lot of really good drives from a variety of great vendors at really competitive prices. So why bother with OCZ anymore?

I was one of those tricked with the vertex2E, less space available, slower as well.

 

[Astral Abyss]

It is not the controller, it is the manufacturer.

As I've written before, Intel 520 are just fine.

OCZ failed miserably on my home machine, work and for several clients.I used to have a raid0 of vertex2 for a bit longer than an year, then boom, no more...Now a single Intel 520 in place and at work a M4 in place of a single vertex 2

I'm sorry that your experience with OCZ was less than satisfactory, but that doesn't change the fact that mine was pleasant, including my friends, and my wife, all using OCZ SSDs without issues.

 

[daglesj]

Got my 830 installed in a SATA 1 Tablet Laptop (Tecra M7) with Windows 8!

It only pushes 100MBps but the low access times means it works smoother then ever.

Superb.

 

[sok0]

I have a vertex 1 60 gb, vertex 2 90gb, vertex 3 120gb, and recently upgraded to a 240gb Force GT. I honestly cannot tell any difference between any of them other than on large files. And have had 0 problems with them. I would get whatever is the best deal. Ocz or not, doesnt matter.

 

[UL]

my Vertex 4 512 GB just crapped out on me, owned it roughly 1 year... hoping i can get it replaced

 

[mwarps]

My Agility 3 lasted two+ years without any issue. I have no further data as someone stole my laptop :-p

 

[PeterDLai]

I'd say just go with the Samsung for peace of mind. I hardly ever hear anybody complain about their SSDs.