Stay away from OCZ storage products

[houkouonchi]

you should not be in here bashing OCZ because you didn't read or understand what was going on. you probably bought it for some reseller because you were getting it cheap. well, sorry man, but you get what you pay for.
OCZ has a tremendous reputation and alot of respect out there in the enthusiast market for taking care of its customers. there products are also top-notch. they provide ten times the support of any other manufacturer, and have set industry standards with availability of firmware updates and coherent tech support forums.
get over it already. you got burned by your reseller. NOT BY OCZ.

I was actually semi concerned with the warranty to begin with. This is what really erks me. In the manual (which I read) it doesn't state anything about an authorized reseller for the warranty. Also I even emailed OCZ and gave them the serial numbers to ask if there would be any problem with the warrnaty and they said this:

Comment: The drives have a 2yr warranty from the date of purchase


Another one line response... They did not even mention 'as long as you bought from an authorized reseller'. I would have have probably returned the drives or atleast tried to if I found out back then that I would have problems for the warranty.

Also they don't have a list of authorized resellers so how the hell are you supposed to know if the seller is authorized or not?

Also why is the reason for this policy in the first place? The only valid reason I could think of myself (there may be others) is to have a reputable company that they know they can trust when verifying the purchase date. This seems kind of moot on a drive that hasn't even been on the market for two years and even if you assume I bought it right when it was released it would still be in warranty?

 

[stiltner]

This unauthorized retailer was never listed by the OP was it?

I'm curious who it was exactly that he bought the items off of. It was any reputable dealer, he would have probably mentioned that in the OP, as it would give his argument even more weight if it was someone that was commonly referenced for sales.

I'm gonna wager a bet these were Ebay "specials", and so hard to pass up a good deal right.

If they are legitimate drives, and have a 2 year from the date of mfg warranty, then its on OCZ to repair them, unless they can provide proof of authorized retailers.
http://www.ocztechnology.com/where-to-buy.html Would probably be as close to "authorized" as they could reasonably establish at this point IMO. That a lot of companies.

Comment: The drives have a 2yr warranty from the date of purchase

What drives are these, OCZ lists 3 year warranty on their site for all the 2.5" SSD I seen.
But I could have missed some, I'm kinda tired at this point.

 

[SoAndSo]

First of all, houk has my gratitude for posting his experiences about how poor OCZ's customer service is. I appreciate the warning. I'm not sure why you feel the need to post derogatory comments ("having a waah") about his post.

Second, if the retailer he purchased from is not "authorized" by OCZ, then what exactly do you think the retailer will do if houk contacts them? Take back a product 6 months after purchase, and eat the $1000 cost? Not likely.

Clearly the party at fault is OCZ. They manufactured a defective product (assuming the parts are not counterfeit and not abused, and I think this is a good assumption) and refused to support a customer. For me, this is a clear warning sign to stay away from OCZ products.

BTW, did I miss the post where houk wrote that he has not contacted the retailer he purchased from?

i did not mean to be derogatory or inflammatory, it was just an expression.
If the OP had contacted the retailer he would have mentioned that. He has not done so. it still stands that he needs to contact the retailer! a $1000 product should last more than 6 months and somebody needs to sort it for him. is there a consumers guarantee act or something in the US? (i am assuming OP is in US) we have a CGA in New Zealand (where i live) that basically states that an item should last relevant to cost (ie i would expect a $1000 SSD to last more than 6 months) and the retailer needs to sort it out.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

i did not mean to be derogatory or inflammatory, it was just an expression.
If the OP had contacted the retailer he would have mentioned that. He has not done so. it still stands that he needs to contact the retailer! a $1000 product should last more than 6 months and somebody needs to sort it for him. is there a consumers guarantee act or something in the US? (i am assuming OP is in US) we have a CGA in New Zealand (where i live) that basically states that an item should last relevant to cost (ie i would expect a $1000 SSD to last more than 6 months) and the retailer needs to sort it out.

Nope. The USA has no powerful consumer protection laws like most 1st world countries do. Corporations pretty much run the USA. We are still the world's largest market. Too bad our legislation is so controlled by lobbyism or we would have more consumer protection here. But you could always sue them.

 

[Old Hippie]

Yeah I'm sure you read every warranty too before buying anything.

If you read the thread you will see that I too have been bit by this warranty thing but by Dell.

There's a thread here.

I didn't read the warranty and it's no one's fault but my own.

That's part of the problem with this country.....Nobody wants to accept responsibility for their own actions.

If you miss the details it's your fault.

If you don't like OCZ don't buy OCZ.

 

[aznx]

I was actually semi concerned with the warranty to begin with. This is what really erks me. In the manual (which I read) it doesn't state anything about an authorized reseller for the warranty. Also I even emailed OCZ and gave them the serial numbers to ask if there would be any problem with the warrnaty and they said this:

Comment: The drives have a 2yr warranty from the date of purchase


Another one line response... They did not even mention 'as long as you bought from an authorized reseller'. I would have have probably returned the drives or atleast tried to if I found out back then that I would have problems for the warranty.

Also they don't have a list of authorized resellers so how the hell are you supposed to know if the seller is authorized or not?

Also why is the reason for this policy in the first place? The only valid reason I could think of myself (there may be others) is to have a reputable company that they know they can trust when verifying the purchase date. This seems kind of moot on a drive that hasn't even been on the market for two years and even if you assume I bought it right when it was released it would still be in warranty?

So who did you buy it from? Please don't avoid the question..

Maybe you got a fake/modified drive.

http://martybugs.net/articles/fakesandisk.cgi
http://reviews.ebay.com/FAKE-SanDisk-Ultra-Secure-Digital-Cards-Exposed_W0QQugidZ10000000001254879

 

[james__bean]

3 pages of people asking and we still don't know who he bought the drives from. My bet is that he bought them off ebay, in which case I wouldn't expect OCZ to honor a warranty from an ebay purchase either.

 

[Old Hippie]

3 pages of people asking and we still don't know who he bought the drives from. My bet is that he bought them off ebay, in which case I wouldn't expect OCZ to honor a warranty from an ebay purchase either.

I have no doubt these drives were a bargain....at the time.

 

[Metaluna]

+1. A lot of Home theater (TV's/Receivers/Speakers) manufacturer's have the same policy. No warranty unless purchased from an authorized distributor.

I don't know if it's still this way, but it used to be that if you bought a Nikon camera in the USA from a non-authorized (aka grey market) source, not only would they not honor the warranty, but if you took it to an independent repair shop to have it fixed on your own dime, they would even refuse to sell the shop the parts.

 

[john4200]

It seems to me that any manufacturer with integrity and good customer service should honor the warranty on any product of theirs which has not been abused, assuming there is proof that the product was purchased or manufactured within the warranty period (and that it is genuine). It should not matter how or where the product was sold. If it is defective, it is the manufacturers responsibility. Ethically, that is.

I am aware that there are many manufacturers that do not operate that way, including, apparently, OCZ. They are within their legal right to do so (assuming the fine print specifies it). But any manufacturer that refuses to replace a defective product, something that is clearly their fault, because of fine print or a legal loophole, is a manufacturer that I am going to avoid.

 

[mwarps]

I don't know if it's still this way, but it used to be that if you bought a Nikon camera in the USA from a non-authorized (aka grey market) source, not only would they not honor the warranty, but if you took it to an independent repair shop to have it fixed on your own dime, they would even refuse to sell the shop the parts.

Still is. If it's not Nikon USA and you buy it here in the USA, you will get no warranty coverage at all.

 

[Computurd]

dude, have you been living under a rock? you can google as well as i can. find it yourself.
i will link you this though:

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid_state_drives/ocz_vertex_series_sata_ii_2_5-ssd

now go the awards tab. speaks for itself.

 

[Blue Fox]

dude, have you been living under a rock? you can google as well as i can. find it yourself.
i will link you this though:

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid_state_drives/ocz_vertex_series_sata_ii_2_5-ssd

now go the awards tab. speaks for itself.

That pretty much means nothing. Reviews don't spot problems that occur later in life. Also, they haven't sold millions of SSDs. Had you done even a small amount of research, you would see that in their last fiscal quarter (March through the end of May), they had a revenue of 13.3m for SSDs, which was higher than ever before (57.6m in the past 2 years). Given the fact that until recently, they hadn't had a SSD under $100 (and the fact that prices have been dropping), that means that there is no way that they've sold a million SSDs, let alone half that.

 

[Computurd]

well you have made a good point, blue fox. one i will take with a smile believe me i wont shit my pants about being wrong about the amount of ssd manufactured by OCZ.
The awards, yea true they dont spot problems later on in life.

BUT i have yet to see these long lines of "my vertex failed and OCZ screwed me!" anywhere. and i am active on no less than six forums, and lurk at another four. all in storage areas, it is my specialty of sorts.
Outside of their support forums (where you do hear of problems, thats what its there for) i dont hear or see it.
dude got bonered by a unauthorized reseller, and yea, maybe ocz is being unnecessarily strict about it, but that is hardly a reason to go about bashing their ssd's. I have eight in an array and have never had a problem with any of them. i also have one in a lappy and a LE on my phase unit rig. never any probs. so i CAN speak from experience to that. his particular situation, a very very rare one indeed, is no reason to post up "Stay away from ocz products!"
dude should be saying "Make sure you buy from respectable, authorized dealers"

 

[aaronspink]

im not trying to sound like an asshat, but if i buy a product from a shop/online and it craps out, i am going to be contacting the shop first about a replacement/refund, not the manufacturer. I did that with my samsung 226bw monitor when it died within the warranty period. The shop i purchased it from told me that I need to contact the manufacturer directly so i did and it was sorted no problem (that was just the way samsung handled my warranty)

you need to contact wherever/whoever you bought it off, not write a premature slagulation rant on [H]

Actually, the generally correct thing to do is to contact the manufacturer unless the product was purchased within the last 15/30 days (variety by part of the work) in which case you return it to the seller for a refund/replacement. Retail outlets generally will just tell you to contact the owner of the warranty which in many cases is the manufacturer.

 

[aaronspink]

dude, there have been millions, and i mean literally millions, of ocz ssd's sold. if they were a bad company befitting of this little crying fest, this forum, and many others, would be peppered with crying and whining such as this.

I would be shocked if OCZ has sold a millions SSDs. They have no OEM contracts, they haven't even had non-crappy SSDs until recently, and they just plain don't have the financial s to have to success.

Fundamentally OCZ is a 2nd tier boutique supplier of computer components that are often times just remarking and markups of other companies products.

The only people that have sold millions of SSDs are the people that have been doing it forever like STEC or M-Systems(bough by sandisk) (which is very few of them and into a limited enough market they until recently even they hadn't crossed the 1 million mark) or the tier 1s like Intel, Samsung, etc.

 

[john4200]

dude, have you been living under a rock? you can google as well as i can. find it yourself.

Actually, I have not been living under a rock. I have a rough idea of how many SSDs OCZ has sold, and your figure looked inflated. But I cannot prove it. So I asked you for a reference to support your assertion. Which you apparently are unable to provide.

You might try getting your facts straight before you accuse others of being ignorant.

 

[aaronspink]

Outside of their support forums (where you do hear of problems, thats what its there for) i dont hear or see it.
dude got bonered by a unauthorized reseller,

And where is this magic list of authorized resellers?

 

[Computurd]

http://www.ocztechnology.com/where-to-buy.html

well john, it is hard not to assume that others might be ignorant when they have no other basis than a lone guy crying about his ssd not being RMA'd and they have absolutely no idea of what really happened, and no other reference than this guy, to bash a company.

How can OCZ be sure that this drive isnt a drive that was abused, used in a server? used for testing? some guy pouring LN2 on it, then reselling it? (yes people have poured LN2 on SSD's)
how do they know it wasnt used for target practice then resold?
BY using authorized dealers, as every other manufacturer does. It guarantees that the item is sold in factory fresh condition, and not used for 4k random write tests at 64QD for 12 hours straight by some kid in brooklyn, then sold off the back of a truck.
Get over it man. the wherabouts of that drive cannot not be verified from the point of origin (factory) to this mans hands. so they wont warranty it. period.

when you stop and think about it, there is an absolutely valid reason they should not warranty this drive.
if i test this ssd here to see if its waterproof by dumping it in a toilet and taking a shit on it, flush the toilet, then wipe it off and sell it on ebay to houkouonchi , can you really tell me that they should honor a warranty on it? answer me that.

 

[aaronspink]

How can OCZ be sure that this drive isnt a drive that was abused, used in a server?

So what if it was used in a server? Are you kidding me?

used for testing? some guy pouring LN2 on it, then reselling it? (yes people have poured LN2 on SSD's)

They can inspect it?

how do they know it wasnt used for target practice then resold?

by looking at it.

BY using authorized dealers, as every other manufacturer does. It guarantees that the item is sold in factory fresh condition, and not used for 4k random write tests at 64QD for 12 hours straight by some kid in brooklyn, then sold off the back of a truck.

if 4k random write tests for 12 hours breaks the drive them they have other problems they need to figure out. So what you are claim is that their drives are so broken that they can't handle a reasonable burn in test? And manufacturer they refused a warranty claim from a burn in test should be taken to court, tar'd, feathered and have warnings about them posted all over the internet.

Get over it man. the wherabouts of that drive cannot not be verified from the point of origin (factory) to this mans hands. so they wont warranty it. period.

How is this different from any other drive in existence?

when you stop and think about it, there is an absolutely valid reason they should not warranty this drive.

Hey your mistake is the truth.

 

[Computurd]

aaronspink, you, sir. dont know what you are talking about. an intel ssd (with supreme reliability), can be killed in short order with random 4k writes at 64QD. I would love one of the guys around here who knows how long that would take to chime in. You wont believe it coming from me. but you need to read up. a reasonable amount of burn in? jesus. LOL
you are aware that ssd's have a lifespan, correct? if it was used in a server, said lifespan is much much shorter. these drives arent intended for server usage. they have a very finite lifetime. you need to google "ssd life span"

you did not answer my question so i shall ask it again.

if i test this ssd here to see if its waterproof by dumping it in a toilet and taking a shit on it, flush the toilet, then wipe it off and sell it on ebay to houkouonchi , can you really tell me that they should honor a warranty on it? answer me that.

 

[Computurd]

lol dude that is epic. you dont "break" ssd's. you wear them out.

 

[john4200]

well john, it is hard not to assume that others might be ignorant when they have no other basis than a lone guy crying about his ssd not being RMA'd and they have absolutely no idea of what really happened, and no other reference than this guy, to bash a company.

How can OCZ be sure that this drive isnt a drive that was abused, used in a server? used for testing? some guy pouring LN2 on it, then reselling it? (yes people have poured LN2 on SSD's)

Actually, if you followed the link in the original post, you would see the thread houk started in OCZ's forums. where an OCZ representative states that they will not honor the warranty, and apparently not even allow an RMA so they can examine the drives. So, I do have other basis than houk's post here.

How to tell whether a drive is abused? Well, some SSDs store various parameters, such as the amount written. As far as physical abuse, this can generally be determined by inspection of the case, the fasteners, and the chips and circuit board. Anyone that has ever done QA or failure analysis on electronic parts could tell you that a lot can be determined from visual inspection. And depending on the actual parts and procedures used by the manufacturer, you can often determine more with specific tests. It is important to do these types of tests of failed parts in order to improve the design and manufacturing processes.

 

[Blue Fox]

If you kill the SSD through random writes, that's well within the warranty terms, though you don't seem to believe that. Maybe you should look at the terms on your Intel SSD. Your silly hypothetical situation is rather frivolous though. If the SSD is not physically damaged and is transferred from user to user, it should remain under warranty. They are preventing anyone from reselling a drive and having it remain under warranty. Every hard drive manufacturer looks at the manufacture date. They don't care how many hands it has been through. If you purchased it well after the manufacture date, you can show them a receipt and they'll honour the warranty from that point instead of the manufacture date. OCZ's warranty and response has just been bloody poor and unacceptable, though you don't seem to see that and like to throw silly examples and arguments out.

 

[Computurd]

destructive firmware flashes erase all smart data. they cant tell what has happened to it if you flash 1.1 ver to it. when it comes time to sell the used ssd's, thats what people do. and thats why they dont rma it. and you are still avoiding the question. for the noobs out there, that is why you do not buy used ssd's!!!
the smart data on the disk is easily removed, by a number of different techniques.

 

[houkouonchi]

I think someone only asked me flat out once where I got it since the last time I responded to this thread.

To answer peoples suspicions yes the drive was bought off ebay. The drives were NIB so I saw no problem with this. It also seemed like a pretty reputable seller since they mainly sold OCZ equipment.

The drives really were not a bargain as they were still $500. I saved maybe $40 off the next lowest online retailer I could find. The biggest reason for me going this route was because I needed four of them in a raid0 config and $40 became a lot more significant when multiplied by four times.

If I would have known OCZ's warranty policy from the start I would have never bought from them in the first place. What pisses me off is they don't bother offering up this information at all even when I contact support asking about the warranty and expect you to find it on their site (I did read the manual but I didn't visit all around on their site).

I was somewhat worried about the warranty only because I know that sometimes drives are considered OEM or sold to manufacturer's that build computers (like DELL) and the warranty wont be handled through OCZ directly. I gave them the serial numbers and they told me no problem if they were less than 2 years old and nothing about an authorized retailer.

Also they list nothing about this in their manual when they talk about warranty and its only on the site.

I used these disks in a server but what does it matter? This doesn't necessarily mean anything bad.

Basically the reason I bought the drives is I use them in a server for seeding torrents. Its extremely random read heavy and I don't really add new files to seed very often so I very rarely do writes. If you saw the thread I posted on OCZ I actually posted a support question *before* they failed. I didn't imagine it could be any type of wear issue as its very easy to see how much has been written to the array since the last reboot very easily via the 'iostat' command.

Basically in 151 days:

04:45:31 up 151 days, 20:42, 11 users, load average: 2.27, 1.76, 1.94

I saw:

Device:            tps    MB_read/s    MB_wrtn/s    MB_read    MB_wrtn
sdd             131.35        19.33         0.00  253574291      32076

Which is 253 TB read and only 32 GB written. To my knowledge reading does not wear out an SSD, just writing right? I don't consider myself to have abused the drives as I barely ever wrote to them which is the only thing that damages them (to my knowledge).

I knew I would never really be doing any writes to the array which is the reason I went with the generally considered crappy (due to their random write performance) jmicron drives as I knew I would be 99.99999% reads and really never do writes.

I knew random writes were really bad so I made sure everything I copied were sequential copies (copied off the 8x1.5 TB disk array on my server).

Anyway I plan on calling them on Monday and talk to an actual human being (hopefully) and try to see if something can be worked out.

I thought it was worth it to post this thread (I know I was ranting) as I wish someone would have posted a story like this in the storage section (which I often read) so I would have known better than to buy an OCZ product. I would never invest $2000 in SSD's with no warranty. No way in hell.

 

[Computurd]

I would never invest $2000 in SSD's with no warranty. No way in hell.

sorry man, but you take risks when you buy off ebay. and that is the risk. there are people selling "NIB" ssd's on ebay that have been flashed with destructive fimrwares to wipe smart data, then sold as new.

@bluefox- ssd's arent HDD, so they do have different rules on how they rma. i am suprised, honestly, that you dont seem to understand why.

 

[john4200]

destructive firmware flashes erase all smart data. they cant tell what has happened to it if you flash 1.1 ver to it. when it comes time to sell the used ssd's, thats what people do. and thats why they dont rma it. and you are still avoiding the question. for the noobs out there, that is why you do not buy used ssd's!!!
the smart data on the disk is easily removed, by a number of different techniques.

The behavior of flash NAND chips over their lifetime of writes is well understood. A few simple tests of the flash chips could determine whether they failed due to excessive writes.

 

[john4200]

I thought it was worth it to post this thread (I know I was ranting) as I wish someone would have posted a story like this in the storage section (which I often read) so I would have known better than to buy an OCZ product. I would never invest $2000 in SSD's with no warranty. No way in hell.

I thank you for your post and your warning. I agree with you, and I will avoid OCZ products in the future.

 

[Blue Fox]

sorry man, but you take risks when you buy off ebay. and that is the risk. there are people selling "NIB" ssd's on ebay that have been flashed with destructive fimrwares to wipe smart data, then sold as new.

What does that have to do with anything? That's not relevant at all. Outside of industrial products, SSDs have not been on the market long enough for any of their warranties to expire (for the mainstream stuff at least), so you can flash the firmware on them to your hearts content.

@bluefox- ssd's arent HDD, so they do have different rules on how they rma. i am suprised, honestly, that you dont seem to understand why.

Being a SSD has nothing to do with it. Look at Seagate and Western Digital. They sell SSDs. Do they check where you bought it from? No.

 

[aaronspink]

aaronspink, you, sir. dont know what you are talking about. an intel ssd (with supreme reliability), can be killed in short order with 4k writes at 64QD. I would love one of the guys around here who knows how long that would take to chime in. You wont believe it coming from me. but you need to read up. a reasonable amount of burn in? jesus. LOL

so you are saying that I do ~19 writes to each flash block on a device using flash rated at 10k+ erase/write cycles will kill it and void my warranty? I think the one that doesn't know what they are talking about wrt flash based SSDs is you. To hit 10k cycles with continuous writes would take ~265 days doing nothing but writing at max sustained write speed.

The only thing doing 12/24/36 hours of continuous writes would do is uncover defective hardware which is EXACTLY what a burn in test is supposed to do. Anyone that cares about their data should do exactly that. I know that I run ALL my HDs flat out for 48 hours before I use them in any real way to weed out the defects. I'm currently putting 6 WD20EARS through 48 hours of multiple simultaneous bonnie++ work before they settle in as NAS storage. This will be followed up by 24 hours of DD work to fill and read the platters multiple times and then I'll look at the smart values and figure out which if any of the drives are failing.

you are aware that ssd's have a lifespan, correct?

I'm well aware of it, you are aware that the lifespan is sufficiently high that it is unlikely ever to be reached by most users unless they purposely try to hit it by continuously writing to the device constantly for close to a year with MLC drives? Under random I/O situations, it would take multiple years. And would require doing nothing but writing which isn't a reasonable workload, so you can realistically double that time for anything close to reasonable usage (1R per 1W).

if it was used in a server, said lifespan is much much shorter. these drives arent intended for server usage. they have a very finite lifetime. you need to google "ssd life span"

Server vs desktop use isn't going to appreciably change the lifespan. The worse case serve scenario is being used as a ZIL type device (effectively Tier 1 write cache) and even then you are looking at multiple years of service without issue unless the hardware is defective for an MLC based device with non-braindead wear leveling and reserve. For SLC you are effectively looking at beyond hardware service life at continuous writes (~20+ years).

you did not answer my question so i shall ask it again.

If there is no detectable physical damage to the device, then yes. If there is physical damage to the device, then no. Manufactures should stand behind their products and should be held accountable for their products.

 

[Computurd]

a few simple tests, would you like to volunteer your time and effort and equipment to test thousands of ssd's bought off ebay? that probably half of them have been 'refurbished' via destructive flash? the costs of this would be astronomical.

Hence: Authorized Dealers
@blue fox----the reason people flash them back is to hide the usage data in the SMART data.

 

[houkouonchi]

sorry man, but you take risks when you buy off ebay. and that is the risk. there are people selling "NIB" ssd's on ebay that have been flashed with destructive fimrwares to wipe smart data, then sold as new.

To my knowledge OCZ never had released any firmware for the Core V2 series disk. Also allowing the firmware to be rewritten or the default act of updating the firmware wipes out the smart values seems like a design flaw to me.

I think the disks actually failed like a month before I even noticed. Why? Because i never write to the array. I got those write errors on the disks in the log after I just deleted some files on the file-system and then a day later or so the controller finally kicked the drives.

I was able to get about another 2.5TB of reads (and not even 1 more MB written) when the drives finally did fail (sdd = ssd array):

avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
           4.11    0.28    6.01    4.44    0.00   85.16

Device:            tps    MB_read/s    MB_wrtn/s    MB_read    MB_wrtn
sdc             142.77        18.75         0.37  258563691    5103682
sdc1            142.77        18.75         0.37  258563690    5103682
sdb              11.48         0.22         0.01    3079934     158376
sdb1             11.48         0.22         0.01    3079933     158376
sdd             126.37        18.57         0.00  256028824      32076
sdd1            126.37        18.57         0.00  256028824      32076
sda              31.96         0.17         0.19    2400930    2610227
sda1             28.22         0.16         0.17    2230618    2400411
sda2              3.52         0.01         0.01     162446     159193
sda3              0.02         0.00         0.00       1077        855
sda4              0.19         0.00         0.00       6788      49766

 

[Computurd]

you are saying that I do ~19 writes to each flash block on a device using flash rated at 10k+ erase/write cycles will kill it and void my warranty? I think the one that doesn't know what they are talking about wrt flash based SSDs is you. To hit 10k cycles with continuous writes would take ~265 days doing nothing but writing at max sustained write speed.

your not understanding difference between random and sequential writes on ssd. intels have been killed in under 24 hours with sufficient QD with small file random writes. and they are the king of reliability in ssd world.

 

[aaronspink]

destructive firmware flashes erase all smart data. they cant tell what has happened to it if you flash 1.1 ver to it. when it comes time to sell the used ssd's, thats what people do. and thats why they dont rma it. and you are still avoiding the question. for the noobs out there, that is why you do not buy used ssd's!!!
the smart data on the disk is easily removed, by a number of different techniques.

If their firmware flashes are destructive of reliability data then that is just poor design on their part and they should have to handle the consequences.

 

[Computurd]

it can be done with other drives as well, with a number of techniques. can be done to hdd as well.

 

[houkouonchi]

Also in case you are curious I actually have the I/O activity of the drive logged pretty much since I got the disk:

http://box.houkouonchi.jp/rrd/detail.php?graph=4&tree=&filter=

You can pretty much see the two times I actually added stuff to the disk in the yearly graph.

Compare this to the OS boot, MySQL raid10 slice and data raid6 slice of the mechanical disks (sda-> sdc):

sda (boot --mechanical):
http://box.houkouonchi.jp/rrd/detail.php?graph=1&tree=&filter=

sdb (mysql --mechanical):
http://box.houkouonchi.jp/rrd/detail.php?graph=2&tree=&filter=

sdc (data --mechanical):
http://box.houkouonchi.jp/rrd/detail.php?graph=3&tree=&filter=

 

[Computurd]

i understand your point houkouonchi, i am not inferring that you destroyed your drive by any means. What i am saying is that there is a reasonable expectation of a manufacturer of a ssd to know where that disk has been prior to you buying it.

regardless of what anyone here says, if you call intel and say "hey i wrote 4k random for 24 hours at QD64 and killed my drive" they will not rma it, no way, no how. i guarantee it. you would have to lie.

they just cant verify where it has been and what has happened to it. and that is just how it is.
EVGA doesnt warranty their gpu's if they are resold, why arent we bitching about that? a number of manufacturers, off teh top of my head, will not do it.
you bought off ebay, and unknowingly took a risk, and i feel sorry for you, but i dont think it is reason to condemn ocz.

 

[aaronspink]

your not understanding difference between random and sequential writes on ssd. intels have been killed in under 24 hours with sufficient QD with small file random writes. and they are the king of reliability in ssd world.

Then those drives were defective and should be replaced. I'm fully aware of the difference between random and sequential writes and on a properly designed SSD they don't really change anything. The number of writes to the flash devices have NOTHING to due with the lifetime of the flash, only the number of erase cycles. 4K random writes will have the same wear effect as 4k sequential writes on any modern SSD that employs wear leveling with COW functionality.

And no, intel aren't and haven't been the king of reliability in the SSD world, only in the gray area of the consumer SSD world with companies that spit out 20+ untested designs within a year. For the top line reliability people tend to go with the SSDs from people like STEC, etc who have been doing this far longer than anyone else. If you look at what drives the major OEMs use in the enterprise, they don't come from any of the big players in the consumer/prosumer market. Although that will likely change as the majors bring out their next gen enterprise SSDs with what they've learned from the current generation.

 

[aaronspink]

regardless of what anyone here says, if you call intel and say "hey i wrote 4k random for 24 hours at QD64 and killed my drive" they will not rma it, no way, no how. i guarantee it. you would have to lie.

Assuming it actually killed the drive, they will RMA it. Because its defective. I don't know where you are getting this whole they won't RMA it BS from.

they just cant verify where it has been and what has happened to it. and that is just how it is.

Oh, really now? And how do you know that? You are making a lot of assumptions which you have no support in fact for.

EVGA doesnt warranty their gpu's if they are resold, why arent we bitching about that? a number of manufacturers, off teh top of my head, will not do it.
you bought off ebay, and unknowingly took a risk, and i feel sorry for you, but i dont think it is reason to condemn ocz.

If OCZ isn't standing behind their products within the warranty period then they aren't worth buying from. Period.