33 replies to this topic

[mr_sock_00]

Do a Google search on OCZ products and see for yourself, not just the people here who used OCZ <1 year or the first product they bought.
And how valuable is your data? In fairness, I think Vertex is their best SSD product though.

[IceBreakerG]

I have a 240GB Agility 3 in my MacBook Pro (dual booting Windows 7 on it too), and it's been very reliable so far. It's faster than anything I've ever owned, so I wouldn't know how much faster other drives would be (or if it's even a noticeable difference), but I believe the newest firmware fixed any reliability issues it may have had.

[Astra.Xtreme]

IceBreakerG, on 06 November 2012 - 14:50, said:

I have a 240GB Agility 3 in my MacBook Pro (dual booting Windows 7 on it too), and it's been very reliable so far. It's faster than anything I've ever owned, so I wouldn't know how much faster other drives would be (or if it's even a noticeable difference), but I believe the newest firmware fixed any reliability issues it may have had.

This. As long as you have the latest firmware on the 3 Series, you'll be fine. If you get the 4 Series, you won't have to worry about anything since it uses Indilinx, which is super reliable. Plus a 5 year warranty.

Obviously this all depends on who you talk to. I've build about 50 PCs for a client, many of which with an OCZ SSD. Haven't had a single failure yet with those. I've seen one failure, and it was a Kingston, but I wouldn't say Kingston is less reliable than anything else.

[tsupersonic]

Javik, on 06 November 2012 - 14:44, said:

I disagree, this thread on it's own seems to show how polarised people are, often it depends on whose opinions you ask. And I find the best opinions come from people to have used the products.

Every product has failures - that's unavoidable. But, OCZ just has high failure rates, and that should be enough as a consumer to sway you away. Why gamble with a product like an SSD? You're storing information, and it's an inconvenience if it fails. In either case, backup your data regardless of the brand. OCZ's tend to be slightly cheaper than the competition, but I would buy Intel, Crucial, Samsung for a few $ more. Having used an OCZ drive, and seeing it fail (amongst my friends') does not put a good reputation of them in my mind.

[threetonesun]

tsupersonic, on 06 November 2012 - 15:03, said:

But, OCZ just has high failure rates, and that should be enough as a consumer to sway you away. Why gamble with a product like an SSD?

Do you have more than anecdotal proof of this? OCZ has been selling cheap SSDs for a long time, I would expect there to be a fair number of failures. But is it really greater than other drive companies by volume sold? It's hard to say.

Unless someone can point to an actual manufacturing flaw, like the IBM Deathstars, it's hard to say they're actually worse.

[+articuno1au]

There was a noteworthy flaw in the Sandforce chip firmware that made the drives unreliable and glitchy.

That's more than fixed. It was fixed more than a year ago..

[torrentthief]

any modern ssd is fast as hell, way better than your mechanical hdd. Samsung do appear to overall be the best at the moment though.

[Javik]

tsupersonic, on 06 November 2012 - 15:03, said:

Every product has failures - that's unavoidable. But, OCZ just has high failure rates, and that should be enough as a consumer to sway you away. Why gamble with a product like an SSD? You're storing information, and it's an inconvenience if it fails. In either case, backup your data regardless of the brand. OCZ's tend to be slightly cheaper than the competition, but I would buy Intel, Crucial, Samsung for a few $ more. Having used an OCZ drive, and seeing it fail (amongst my friends') does not put a good reputation of them in my mind.

I only use my SSD as a boot drive, all my integral data is stored on mechanical drives so I'm covered on that front, but I've simply not seen anything that tells me using an OCZ drive is a risk. The firmware issues that caused the failures have been fixed as articuno1au pointed out, I know signs of disk failures, I update my firmware for products as soon as it's released and I'm careful. I've never seen evidence that owning an OCZ drive is a bigger risk than any other, you'll always get the odd failure, it's just part of the risk of comupting.

[mollick2]

I have yet to have an issue with any of the four OCZ drives I have. My Vertex 2 is two years old, Vertex 3 just over a year and two Vertex 4s are a few months old.

OCZ has the highest failure rates, but its negligible (last time I checked they were within half a percent from Intel). The failure rates of mechanical drives are astronomical in comparison.

[LogicalApex]

tsupersonic, on 06 November 2012 - 15:03, said:

Every product has failures - that's unavoidable. But, OCZ just has high failure rates, and that should be enough as a consumer to sway you away. Why gamble with a product like an SSD? You're storing information, and it's an inconvenience if it fails. In either case, backup your data regardless of the brand. OCZ's tend to be slightly cheaper than the competition, but I would buy Intel, Crucial, Samsung for a few $ more. Having used an OCZ drive, and seeing it fail (amongst my friends') does not put a good reputation of them in my mind.

As I like to say... If you didn't have a backup then it wasn't important.

[MightyJordan]

Thanks for all the responses, everyone. After mulling it over for the past hour, I think I'll keep waiting and set my money aside for a Samsung 830. I'll probably leave it until the next generation graphics card come around, as I'm waiting for those too.

[+djdanster]

I've had 2 OCZ Agility 3's in RAID 0 for the past year. Great SSD's. Initially I have a few problems with them, but as soon as I found out about the firmware updates, I updated them and they are now flawless! I maintain ~750MB/S r/w in RAID 0.

[Javik]

Does hardware level TRIM still function when you run them in RAID?

[LaP]

tsupersonic, on 06 November 2012 - 15:03, said:

Every product has failures - that's unavoidable. But, OCZ just has high failure rates, and that should be enough as a consumer to sway you away. Why gamble with a product like an SSD? You're storing information, and it's an inconvenience if it fails. In either case, backup your data regardless of the brand. OCZ's tend to be slightly cheaper than the competition, but I would buy Intel, Crucial, Samsung for a few $ more. Having used an OCZ drive, and seeing it fail (amongst my friends') does not put a good reputation of them in my mind.

Every Hd can fail to be honest.

My raptor failed last year. It was around 5 years old. Not that old for a HHD.

It doesn't matter which brand you own you should always back up important data. I have a slow cheap 750GB external HDD that i use to backup all my data including a ghost of the OS. When my raptor died i replaced it with a Vertex 3 and restored the data from the external HDD.

If this is a home computer i would say buy the best bang for the bucks. Everytime i see someone recommending Intel SSDs for home computer i am shocked. You can get a Samsung 830 for like 20$ less in Canada than an Intel SSD. Intel SSDs have always been some of the most expensive on the market. They are not worth it for home computer.

OCZ used to be less expensive and a good buy despite the reliability problems. But it's not really true anymore as the Samsung 830 is now actually less expensive anyway in Canada.

[warwagon]

Tyler R., on 06 November 2012 - 14:30, said:

Avoid anything OCZ. They just laid of a bunch of people and are going down probably soon. I have a Vertex 3 and it's good---faster than an HDD, and I'm happy with it, but it could be better. Get the Samsung 830. Don't clone the drive!!! Do a fresh install!!!

You can clone the drive, if the cloning software knows about SSD's and align's it properly.