I am surprised to see the OCZ drives recommended so frequently in the article. So far I've owned 2 from crucial, 1 intel, and 1 from OCZ. The first SSD drive I purchased was a crucial, and it is still running like a champ 3 years later in a macbook pro. The OCZ drive failed within 90 days. This wouldn't be a big deal in and of itself, things break. However, their customer service is terrible. I got nothing but a 2 week long run around with them when I tried to RMA it.
I have two OCZ drives, a Vertex 60GB in a lightly-used Fit-PC2, and a Vertex 2 240GB that was in my ThinkPad W510. They both failed after a few months.
To their credit, OCZ did replace the drives promptly and without hassle. The 60GB replacement hasn't failed (albeit again under light use). The 240GB is on a Fedex truck for me today, so we will see on that one.
I put a 300GB Intel 320 in the ThinkPad about three months ago. No problems at all with it, but time will tell!
The Intel drive has better utility software - you can do a secure erase, for example. OCZ doesn't provide a utility like that. There are open source utilities and such, but it can be pretty chancy getting them to work (I never succeeded).
An aside: I kept the ThinkPad's hard drive and put it in an Ultrabay adapter replacing the optical drive. Large and less frequently accessed files (photo, video, downloads, etc.) go there. This gives lots of extra storage and should save wear on the SSD (not that it helped the OCZ any).
The hard drive is set to turn off after a few minutes even on AC power, so it sits idle most of the time. When I do need an optical drive I use a USB one, or I can swap the original drive back in.
The first OCZ was a Vertex 2 180GB and failed after 1 month. I got it RMA'd and received my second Vertex 2. That one failed after 2.5 months.
Both intels are still running strong. I'm also surprised to see the OCZ's so strongly recommended. The RMA process sucked both times and the second time is working out to be a refund. I haven't received the refund yet, but at least there is a process.
I've burned through three Vertex 1's where the third was replaced at my request during RMA with a Vertex 2 (that was nice of them at least).
The first was when my current system was new two years ago. I was never able to get it working.
The second lasted a year and a half before it started corrupting files before finally dying.
The third lasted almost two whole weeks before I received a BSOD while gaming and a no longer detected SSD.
All three of these requires some form of CMOS reset/firmware fiddling to get running initially.
At least the Vertex 2 seems fine so far. But overall, I'm not too impressed with OCZ. I'll give them credit for replacing the drives without much fuss, but the last two RMAs took around 2 weeks to receive the replacement. Which is a huge pain in the ass when it's your OS drive in your rig.
I had a similar breakage experience with OWC, which makes SSDs using the same (new/aggressive) Sandforce controllers as OCZ. My drive ("Mercury Extreme Pro", like a "Vertex 2") failed in the first week in that it would not cold boot; if you left it powered on in a blank zombie white screen for ~5 minutes you could get it to boot on restart.
OWC's customer service was stellar though. Every time I called the phone was answered by a tech (an engineer I suspect) who very much knew what he was talking about and never wasted my time with scripts. After one failed fix -- it looked like zapping PRAM had fixed it, but it didn't -- they mailed me a new drive and I returned the old in its packaging. The new drive has been running fine since February.
I am also very surprised to see OCZ drives recommended. I have 10 OCZ Vertex 3 SSDs in a single server. In the past two months, 6 of these 10 Vertex 3 drives have failed so far. OCZ is utter and bitter crap.
I have a Kingston and an OCZ Vertex 2 and the OCZ drive failed in a month. My experience with the RMA is similar, it took 3 weeks to get a replacement and very slow email support.
OCZ's SSD offerings have carved out a very good chunk of the SSD industry. Their Vertex drives almost always receive favorable reviews & perform competitively, and their Agility drives are a popular budget SSD. Judging from the past few shootouts I've seen, they are one of the Drives to Beat, along with the intels.
Comments
I am surprised to see the OCZ drives recommended so frequently in the article. So far I've owned 2 from crucial, 1 intel, and 1 from OCZ. The first SSD drive I purchased was a crucial, and it is still running like a champ 3 years later in a macbook pro. The OCZ drive failed within 90 days. This wouldn't be a big deal in and of itself, things break. However, their customer service is terrible. I got nothing but a 2 week long run around with them when I tried to RMA it.
I have two OCZ drives, a Vertex 60GB in a lightly-used Fit-PC2, and a Vertex 2 240GB that was in my ThinkPad W510. They both failed after a few months.
To their credit, OCZ did replace the drives promptly and without hassle. The 60GB replacement hasn't failed (albeit again under light use). The 240GB is on a Fedex truck for me today, so we will see on that one.
I put a 300GB Intel 320 in the ThinkPad about three months ago. No problems at all with it, but time will tell!
The Intel drive has better utility software - you can do a secure erase, for example. OCZ doesn't provide a utility like that. There are open source utilities and such, but it can be pretty chancy getting them to work (I never succeeded).
An aside: I kept the ThinkPad's hard drive and put it in an Ultrabay adapter replacing the optical drive. Large and less frequently accessed files (photo, video, downloads, etc.) go there. This gives lots of extra storage and should save wear on the SSD (not that it helped the OCZ any).
The hard drive is set to turn off after a few minutes even on AC power, so it sits idle most of the time. When I do need an optical drive I use a USB one, or I can swap the original drive back in.
I've owned 4 SSD's: 2 Intels and 2 OCZ's.
The first OCZ was a Vertex 2 180GB and failed after 1 month. I got it RMA'd and received my second Vertex 2. That one failed after 2.5 months.
Both intels are still running strong. I'm also surprised to see the OCZ's so strongly recommended. The RMA process sucked both times and the second time is working out to be a refund. I haven't received the refund yet, but at least there is a process.
I've burned through three Vertex 1's where the third was replaced at my request during RMA with a Vertex 2 (that was nice of them at least).
The first was when my current system was new two years ago. I was never able to get it working.
The second lasted a year and a half before it started corrupting files before finally dying.
The third lasted almost two whole weeks before I received a BSOD while gaming and a no longer detected SSD.
All three of these requires some form of CMOS reset/firmware fiddling to get running initially.
At least the Vertex 2 seems fine so far. But overall, I'm not too impressed with OCZ. I'll give them credit for replacing the drives without much fuss, but the last two RMAs took around 2 weeks to receive the replacement. Which is a huge pain in the ass when it's your OS drive in your rig.
I had a similar breakage experience with OWC, which makes SSDs using the same (new/aggressive) Sandforce controllers as OCZ. My drive ("Mercury Extreme Pro", like a "Vertex 2") failed in the first week in that it would not cold boot; if you left it powered on in a blank zombie white screen for ~5 minutes you could get it to boot on restart.
OWC's customer service was stellar though. Every time I called the phone was answered by a tech (an engineer I suspect) who very much knew what he was talking about and never wasted my time with scripts. After one failed fix -- it looked like zapping PRAM had fixed it, but it didn't -- they mailed me a new drive and I returned the old in its packaging. The new drive has been running fine since February.
I am also very surprised to see OCZ drives recommended. I have 10 OCZ Vertex 3 SSDs in a single server. In the past two months, 6 of these 10 Vertex 3 drives have failed so far. OCZ is utter and bitter crap.
I have a Kingston and an OCZ Vertex 2 and the OCZ drive failed in a month. My experience with the RMA is similar, it took 3 weeks to get a replacement and very slow email support.
I have an OCZ from a while back, not sure on the exact model but it has been running fine for over 2 years.
I have had good success with 2 OCZ (Vertex1 and Vertex2) drives but had an Intel SSD that failed hard on me.
OCZ's SSD offerings have carved out a very good chunk of the SSD industry. Their Vertex drives almost always receive favorable reviews & perform competitively, and their Agility drives are a popular budget SSD. Judging from the past few shootouts I've seen, they are one of the Drives to Beat, along with the intels.
You seem to like OCD SSDs. I'd be interested to know which ones you've used, and how they've worked out for you. Thanks!