Slashdot Mirror
OCZ May Be On Its Last Legs
itwbennett writes "OCZ, one of the first commercial solid-state drive (SSD) makers has been blaming a shortage of NAND for its woes for some time now, but things have taken a precipitous turn for the worse: 'For its second fiscal quarter ended August 31, 2013, revenue was $33.5 million, a huge drop compared to revenue of $55.3 million for the first quarter of 2013 and revenue of $88.6 million for the second quarter of 2012. The net loss for this quarter was massive, $26 million, a doubling of the $13.1 million loss in the same quarter last year.' The company has burned through cash, its stock collapsed, and now so have sales. Meanwhile, other SSD makers are doing well. So what is happening here?"
Rightly or wrongly, they earned a reputation for selling unreliable drives. Last winter I saw quite a few deals on mass market websites that featured refurbished OCZ drives at cut-rate prices -- I suspect they had a return rate that was significantly higher than the industry average.
True story:
I bought a 240 GB Vertex 3 back in 2011 at a considerable expense... I put it in my laptop and immediately, my laptop would crash (BSOD) every 20 minutes, continuously. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SandForce#Issues
I attempted to contact OCZ but their phone support directed me to an online forum. There, they said it was a known problem with laptops' powersaving mode, and to flash it. I said, ok, where's the flashing program for windows? The tech said (via a post) that there was no flashing utility for windows. I would have to use Linux. I said that I couldn't just wipe my hard drive and install linux, and the guy laughed at me and told me to buy another hard drive.
So I did. I went to a competitor, left a horrible review of my experience on Amazon, and never used OCZ again. http://www.amazon.com/review/R1GYKQFNH227GT/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
They also replaced the 34nm Vertex 2 drives with 25nm drives, lowering speed and space without changing the model number. They are scum.
The tech said (via a post) that there was no flashing utility for windows. I would have to use Linux. I said that I couldn't just wipe my hard drive and install linux, and the guy laughed at me and told me to buy another hard drive.
Intel did the right thing and deployed their SSD upgrade software as a bootable CD. In my opinion, this is currently the best way to distribute any kind of PC firmware. You can burn the disc from inside any operating system, and when you boot from that medium, you get a nice clean environment to update the device without a full-blown OS interfering with the process.
I had terrible experiences with their drives and tech support. In one instance, to solve a Windows blue screen problem, their support told us to update the firmware on the drive, which bricked it. They then refused to return/repair the drive because "firmware updates void your warranty." In another case, we needed a quick replacement on a failed drive so we requested advance replacement. They immediately charged our card MSRP (double the actual retail price), but then it took them over 30 days to actually ship the replacement.
The quote in the article blames capital constraints, and difficulty acquiring, not a shortage. They are likely buying cheaper supply with higher failure rates, creating a death spiral.
If that is not the case, the author should kick himself in the balls repeatedly for using unrelated quotes to support a point, as I can't be arsed to dig past that stupidity.
Non story, failing company cuts corners and fails faster.
A lot of SSDs support SATA Aggessive Link Power Management (ie. SATA powersaving), but has stability issues when it is enabled. To fix this under Linux -
https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Power_Management_Guide/ALPM.html
I have no idea how to disable this under Windows, but having turned off ALPM, all of my Sandforce SSDs have been rock solid. Even my Crucial M500 has problems with ALPM on max, I had to turn it down to medium to prevent it from crashing regularly and taking the filesystem with it.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
OCZ does that too: http://ocz.com/consumer/download/firmware. GP had a case of bad tech support, I guess.
As a former service manager to a laptop ODM/Integrator, their RMA process sucks, and our MTBF with their devices in custom laptops was drastically lower on every model. When you are dealing with gamers and power users that want to spend 2000-3000 dollars on a laptop, the last thing you need is faulty hardware weeks out of the box AND a 2-3 week + turnaround with OEM direct RMA's.
If it's not broken, let's fix it till it is.
Same here. OCZ has been awful as far as failure rates. I've had three of them die on me. Never again.
I've never had experience with their SSD drives. I have, however, had experience with their RAM and power supplies, and after those experiences I avoided their SSDs like the plague...
Ditto with my local computer store, the failure rate was so high they dropped them completely. I don't think they'll even let you special order them now.
Everyones SSD stuttered back then, save for Intels. Search for Marvel SSD controller stuttering and you'll find almost every brand! The early controllers were garbage..
Hell it don't take Steve Jobs to know OCZ is shit, just talk to any system builder. i have several gamer customers and they ALL ended up getting burned by OCZ at least once. I'd tell them "Look at the reviews, they are burning folks" but all they cared about was their rank on the boards...well they all ended up with paperweights. OCZ is a classic example of "treat customers like shit and watch them dry up".
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'd not put corsair in the same bucket as the other two. Their RAM, for instance, will not spontaneously combust. The other two... yeah, you don't have to look very far to see that they have the build quality of white branded parts.
It's a problem when you look for, say, mechanical keyboards. Even companies that used to make good stuff, like das, now have cut costs so that you are going to get more life out of a random membrane keyboard.
I used a handful of OCZ vertex 2's (back then it was like $3 per GB) in a couple of servers (in enterprise setting) for almost three years. Still running.
I also own four vertex 4's in a RAID 10 setup, all four drive still running after a year.
Either there is a incredible bad luck streak, or there is some abuse going on. The first and only SSD failure I have come across is a 120GB Intel X25-m.
New Economic Perspectives
I can back this up. I had seven OCZ drives in various customer computers during their firmware debacle. One bricked after two weeks. OCZ claimed there was nothing wrong with their drives. Then they released 2.11 firmware to fix the imaginary issue. The forums filled with complaints that it had INCREASED the number of BSODs. OCZ said they can't reproduce what we were all seeing and experiencing, but released version 2.15 IIRC which did fix the issue. However... The CS was exceptionally rude through the entire time. The firmware update could not be applied in a Windows environment, even though other vendors do manage to do this. The drive needed to be pulled and connected to a different PC as a non-boot drive and updated from there. And when I tried to do this using my old workhorse computer, the update failed. OCZ support told me that my motherboard and chipset were not compatible. (MSI P35-Neo2 FR, not an uncommon board.) The issue was rare but not rare enough, and if it bricked you lost everything, no recourse. Backups of course, but the drive was toast. So was my time. I returned all drives to Microcenter and ordered fresh stock from Newegg. OCZ can burn in hell.