SSD Manufacturer OCZ Preparing For Bankruptcy

JDG1980 writes "OCZ, a manufacturer of solid-state drives, says it will file for bankruptcy. This move is being forced by Hercules Technology Growth Capital, which had lent $30 million to OCZ under terms that were later breached. The most likely outcome of this bankruptcy is that OCZ's assets (including the Indilinx controller IP) will be purchased by Toshiba. If this deal falls through, the company will be liquidated. No word yet on what a Toshiba purchase would mean in terms of warranty support for OCZ's notoriously unreliable drives."

Comments

...and

[Konster]

...and not a single customer was surprised.

Re:...and

[Cwix]

I actually kinda am, I purchased one of their drives over a year ago and I have had no reason to complain about it. But that was just one drive, if there was news about issues, I missed it somehow.

Re:...and

[ganjadude]

I kind of am, I havent got one of their SSDs however I have always loved their memory. in typical /. fashion i havent RTFA but I am assuming this is the same OCZ

Re:...and

[Konster]

They had loads of issues with their early drives for a few years.

They got rid of the CEO, and changed their approach to quality, but it was too late. Their Vector drives are pretty decent, but they had no one to buy them.

Re:...and

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing decent about them, they are the industry standard for failure despite hype.

Re:...and

[Joce640k]

Note to self: Don't buy any new Toshiba-manufactured SSDs...

Re:...and

[Cwix]

Obviously I missed all that. I must have been lucky, I have a vertex 3.

Re:...and

[Anonymous Coward]

I was envited to come take a tour of their facilities & see how things were going about 6mo-1 year ago. I didnt do it and did do an interview on the phone, though. What surprised me is how much they were 'expecting' things to land slide but wanted to keep it under wraps. Their were talks about them having a 'vested intrests' of Slash Dot (to use their terminology) but as you say they had terrible product reliability with an occasional good one (not like their R.A.M though) and some people kept buying. I donno, might have been because of brand loyalty.
 
-KD

Re:...and

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you. My OCZ Vertex 4 works like a dream.

All the hate was just hype.

Re:...and

[Anonymous Coward]

Toshiba is already on my manufacturer blacklist.

Re:...and

[Anonymous Coward]

Had a vertex 2 originally, was replaced under warranty for an agility 3 it failed demanded another vertex after that as figured the agility was lower quality so they replaced with another vertex 2, recently failed again.

So all up 4 failures all under warranty last time around I refused any further OCZ drives and was given the Intel 335 as a replacement. I actually gave the agility to a friend to use as after the first failure happened out of the blue I had moved to crucial (still going strong).

Re:...and

[Luckyo]

It was because they were cheap. Very cheap. Unfortunately they were also very unreliable, and if there's one thing that people do not forgive, it's losing their data.

As a result, it's a pretty terrible idea to be the maker of cheap, unreliable storage.

Re:...and

[Luckyo]

Better hope that it keeps doing that, chances are that your ability to exchange it under warranty may go up in smoke.

Re:...and

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Even before SSDs they had a track record of producing crap.

Re:...and

[gl4ss]

I bought for cheap and fast. from discount.
2 years daily use.. still works. so dunno.

better than seagate anyways!

Re:...and

[citizenr]

There are three industry standards of ssd failures:
one is samsung drives, >33% of the market and hardly any failures
second one is the rest except Sandforce users
third one is Sandforce and all OCZ drives.

Re: ...and

[O('_')O_Bush]

I have 3x Vertex 3's, 1x Vertex 4, at least 3x sets of RAM, all with year(s) under their belts(oldest SSDs from 2011) and I have never had an inkling of a problem. Newegg reviews seemed to agree.

I'm very surprised at this or perceived quality control issues.

Re: ...and

[Hadlock]

European retailers publish their return rates by brand, OCZ has consistently been #1 by a wide margin, sometimes having as high as one in five (that's 20% for those of you following along at home) return rates for some models, the brand as a whole has been at around 8% for almost two years now. They're ticking time bombs. By contrast, intel, samsung et all generally have a return rate around 2% which is standard for retail items in general. Something is obviously very wrong. Also you should note that OEMs do not touch OCZ products with a 20 ft pole, you can only buy them at retail which should be a huge red flag.

Re:...and

[Anonymous Coward]

I wholeheartedly agree. But the Indilinx controller IP is worthwhile. Not that I'd be buying a Toshiba SSD in a hurry.

Re:...and

[gigaherz]

Agreed: Both my Vertex3 and my Vertex4 work perfectly well. I did have some issue with the Vertex3 at the beginning, but it was easily fixed with a firmware update.

Re:...and

[Gumbercules!!]

I would have thought Intel held the standard for the best SSD in terms of quality? I absolutely only use Intel SSD in servers as they're the only enterprise grade SSD I trust. As for OCZ, I have 8 in a pile on my desk at the moment (all 60GB ones) and I know 2 of them don't work and 6 probably do - but I can't be bothered trying to figure out which is which. They have been pretty bad, I would agree.

Re:...and

[Anonymous Coward]

3 year old vertex 3 just died on me few days ago...

also got agility 4 DOA, got replacement that died in few months...

Re:...and

[Anonymous Coward]

Then Toshiba would be a perfect match, seeing as their product quality is shit too, especially their drives.

Re:...and

[DeSigna]

Intel are high-midrange (in terms of quality and performance) in both enterprise and desktop flash storage. Samsung has a very strong presence across the board due to reputation, very good performance (substantially better than Intel in production gear) and many of the vendor-branded enterprise drives (HP, NetApp, EMC, etc) have Samsung internals.

When I bought my current desktop's SSD (Samsung 840 Pro), the only other vendor with a drive even remotely close in performance was OCZ. Googling for "OCZ Vertex4 problems" quickly put that possibility to rest. At the time, Intel wasn't looking like they were bothering to keep up with performance on the desktop, but they're always been reasonable quality-wise.

Re:...and

[jaredm1]

you can't have surprised customers unless you have customers.

Re:...and

[dww]

You were lucky then. I had one of the early Vertex 3's, and it took a whole series of firmware updates before OCZ got it right. They did in the end (it's still working now), but I'd never buy another OCZ. Also, the Vertex 3 advertised read and write speeds were far above what you get in real use: they only apply in tests using long strings of 0 or 1s. Compression creates great test results which in turn sells product. But when the customer finds how much slower the device is in use, they don't become repeat customers.

Re:...and

[Dogtanian]

Is the problem in general with Sandforce or with the way that OCZ used their controllers? From this very informative Slashdot post by Miamicanes:-

For example, Sandforce's engineers came up with an ugly, performance-killing hack that allowed the drive to avoid corruption if it were powered-down mid-write so they could officially claim that the ultracapacitor (*) was "optional" in "cost-sensitive applications". OCZ built drives without the ultracap, then had Sandforce furnish them with firmware that DISABLED THAT SAFETY MEASURE to avoid killing their drives' write performance in benchmarks.

To be blunt, Sandforce probably deserve to be tarred with the OCZ brush since they were actively complicit in that, but the fact remains that the problem here was caused by overriding the safety measures built into the controller rather than the controller itself...?

That said, the association has still put me off buying any Sandforce-based SSD.

(*) Which I assume was intended to provide enough power to complete the write normally. I'm also assuming that this "ultracapacitor" must be significantly more expensive than the bog standard types we're familiar with, whose cost would be negligible.

Re:...and

[AmiMoJo]

Their problem was that they tried to engineer their own SSDs and become a major player. Before when they were just doing RAM they basically bought the chips from someone else, copy/pasted the reference DIMM design and stuck their own heatsink on it.

Their early SSDs had a lot of firmware issues, and they handled them badly. They also did douchbag things like reducing the capacity of existing products without any indication or model number change when they figured out that they hadn't left enough spare space for remapping failed pages. Later on they just started using Sandforce controllers and copy/pasting the reference design again, so quality improved. By then it was far too late though.

Re:...and

[Lehk228]

their single customer appears to have been suprised

Re:...and

[Anonymous Coward]

OCZ's early problems were really sandforce problems. Other manufacturers using similar chipsets had equally poor reliability. They are not good controllers.

Re:...and

[Dogtanian]

Fuck you. My OCZ Vertex 4 works like a dream.

Was that the type of dream where you're in an exam and someone comes in and steals your pencils and you chase him down the corridor, but the corridor is the one from the office where you had your first job except that when you leave at one end you realised you've re-entered at the other side and there's no exit and the person who stole your pencils is now chasing *you* and you run and run and run, then you realise that the person chasing you looks like Guy Pearce when he used to play Mike in Neighbours and by waving your hands you get your pencils back, but you only have 15 minutes of the two hour exam left and it's for Portuguese Literature which you never studied in your life and also your OCZ SSD drive keeps failing and corrupting your data?

Yeah, I guess one could say it works like a dream. (^_^)

Re:...and

[Guspaz]

Intel uses Sandforce controllers in most of their current consumer SSDs. The 520, 330, 335, 525, 530, and 1500 are all Sandforce drives, with the 335 being Intel's current "mainstream" drive. Apple also uses Sandforce controllers in their Macbook product line, although they dual-source with a Samsung controller I believe. From all indications, neither Intel nor Apple have seen SSD failure rates higher than average. This tells me that most of the bad rep Sandforce got was purely because of OCZ's stupid antics. Insufficient validation and questionable choices (like the one you mentioned) combined with terrible customer service when their products inevitably failed.

In reference to the "ugly hack", you'll likely find ugly hacks in any SSD controller.

Re:...and

[tlhIngan]

It was because they were cheap. Very cheap. Unfortunately they were also very unreliable, and if there's one thing that people do not forgive, it's losing their data.

That was the big problem - the high failure rates. OCZ drives consistently were amongst the fastest drives, but any rational person would see that the numbers are so big they're meaningless. I mean, if you had to choose an OCZ drive with 500MB/sec reads and writes, or a more reliable one with 400MB/sec read and write, well, what 20% loss in speed probably will go unnoticed (copying a 1GB file - 2 seconds vs. 2.5 seconds), especially if it means your data is there tomorrow.

And yes, you can get good SSDs with ultra/super caps or big banks of tantalum caps that will let them handle sudden powerdowns gracefully. In fact, enterprise SSDs almost always have caps in them, while consumer drives don't. (Some of the new big-SSD and HDD hybrids power the SSD from the back EMF of the drive motor on sudden powerdown - that energy is also used to do emergency head parks).

Re:...and

[Dogtanian]

...and not a single customer was surprised.

Yes, everyone is assuming that OCZ went under because their drives were rubbish. I'd say that was the most likely cause too, but it's still (a) an assumption and (b) won't be the reason they went under in itself. No-one so far has actually answered that question!

What I mean is that companies don't go bankrupt because they sell rubbish- they go bankrupt because of the *financial consequences* of selling rubbish. (*) In particular, I'd like to know...

(i) Was OCZ's bankruptcy due to losses caused by a very high level of returns?
(ii) Or was it down to their bad reputation spreading and people not buying OCZ drives?
(iii) Was it because the market became too competitive and their strategy of being cheaper *and* faster than their rivals forced them to cut profits too close to the bone? (Which *might* have nothing to do with their drives being crap).
(iv) Was it a combination of all three... or was it something else altogether?

I would actually like to know because AFAICT, none of the linked stories or comments here have actually answered it per se! I doubt at this stage OCZ or the administrators will be giving out an official cause, but there must have been some publicly-visible signs as to the source of their financial distress in recent months.

(*) In this case there are two distinctly different potential consequences, i.e. reasons (i) and (ii)

Re:...and

[dshk]

I also considered 840 Pro, because I assumed that "Pro" means that it has capacitors, but no, it has not. Absolute performance is misleading alone. It must be considered together with reliability and consistency of performance. These three often represents trade-offs. It is easy to create a drive which is very good in random IO: use a large write cache on the drive without capacitors, and lie to the OS about sync. Manufacturers have done this previously, maybe they do this today, they do not talk about the internals of the drives, I do not trust them. I ended up with Intel DC S3500, contrary to the fact that I am not a fan of Intel. It is a server drive, so I hope it does not lie to the OS, and the price is not much higher, if at all. It is not optimized for the "desktop", but it has a consistent performance. I haven't even checked absolute performance, but I am sure it will be fast enough for me (because a hard disk was also enough).

Re:...and

[Dogtanian]

In reference to the "ugly hack", you'll likely find ugly hacks in any SSD controller.

True, but although the poster clearly had disdain for it (*), the "ugly hack" wasn't the target of his criticism per se.

What he *was* criticising was the fact that OCZ (with Sandforce's collusion) wanted to cheap out and not use the cap, but weren't prepared to accept the performance hit required to use it reliably under those circumstances, so blatantly ignored reliability to get performance on the cheap.

In other words, they had the old choice of "fast, cheap, reliable- pick any two", did so, and ended up with unreliable crap.

(*) Understandably, since the design was obviously meant to be used with the capacitor, and the "hack" was clearly a workaround intended for cheapskate companies who want to use it safely while cutting corners on the necessary parts.

Re:...and

[Guspaz]

I don't put too much blame on SandForce for that; the same flexibility that got OCZ their custom firmware that killed reliability got Intel custom firmware with fixes that came about through Intel's far more intensive validation. I think it was the wrong call for SandForce from a marketing perspective, though, because OCZ really damaged their reputation. I'd imagine that LSI's relatively recent acquisition of SandForce should help with that.

Re:...and

[Luckyo]

7200.11? Nah, actually about the same failure rate.

Re:...and

[ultranerdz]

What does capacitors have to do with "pro" or professional gear or anything else?

Re:...and

[dshk]

Capacitors make possible to cache already written and synced data on the drive. For example, you write many updates to a single file, like in case of the MySQL replication status file. If you cannot lost even only a few writes, then you must flush all these writes to the disk platter / flash memory. This is of course really slows down things. And quite unnecessarily, because everything which is written out, will be overwritten within a few milliseconds.

If you have capacitors on the drive, these small writes never reach the flash memory (except on system shutdown), because the drive can safely store them in memory. If there is a power loss, or other problem, the capacitors provide enough energy to write out the content of the cache to the flash memory.

Capacitors are the smaller equivalents of the battery backup units in RAID controllers.

Re:...and

[0123456]

Intel uses Sandforce controllers in most of their current consumer SSDs.

As I understand it, Intel have special firmware for their Sandforce SSDs.

Intel SSDs have also been known to fail horribly at times, like the bug a couple of years ago where they'd boot up with a capacity of 8MB and require a secure wipe to recover, but such horrors have been relatively rare compared to many other manufacturers.

Re:...and

[Guspaz]

There have been occasional incidents, but they usually had specific trigger causes rather than being spontaneous, and they usually manifest themselves shortly after launch. The 8MB bug, for example, was triggered by corruption on power failure, which is generally not something consumer drives are designed to handle anyhow. Also of note was that the 8MB bug affected the 320 series, which used an Intel controller, not a SandForce controller :P

Nobody's SSDs are perfect and completely bug-free, but while there have been occasional issues with Intel's drives, they still have a lower failure rate than anybody else except Samsung.

Re:...and

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsungs equivalent would be the SM843T.
Pretty much a 840 Pro with higher overprovisioning, supercaps and 10k erase rated MLC.

Re:...and

[hardwarefreak]

SandForce was purchased by LSI quite some time ago. LSI wanted directional control of the silicon to make sure future enhancements fit their needs. That and the fact LSI has always been a storage centric IP/ASIC company, making such an acquisition a perfect fit with their core business. The SF22xx controllers are used in all of LSI's enterprise PCIe SSDs, including the $35K, 3.2TB, model BFH8-3200:

http://www.lsi.com/products/flash-accelerators/pages/nytro-warpdrive-bfh8-3200.aspx#tab/tab0
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/LSI-Nytro-WarpDrive-BFH8-3200-solid-state-drive-3.2-TB-PCI-Express-3/3072358.aspx

If the SandForce controller is good enough for a $35K enterprise device it's more than good enough for your needs. Your shunning of the SF controllers, simply due to low OCZ product quality, is unwarranted. They're one of the two best (Samsung being the other) SSD flash controllers on the planet, hands down. OCZ's problems weren't due to the SF controllers.

Re:...and

[Dogtanian]

Your shunning of the SF controllers, simply due to low OCZ product quality, is unwarranted. They're one of the two best

I agree that component manufacturers shouldn't generally be held responsible for misuse of their products by other companies, but the fact was that Sandforce were complicit in that case. Okay, so perhaps I would consider a Sandforce-based device, after all, but even so Sandforce can't complain that their reputation was the entirely innocent victim of OCZ's corner-cutting- they brought it upon themselves.

Warranties

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> No word yet on what a Toshiba purchase would mean in terms of warranty support for OCZ's notoriously unreliable drives

You can expect the same level of warranty service that you've always received from OCZ.

Re:Warranties

[SeaFox]

You can expect the same level of warranty service that you've always received from OCZ.

Yes, that is a stupid supposition for the summary to make.

The warranty is a legal obligation, and one a company would have a responsibility to fulfill, and if the company is bought by someone else, it becomes their obligation.

Re:Warranties

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's be honest here, OCZ customer service could never have been as bad as Toshiba.

Re:Warranties

[Dunbal]

They welched on $30 million, you think they have trouble not fulfilling their warranty "legal obligation"?

Re:Warranties

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you hear that sound? Its the sound of the joke flying over your head.

Re:Warranties

[Austrian Anarchy]

Let's be honest here, OCZ customer service could never have been as bad as Toshiba.

I have never had a Toshiba warranty/customer service problem and all of my home computers have been Toshiba since the early 1990s. Even my first one, a used T-1100, they sent me a still shrink-wrapped fresh DOS copy when I needed it. My only gripes have been with places where I bought one, not with the manufacturer.

Re:Warranties

[PopeRatzo]

The warranty is a legal obligation, and one a company would have a responsibility to fulfill, and if the company is bought by someone else, it becomes their obligation.

Sure, if you wanna face an arbitration panel hand-picked from corporate lawyers.

Anyway, it doesn't say the drives will be purchased by Toshiba, just the controller technology.

When a company goes bankrupt and another company picks its bones, the first thing to go by the wayside are things like pensions, guarantees, municipal contracts and similar agreements. Toshiba's lawyers will get them out of those warranties faster than a drunk sophomore gets out of a prom dress.

Re:Warranties

[Anonymous Coward]

The warranty is a legal obligation, and one a company would have a responsibility to fulfill, and if the company is bought by someone else, it becomes their obligation.

That depends on how the sale is conducted. In some cases yes, in other cases no.

Re:Warranties

[EdIII]

I think the question was about Toshiba handling the warranties. If Toshiba buys them, they will need to honor the warranties. OTOH, if they just purchase IP they will not need to do so.

Re:Warranties

[Anonymous Coward]

They can also just buy the fabs, leave the inventory and management-sales arms alone. It's a better deal for Toshiba, and if there's no competitor in the wings willing to bid on the warranty-encumbered whole, then the fabs are all they need to make an offer on.

Re:Warranties

[ArbitraryName]

Incorrect. Warranties are considered unsecured liabilities. Once the company files for (Chapter 7) bankruptcy they stop honoring warranties just like they stop paying debts. The company's assets are sold and creditors are repaid in a set order. Unsecured debts are absolutely dead last and are generally never paid (after all, if they could have paid them they wouldn't likely be filing bankruptcy. Assets sold in bankruptcy are free from any liens or claims. Toshiba would be under no obligation to warranty any OCZ products, as they would have simply purchased their assets.

Re:Warranties

[FatdogHaiku]

Unless Toshiba actually agrees to assume the liabilities of OCZ (and WHY would they do that?) then no, the obligation to cover old products is not transferred. If a building contractor goes belly up and you buy his assets (materials, vehicles, tools & equipment, unsold inventory, client lists, etc.) that does not make you responsible for work he did in the past. Now, "if" you keep the brand alive you would most likely have to stand behind previous commitments, but again WHY would Toshiba do that? Toshiba is solid and OCZ is on fire. Toshiba will gain new IP and physical plants and resources and OCZ will be ash. Shareholders will get pennies on the dollar, customers will get screwed without lube. For warranty inquiries, contact the bankruptcy trustee.

Re:Warranties

[sjames]

They'll just spin off and sell off anything of value and leave an empty shell to go bankrupt.

Re:Warranties

[russotto]

The warranty is a legal obligation, and one a company would have a responsibility to fulfill, and if the company is bought by someone else, it becomes their obligation.

Only if they bought the company whole. If the company goes bankrupt and Toshiba buys "substantially all the assets of" the company, they may not get the obligations.

Re:Warranties

[Sporkinum]

No problems with warranty service on our Toshiba CT scanners.

Re:Warranties

[nuggz]

Unless they don't buy that part of the business.

The whole point of a bankruptcy is to get rid of excess obligations.

Re:Warranties

[Mashiki]

You might think so, but it sure didn't work for fujitsu now did it? Warranty coverage and "who picks it up" varies by where you live, in Canada, I got cold hard cash for every drive I sent back to them as they failed.

Re:Warranties

[PopeRatzo]

That's because you live in a relatively civilized country where people still matter.

Re:Warranties

[Luckyo]

They likely will buy some assets from the liquidation, but not others. As a result, they likely won't be bound by warranty agreements.

Re:Warranties

[citizenr]

Unless Toshiba actually agrees to assume the liabilities of OCZ (and WHY would they do that?)

Only one reason comes to mind - in order to preserve OCZ brand name. This brand is still associated with crazy fast drives. People in the industry know this is due to OCZ blatantly lying to customers and advertising compressed data speed, but perception of unwashed masses remains.
Of course OCZ is also associated woth total lack of RMA support, and most people that had to go thru RMA never bought OCZ again.

Re:Warranties

[Firethorn]

The warranty is a legal obligation, and one a company would have a responsibility to fulfill, and if the company is bought by someone else, it becomes their obligation.

It depends on how the company was bought. Once it hits the bankruptcy court everything is up to grabs, and warranty coverage is a debt. Generally a company that buys it 'stock and barrel' will end up honoring the warranties, but it's not a guarantee.

Re:Warranties

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"The warranty is a legal obligation, and one a company would have a responsibility to fulfill, and if the company is bought by someone else, it becomes their obligation."

That would be nice. However, if the sale is structured as a partial asset acquisition, rather than a sale of the whole company as an entity, it may or may not be true. The details are brutally complex and varied; but it cannot be safely assumed that a few tedious 'obligations' (especially to a class of very small claimants, who are unlikely to be nearly as well represented or tightly drafted as a large creditor or a few such...) won't conveniently be retained on the books of the sacrificial company, while the assets worth taking are transferred and the remnants allowed to sink into bankruptcy.

Re:Warranties

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The Harper Regime is working as fast as it can! Give it time...

Re:Warranties

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Let's be honest here, OCZ customer service could never have been as bad as Toshiba.

My experience has been that Toshiba makes total shit computers (in terms of reliability, durability, service life, and driver support); but their SSD business does a lot of OEM work for just about anybody selling computers with SSDs inside. The sort of buyers who get really, really, really, touchy if a given component supplier ends up being responsible for a lot of warranty incidents. If they are doing that successfully, they can probably handle 'boring, but reliable' at any rate.

Re:Warranties

[guises]

Back when OCZ was a memory company, they provided really excellent service the couple of times that I had to deal with them. And lifetime warranties for their RAM. They were also pretty much the only good option available in Canada that wasn't way too expensive. I'm genuinely very sorry to see them go.

Re:Warranties

[AmiMoJo]

I assume you are talking about the US. In the EU your warranty is with the vendor and is for a minimum of two years. If the drive fails the shop you bought it from must handle the warranty, even if the manufacturer is long gone. You can choose to directly to the manufacturer if you like and they allow it.

In my experience with storage devices if either the shop or manufacturer goes out of business the other one will usually honour the warranty. I had an Intel SSD from a shop that vanished and Intel replaced it when it failed. Years ago I had a Quantum drive that failed after Quantum disappeared and the shop replaced it with a Western Digital under warranty.

Oh, and if that fails, when you buy anything costing over £100 on credit card there is a handy thing called Section 75 which basically means that the credit card company is liable as if they were the vendor. Even if you bought the item from overseas or everyone associated went bankrupt or whatever, they have to deal with the warranty. It's very useful when PayPal are being dicks because the product longer than 60 days before failing.

Re:Warranties

[Lehk228]

bankruptcy is a formal process of eliminating legal obligations which have become impossible to fulfill.

Re:Warranties

[Guspaz]

Speaking of Toshiba and Canada... I live in Canada, and bought a Toshiba laptop in America after being assured by Toshiba (I called them) that the warranty was international and that I should have no problems at all getting it serviced if there was a problem. The text of the warranty also said as much. The only caveat, they said, was that I'd have to pay the shipping costs out of my own pocket, which was expected.

Fast forward a year and a half, and my laptop needs service. I call up Toshiba Canada, and not surprisingly they won't touch the thing because of where it was purchased. So then I call up Toshiba USA, and... they tell me their repair depot will refuse any packages shipped from outside the US. In fact, Toshiba tells me to find an American friend to ship it to and then have them ship it to Toshiba...

Needless to say, my replacement laptop was not a Toshiba.

Re:Warranties

[Guspaz]

People who buy a $180,000 CT scanner probably get better customer service than people who buy a $2,400 laptop. Or at least considering my personal experience with Toshiba refusing to honour valid warranties, I certainly hope they do...

Re:Warranties

[Guspaz]

For as long as OCZ memory was sold in Canada, Kingston Value Ram was sold in Canada as a far better alternative.

Re:Warranties

[Mashiki]

If you live in Ontario, Quebec, or BC that's illegal under consumer protection laws.

Re:Warranties

[Mashiki]

The Harper Regime is working as fast as it can! Give it time...

Odd I've been hearing that for the last 8 years, and it still hasn't happened.

Re:Warranties

[Guspaz]

Indeed it is, but the Office de la protection du consommateur has no jurisdiction over an American company. At best, I'd have to sue Toshiba Canada, and they're located in Ontario. And I'd probably have a hard time showing how an Ontario company is responsible for violations of a Quebec law by an American company...

Re:Warranties

[Mashiki]

Indeed it is, but the Office de la protection du consommateur has no jurisdiction over an American company.>quote>
Actually it does, there's case law precedence via ebay, when they tried to force arbitration in the US. And any company that operates in Canada is bound by law to operate under the laws and consumer protections in each individual province and the whole of Canada.

Can't remember the caselaw number off the top of my head sorry, but it's something to look into.

STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[slashmydots]

Their drives don't have a high failure rate! They're not unreliable! It was all based on a single study that showed a high return rate. That was because the morons at OCZ released them with beta level firmware that made the first batch of 3 and 4 series drives not be recognized 100% of the time by many BIOSes. I built over 50 computers with OCZ SSDs and about 40 of them had to be flashed to the latest firmware before they operated correctly. After that, zero out of 50 came back in 2 years so that means zero failed. They used 9000 write cycle flash memory instead of, for example, Kingston HyperX 3K's 3000 rating. They had an internal, firmware-based TRIM style sweep in case your OS didn't support TRIM too. They were one of the best drives out there.
Unfortunately, I hate them because they decided to "stop being competitive" and single handedly drove up the price of SSDs basically by price fixing. Their drives went up 50% in price overnight. That was such bullshit, they deserve bankruptcy.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[0123456]

I built over 50 computers with OCZ SSDs and about 40 of them had to be flashed to the latest firmware before they operated correctly.

In some parts of the universe, we call not working correctly 80% of the time 'unreliable'.

Even if it's fixed, that kind of reputation hangs around for a long time.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Nanoda]

And I built 1 system with an OCZ Petrol and it vaporized the partitions 6 months later, so that's 100%. I think luck had more to do with success than anything.

I actually _was_ surprised to get a replacement Vertex 4 fairly quickly, which reminds me I should open it and flash it while the firmwares are still easy to get.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

I must have gotten some of the messed up drives you were supposed to. I bought 3 OCZ SSDs. All three different sizes, each purchased a few weeks apart. Within a year, and fairly close in time, all three died. Died as in DEAD, with no warning or indications of a problem. Not recognized by BIOS, not flashable, one smelled like burnt electronics, DEAD. OCZ happily replaced all of them. But I figured...this is either an unlikely coincidence or their drives suck. Rather than figure out the answer to that, I bought Crucial and Intel SSDs and all have been running for more than twice as long as the OCZ SSDs with no issues.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

How many studies do you need to do to prove that gunshots to the head are often fatal?

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[iCEBaLM]

But they're not incorrectly working 80% of the time, they're incorrectly working once, fixed, and then they work for the rest of the products life.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[MrL0G1C]

So this is a lie then?
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[ArbitraryName]

The study you are talking about was based on returns from between six months and one year after purchase. It does not cover DOA parts. Your theory is mistaken.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[cyberjock1980]

I disagree. I've had several friends(at least 4 off the top of my head) that have bought OCZs. None of them lasted 6 months without having to do an RMA. One friend had 3 RMAs in about 9 months. Despite having 3 months left on his warranty he went with Intel(because of my recommendation) because it wasn't worth his time to continually have to restore from backup to a temporary drive while he does the RMA.

Even in forums I hear people talk about failed OCZ drives regularly. Sure, there's the occasional Samsung and Intel in there. But OCZ sure is mentioned FAR more frequently than the other brands. I'm not convinced that their market share is 90% to offset the number of users that complain about failed disks.

Personally, I don't care if they used 1-million write cycle flash memory instead of Kingston's 3000 cycle memory. If every drive I've had second hand experience with has to be RMAd in less than 6 months something is horribly wrong and I'd be avoiding that product or brand. There's alot more to a drive than just the number of write cycles. Poorly written SSD firmware could easily make a drive with a very long lifespan be abnormally short due to write amplification. So feel free to keep talking numbers, cause the comparision of write cycles is only a very small part of what makes an SSD reliable(or not).

In my opinion OCZ has undoubtedly made some bad models. Are they all bad? Probably not. But, it doesn't take much to earn a reputation for being crappy. And once you've earned that reputation it's going to take some serious convincing to get people to spend money on your product again. In my case, they'd have to give me a drive for free to prove that they really are just as reliable as the 3 Intel drives I've had in my 3 main machines that haven't failed in 3 years+ of use.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

"Their drives don't have a high failure rate!"

False.

"It was all based on a single study that showed a high return rate."

False.

They did have a bad firmware shipped for a period of YEARS, that much is true. It doesn't negate the other falsehoods you are spewing.

Who modded that informative? It isn't.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[0123456]

But they're not incorrectly working 80% of the time, they're incorrectly working once, fixed, and then they work for the rest of the products life.

So they magically fix themselves?

If I buy something, I want it to work out of the box. If it didn't work out of the box 80% of the time, I'd call it 'unreliable'. I wouldn't care whether I can download some program from the Internet to fix it, you'd already have lost me as a customer.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't understand how some one like you would want to build a computer. Your complaints would put legos or megablocks out of business.

We enjoy finding solutions to problems. Even house wives do this. Many recipes in boxes only require additional things like an egg to make the person cooking feel like they are doing something. At least this gives a legitimate sense of accomplishment with a simple search and firmware flash.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

This is anecdotal but I have one of their SSD drives and it has worked flawlessly for almost 2 years on a laptop that is used daily (3,483 power on hours according to the SMART data).

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny as we had a near 100% failure rate within 2 years that's including the replacement drives as they always failed sooner or later.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[0123456]

I can't understand how some one like you would want to build a computer. Your complaints would put legos or megablocks out of business.

I've built four computers for my own use in the last four years. They all worked out of the box, and are all still working.

Why shouldn't I expect a new computer built from new parts to just work?

Re: STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

3 years and Close to 10k hours here. And it's a vertex 2. They were notorious for failure, mostly for sleep/hibernation issues. Luck of the draw I guess

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[MikeBabcock]

By which standard, Windows is almost 100% unreliable. No wonder I hate on it.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Luckyo]

In any computer part, a failure rate that causes catastrophic data loss with 1/5 chance is unacceptable.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[hairyfeet]

Flag on the play, dumbass on the field, 15 yard penalty.

I build PCs for a living and have since the days of The Shat selling VIC 20s with his TJ Hooker hair and if "Windows is almost 100% unreliable" for you then 1.- You haven't touched Windows since Win98SE, or more likely 2.- you sir are a moron who clicks on every "punch the clown and win an iPad" ad on the next and clicky clicky through every EULA you get from any dodgy site. So which is it?

as for TFA? Couldn't happen to a shittier company. I have several gamer customers and the failure rate of the OCZs was just nuts, I don't think a single one managed to make it past the warranty. They were especially bad about controller failures where you would just flip the switch and...nothing, the drive wouldn't even show up in the BIOS. As for Toshiba buying them? The only Toshiba drives I've bought in their portable ones but they were always reliable so let us hope that its a case of the quality going up to the parent, not like Seagate where Maxtor seemed to drag down the quality of Seagate after purchase.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[byornski]

It's nice that you've had more than 4 friends but more interesting is OCZ drives.... I have an OCZ drive that I acquired due to the shop being out of sale of Crucial equally sized 240GB drives. It's had windows 7 on it since a year and a half ago and is working fine now. No errors ever reported. If everyone who has ever had a hard drive die on them is just going to post we could have a marathon of karma

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

Suuure. How about the typical Linux desktop, where daily manual fixing is required to keep the thing in one piece.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[smash]

No, they were sold DOA. Having to somehow flash firmware on a storage device typically used for a system drive on a new PC before I can expect to use it is inexcusable.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[smash]

No. I do not enjoy finding work-arounds or bug-fixes for broken-as-sold hardware that I paid good money for. I'm not interested in "accomplishment" from building a PC because it is menial unskilled labour despite what a bunch of nerds might want you to believe.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[FalleStar]

I'm surprised to see so many people had issues with their OCZ SSDs. I've been running my 256GB OCZ Agility III for over a year with zero issues. I use the drive strictly for the OS partitions though, all my games and media are on my 1TB & 2TB drives. For what I paid for it, I feel like I've already gotten my use out of it. If it does fail on me, that's what backups are for.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

The actually were being too competitive by trying to buy market share. They were driving prices too low, also offering huge rebates. They were burning through a lot of cash buying up NAND supplies and selling them below cost. And when low-end supply dried up, they had use their inventory of higher end NAND in their non-enterprise products. It was really poor management of finances and operations.

They were trying to appear that they own a larger share of the retail market so that they will look like a good target to be acquired. However, Seagate was not fooled and backed out of the merger, and that's when everything collapsed. And when the merger deal is gone, that's when prices of SSDs popped back up overnight.

Source: I am a bitter investor.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[cyberjock1980]

I think you are missing the bigger picture.

Regardless of how well or how poorly an item sells, regardless of a company's reputation, and regardless of what you and I "think" about their product, if significant quantities of their product is being RMAed that is going to kill the profits of that product. If its a very high failure rate it might bankrupt the company. OCZ has some products that have been claimed to have a 40% return rate during the warranty period. Oh look, OCZ is filing for bankruptcy. Coincidence? I think not.

Even if the claimed return rate is 1/2 of reality, that's still 20%. If just 1 out of every 5 customers is having to do an RMA you can expect people WILL be upset and people WILL complain. Just think about how many do a second RMA and that one fails too!

The bottom line, products should not regularly require an RMA during the warranty period. Both so a customer gets a feeling that the product lived for the duration of its expected life and because the company doesn't need to go bankrupt while dealing with failed product processing, return shipping, customer service calls/emails, etc.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

How many studies do you need to do to prove that gunshots to the head are often fatal?

Just keep insisting on higher standards of statistical rigor until you run out of test subjects who you dislike. Simple enough.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Alarash]

"News for nerds." I'm a nerd, I flashed my OCZ SSD. I've had it for 2 years and according to S.M.A.R.T. and my own human perception it's working like a charm. I had it for a good price, and it's got great performance. I'm a rather happy customer. Would I have preferred not to flash the firmware? Yes. Do I care, or is it beyond my skills? No.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

This may not be true, but I heard they were so worried about people reverse-engineering their firmware optimisations that they introduced a "panic mode" whereby the drive would deliberately brick itself if it detected what it deemed to be probing designed to determine this. Either way, the fact the rumour even exists says a lot about how shitty their firmware is.

As for the argument that issues could be fixed by flashing, maybe so but customers simply shouldn't have to endure this hassle and risk of bricking their drive, QA should be of a good enough standard that the drive is reliable already even on v1.0. Plus many won't even be aware that it's possible, it's not like you ever hear about people flashing hard drive firmware.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[FlyHelicopters]

That was because the morons at OCZ released them with beta level firmware that made the first batch of 3 and 4 series drives not be recognized 100% of the time by many BIOSes.

A few years ago when SSDs were brand new, the constant firmware updating required of these drives was common enough that I remember it.

It is why I paid a premium for my first SSD, an Intel X25-G2 160GB drive that was $550 at the time (ouch, those were the days).

Still works perfectly, in a daily use machine, with 97% life left. It will be thrown out from being too small long before it fails.

While all SSD companies have had their teething problems, OCZ has had more of them, and that rep sticks around, even if it isn't always justified.

Maybe their current drives are fine, but once the "2" drives came out and still had problems, I never looked at them again.

Now we use mostly Samsung drives, with a mix of Intel in there. I would try the new Crucial drives as well, but have no need, Samsung and Intel work well, why mess with success?

At the end of the day, that is OCZ's problem. They can't be low enough in price to be worth trying, they can't be fast enough to risk it. Being 10% faster or 10% cheaper isn't worth it when it comes to reliability.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

If only. My OCZ drive lost all of its data due to a firmware bug. I updated to the latest firmware (at the time), repartitioned and reinstalled the OS. About a year later it went sour again.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[AmiMoJo]

That might just be acceptable if you had a second PC that it happened to work fine with to do the update on, and of course know that the update exists. If you don't...

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[daedric]

But they're not incorrectly working 80% of the time, they're incorrectly working once, fixed, and then they work for the rest of the products life.

So they magically fix themselves?

If I buy something, I want it to work out of the box. If it didn't work out of the box 80% of the time, I'd call it 'unreliable'. I wouldn't care whether I can download some program from the Internet to fix it, you'd already have lost me as a customer.

Due tell me how many updates/security fixes/service packs for your favorite OS/Software have you installed?

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

They all worked out of the box

So they magically installed their operating systems themselves?

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Guspaz]

Except you're wrong. You reference a single study, where there are multiple data sources showing that OCZ has a substantially higher return rate than other vendors. hardware.fr has data from both 2012 and 2013, and while the 2013 data does show a market improvement, it's showing OCZ going from an 18x higher return rate than Intel to only a 3x higher return rate... despite using the same controllers.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[0123456]

So they magically installed their operating systems themselves?

Uh, no. Installing the operating system is an essential part of building a PC. Find it doesn't boot and then having to figure out why and then having to download some firmware and then having to upgrade it is not.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[MikeBabcock]

The statement was that a device isn't reliable if it requires updates to be functional.

Please try to follow the statements you're flagging.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[basecastula]

Well, looks like it worked.

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Audguy]

Exactly! How often have drivers come out that gave better, less buggy experience?

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[slashmydots]

One uses an indillinx controller and the other uses sandforce so no. Also, "return rate" is just idiots not flashing them. Actual, legitimate failures is impossible to track without mixing dumb people in with it.,

Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted

[Guspaz]

OCZ spent years selling SandForce-based products. There was a big gap between the first few drives using Indilinx, and them buying Indilinx and producing their own controllers.

Is this the same OCZ that sells memory?

[msobkow]

Just wondering if it's the same company. Their memory sticks work fine, but that's a minimally profitable market with a glut of providers nowadays.

Re:Is this the same OCZ that sells memory?

[Konster]

They used to sell memory, but the margins could support their high rate of rma replacements, so they gave up.

I'm surprised they never turned around their rather cavalier approach to QA since it cost them a lot of money for years and years.

Re:Is this the same OCZ that sells memory?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but they stopped selling RAM a few years ago to concentrate on SSDs.

Re:Is this the same OCZ that sells memory?

[Joce640k]

The only Memory stick I ever bought that was bad right out of the box was OCZ.

YMMV.

Re:Is this the same OCZ that sells memory?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wondering if it's the same company. Their memory sticks work fine, but that's a minimally profitable market with a glut of providers nowadays.

I have a 67% failure rate with OCZ memory sticks. I brought a 3 DIMM set and one of them failed badly. I had to return all 3 as they were a set and the next set failed memory testing as well (though it was a different location and different error). Third time was the charm and I finally managed to get 3 working memory sticks in the computer at once. I have yet to have problems with memory from other companies and I have used computers since the 80's.

Re:Is this the same OCZ that sells memory?

[Anonymous Coward]

It does vary. I used one as the main drive of a web server for 5 years before it finally gave out recently. 5 years of continuous use isn't bad, especially when a usb flash drive isn't exactly rated for that kind of use.

Re:Is this the same OCZ that sells memory?

[Mashiki]

Must not buy much memory. I've had Kingston, Corsair, Crucial, Muskin, Patriot and G.Skill all DOA out of the box before. Last bad stick was a G.Skill eco, though they're my favorite brand especially their low voltage memory.

Re:Is this the same OCZ that sells memory?

[jones_supa]

The parent was probably talking about a RAM stick.

Re:Is this the same OCZ that sells memory?

[jones_supa]

Have you encountered a brand that hasn't been DOA out of the box?

Re:Is this the same OCZ that sells memory?

[Joce640k]

Mine wasn't completely DOA, it was "it failed Windows RAM diagnostic". I have a habit of running it on all my machines.

OCZ wont be missed, how much can you RMA one ITEM

[Anonymous Coward]

OCZ wont be missed, how much can you RMA one ITEM

How many?

[yoshi_mon]

I use Intel SSDs, period. I'm not a fan of Intel at all and really want AMD to succeed such that we have some compititon in the marketplace. But when it comes to SSDs Intel holds the best non-failure rate that I've found.

I've paid more but on my own personal rigs as well as every client's, I've not had any failure. And they are fast too. I mean duh, they are SSDs!

But whenever I saw OCZ I saw marketing. I mean I guess they had some good drives using reliable chips and good controllers but from what I saw it was all about the marketing. Which leads me to my post's question. How many engineers did they really have at that company that worked on things vs the amount of MBA marketeers.

In short I never saw OCZ as a serious company. They were not a Corsair or some other startup that had real desires to make good hardware. Rather they had a lot of marketing push and very little else. The level of return on their SSDs was super high and once I saw that it told me all I needed to know about them. Anyone can make some RAM and slap on some crafted aluminum heatsink onto it. Not everyone can make a SSD.

Re:How many?

[Joce640k]

Yep.

Re:How many?

[SIGBUS]

Then again, Intel's 330 is notorious for not getting along with T60/T61 Thinkpads. It happened to me as well - something about its power management didn't get along with my T61; it would randomly freeze the system for about 30 seconds, and no combination of registry hacks and/or driver upgrades or downgrades would fix it.

The workaround was to replace the drive with a Samsung 840. No more freezeups. The Intel drive went into one of my desktops, where it has worked flawlessly.

As for my OCZ experience, good riddance. I had one of their PSUs pop one day. As usual in this situation, it was caused by crap capacitors. Naturally, it was a couple of months out of warranty.

Re:How many?

[MikeBabcock]

I've been quite happy with recent Samsung enterprise SSDs and some consumer Crucial (Micron) SSDs too. Different goals, different performance levels.

Re:How many?

[Chas]

Then again, Intel's 330 is notorious for not getting along with T60/T61 Thinkpads.>/quote>

With stock firmware from Lenovo, SSDs are unsupported on T60/T61's. PERIOD. The are some third party firmware hacks that promise more stability. But, in general, it's luck of the draw on those machines.

Re:How many?

[Joce640k]

Then again, Intel's 330 is notorious for not getting along with T60/T61 Thinkpads.

That seems more like a problem with the Thinkpad, not the SSD.

We were discussing reliability of SSDs.

Re:How many?

[Guspaz]

I'm also an exclusive Intel SSD user (I've got one G1, two G2s, and two 330s), but Samsung does seem to have a consistently lower failure rate in any statistics that I've seen. It's not a terribly big deal since you're talking about failure rates that are a fraction of a percent, but the next time I need to buy an SSD, Samsung is the only company other than Intel that I'd consider.

Crucial and Corsair have OK failure rates, but they're not nearly as low as Intel and Samsung.

Re:How many?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Intel SSDs, period. I'm not a fan of Intel at all and really want AMD to succeed such that we have some compititon in the marketplace. But when it comes to SSDs Intel holds the best non-failure rate that I've found.

I also want AMD to be real competition for Intel, but I'm pretty sure it isn't going to happen. A couple years back during down times their CEO decided engineering used lots of money and so that was the place to cut. Alas, cutting engineering in down times guarantees you will never see high times again. AMD had the best high-performance processor design team, but the company has committed suicide. I'm not expecting anything out of them in the future.

Thanks "Free" Markets

[JakFrost]

Had an OCZ power supply start failing with random computer crashes due to +12V bus causing dips due to load and 3 out of 4 purchased SSD OCZ Vertex 1 and Agility 1 drives failed with bad sectors and unreadable data.

I still have one of their still shrink wrapped and unpacked OCZ Vertex 1 40GB drives that nobody wanted to buy on eBay twice it was listed that I don't dare curse anyone with so it just sits in my closet. Will have to take it out of it's misery one day and shoot it or something but I certainly won't trust one bit of data to it.

Good bye OCZ! Wish I never met you!

PS: Shame on you computer review sites (AnandTech.com, TomsHardware.com, etc.) for hyping up their products and paying only lip service to the reliability issues and dissatisfied customers.

(I feel like I just posted the same thing yesterday and last month about OCZ.)

Re:Thanks "Free" Markets

[drinkypoo]

If you don't want to play with bcache, dm-cache, or EnhanceIO on that SSD, then sell it to me at the bare minimum price and I will do it :)

Re:Thanks "Free" Markets

[citizenr]

I still have one of their still shrink wrapped and unpacked OCZ Vertex 1 40GB drives that nobody wanted to buy on eBay twice it was listed

No, you simply didnt want to sell it at correct price and decided to keep it in spite of everyone, in effect getting nothing instead of real market value.

I knew it!

[TheRealQuestor]

Thank GOD a couple weeks ago I RMA'd the 3rd drive that had failed in less than year. All 3 were Vertex 3 120 Gig. So at least now I have 1 that should be good for another 6 months. The support really was good with no questions asked really on all 3 drives. But what does suck is I bought 3 of them and ALL 3 DIED. I knew after the 1st one died within 60 days I was going to have issues. Over the years I had issues with Ram compatibility and I just knew the drives were going to be iffy. But they are so damn fast and the price was decent [1st one was 300 bucks, 2nd one was 220 [bought about 3 months later] and lastly the 3rd drive was just over 150 bucks] Now they sell for like 80 bucks. After the 3rd one died about 4 months ago or that I was never going to buy an OCZ drive again. I finally broke down and got an RMA after my #2 drive that was replaced about 6 months ago started tossing errors that I had better RMA the drive. Glad I did.

Looks like...

[rainer_d]

...their business model wasn't that solid, after all.

Re:Looks like...

[Dogtanian]

...their business model wasn't that solid, after all.

Some dark glasses and a "Yeeeeeaaaaaaaah" as requested, sir.

Rule of thumb for buying SSDs

[Krishnoid]

Based on reviews, my best guess is that you want to buy SSDs from manufacturers that own wafer fabs, because they have control over manufacturing, and their reputation for chip fabrication would suffer if they put out poor-quality SSDs. I'm thinking of Micron/Crucial, Intel, Samsung, Toshiba, Sandisk, among others.

Is this true, or are there more important factors to consider when choosing an SSD brand/model?

Re:Rule of thumb for buying SSDs

[Joce640k]

The controller chip and firmware.

Most of the controllers/firmware put out by OCZ seemed like beta.

"Anything for a good benchmark score" was their motto. If it was fast, it shipped. Reliability be damned.

Re:OCZ wont be missed, how much can you RMA one IT

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, maybe we should ask Seagate?

OCZ renamed to orz

[Anonymous Coward]

May be they should rename to orz

In other words...

[rmdingler]

The amount the investing defaultee can expect to recover in a bankruptcy fire sale is larger than any expectations of return from your company's continued existence.

Don't worry

[rsilvergun]

they probably just want the patents and some of the staff.

Re:Don't worry

[Wootery]

and some of the staff

Relevant Dilbert strip.

Ocz

[Anonymous Coward]

i cannot comment on their flash drives because i havent owned any but after they took over power pc and cooling the quality tanked big time.

Nnnnnggggaaaahhhhh!!!!!! It is *dancing*!!!!

[Guppy]

May be they should rename to orz

Happy *IOPS*! I am *squirting happy SATA*!
Why? The reason. Orz have the drives that *dissolve* or burst into several.
*Capitalist friends* have come to Toshiba *playground*.
Why are you coming to this?
Orz are just Orz.

I wonder what will happen to PC Power and Cooling

[compro01]

The Pre-OCZ designs were very solid power supplies. Would be a shame for that company to end as a result of OCZ's incompetence.

Re:OCZ wont be missed, how much can you RMA one IT

[Luckyo]

Maybe we shouldn't, considering that they had exactly one faulty model (barracuda 7200.11), which they replaced in about six months with with 7200.12 which did not have the problem. It died in exact same way (controlled failed in a specific way). I had that drive, and it died in that exact way. It was promptly replaced by a 7200.12 that I use to this day. My parents still have a pair of seagate's 7200.7s that have been working for almost a decade under heavy RAID load. No problems. That is average seagate quality - they just tank on.

7200.11 was the one and only time that seagate had an unreliable non-matrox inherited drive with significant failure rate. Ever. OCZ has a spectacular failure rate that far exceeded even that shitty drive from seagate on average, and it has it both on their SSD drives and on their RAM when they were still selling it.

My Vertex drives are fine

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose best drives I have ever had. I put the core OS on them (Linux) and store other items on a conventional HD. Fast, and reliable so far. These were from the early SSD days of OCZ. Crossing my fingers and hoping not to jinx myself.

Now OCZ ram is another story. Got one bad stick out of the box. Had two sticks of four go bad the first year. They replaced all 4 sticks in time with the next version. Apparently got their act together as those 4 sticks have been fine for a few years.

Re:I wonder what will happen to PC Power and Cooli

[citizenr]

afaik they rebadged Fortrons, just like Corsair, gamerXstreme and others.

As soon as I read the headline

[Burz]

those expanded warranties they introduced to compete with Samsung came to mind. I wonder if they were being sincerely offered in the first place, or if they were just a gamble against what time they had left.

Re:As soon as I read the headline

[Kjella]

Most likely a sincere do-or-die attempt, they probably hoped for enough sales through that to turn things around. Whether that hope was realistic or they were just grasping at straws I don't know, either way the attempt was free and a slim chance to save the company beats doing nothing and going bankrupt for sure, at least from OCZ's perspective. They might have burned a lot more customers that way, but it reminds me a little of an "Ask Slashdot" about a small CEO/investor introducing hellish work hours and conditions - he doesn't care if he'll burn out the employees in a last-ditch attempt to save the company. If he does nothing he's bankrupt, so he might as well give it a go.

Toshitba

[Chas]

Toshitba's on my as well. I wouldn't buy parts from them if they were the only source available.
With crap hardware, crap software, and customer service second to EVERYONE (actually probably third or fourth to everyone but I'm going through a "nice" phase).

Re:Toshitba

[Anonymous Coward]

Toshitba's on my as well. I wouldn't buy parts from them if they were the only source available.
With crap hardware, crap software, and customer service second to EVERYONE (actually probably third or fourth to everyone but I'm going through a "nice" phase).

Actually you should buy recent Toshiba branded hard drives at least, as they're really Hitachis (due to some tech sharing deal). They even show up in the OS as Hitachi!

Re:Toshitba

[Chas]

No.

Not a chance in hell.

statistics prove your claim wrong

[dutchwhizzman]

You are basing your opinion on a sample of one single drive. That's quite a large standard deviation. If you look at defect rates from the larger retailers, over 20% of OCZs SSDs sold have been replaced due to catastrophic failures during the warranty period. This is not limited to a small time frame or a single model, but it's been so consistently since they started selling SSDs.

Numbers for the latest generations have not been conclusive yet, since a lot of those are still in warranty and they could go up. There are strong indications they are in fact improving, but the statistics aren't precise enough to plot failure rates to the exact number of days or read/write actions the drives endured.

Even if they are improving, people will want to wait a while to see that this isn't a glitch, but actual improvement. OCZ will have to take a loss on their SSD drives for quite a long time to prove their reliability and have people restore their faith in them. Yes, that part is hype, but their reputation isn't based on hype.

Re:statistics prove your claim wrong

[Guspaz]

I'll go ahead and link to this article with detailed failure stats from a large French e-tailer:

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/893-7/ssd.html

Note that, depending on the sales period, OCZ's failure rates are up to 18x higher than Intel's despite the fact that both companies use the same controllers for consumer products. One OCZ model had a failure rate of more than 52% within 6 to 12 months...

Unreliable?

[the_arrow]

OCZ's notoriously unreliable drives.

I have an OCZ RevoDrive, bought early 2011, and it works like a charm. The only problems I have with it is when installing a Linux distribution from scratch, but after figuring it out once it works very well.

Maybe I'm one of the lucky few who haven't had a problem with reliability?

D minus is the new A

[gelfling]

Toshiba won't improve anything. They don't have to. People expect crap and crap is what they get. They'll probably just pack an SSD case with SD cards and call it a day.

SSDs need NAND....

[SpinyNorman]

OCZ is/was a horribly managed company, but IMO one of their other core problems is/was that they arn't a flash memory (NAND) manufacturer... Difficult to compete on price when their major SSD competitors (Intel, Samsung, Crucial/Micron, SanDisk) all have their own fabs...

Finally, a crummy company actually goes down

[Theovon]

So often, we see companies making shoddy products manage to continue to snow customer after customer. It’s finally nice to see one actually get what they deserve. Everything I’ve ever gotten from OCZ had some kind of major problem. The only thing worse than their products was their customer service.

Mind you, MSI wasn’t any better.

Dodged a Bullet it seems

[DarthVain]

Built a system in September and was looking at a number of their SSD drives. I ended up getting a MB that supported mSATA, so I went with a Mushkin instead. Glad I did now!

That said, I remember years ago there being a bit of a scandal about OCZ and their memory modules. Something about being less than honest or ethical in their dealings. Sending Reviewers one thing, shipping another for example.

Bad PR?

[agrisea]

I find that the comment of the OP, "OCZ's notoriously unreliable drives", not even true for me. I have a number of new and older OCZ SSD's in my computers and none of them have failed or had any error whatsoever.

Re:Bad PR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your experiences clearly dictate reality.

Welcome to the wonderful world of unbridled narcissism.

What about the rest of OCZ?

[Shirley Marquez]

Nobody seems to talk about what will happen to the other part of OCZ - power supplies. They bought PC Power and Cooling in 2007, and still sell power supplies under that name as well as OCZ. But none of the stories I have seen say anything about their fate.

Just like guitar hero

[stenmansimon]

I am surprised because the hard drive market grow every day. And the SSD HD is a Secure choice if one want a stabile and nearly unbreakable drive. Strange they did not manage to hold it out further and develope the product...

This is how private equity works

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what private equity firms like Hercules do for a living. They buy a company that is popular and shows promise, lean it up, lay off everyone possible, make the short term numbers look good, and use that to take on loads and loads of debt to pay preferred dividends, and then take the only parachute on the plane and jump off before it crashes into the side of the mountain.

Mine have been hit and miss

[EmagGeek]

I've bought tons of OCZ drives over the years. In my experience, you either get a good one, or a bad one. The good ones stay good, and the bad ones die quickly.

I've never had one fail after the warranty period was up, but I've had plenty fail within 2-3 months of purchase.

I'm not sure what their deal was, but in dealing with their support people and in general just hearing about how they operated, it sounded like they didn't actually know anything about how SSDs worked, but were just buying parts, "connecting the dots" on the schematic, and hoping for the best.

I'm not even convinced Sandforce knew how their own controller worked, until Intel figured it out for them (and had exclusivity on the fix).

I never tried any of the Indilinx drives. By the time those came around I was already soured on the reliability of OCZ products. Honestly I think they probably died because they tried too much to differentiate their products in the firmware, doing things that Sandforce probably told them would give unexpected results (like putting wait states in the state machine to slow drives down and sell them at a lower price point).

Who knows... now Toshiba can buy them and have some crappy SSDs to put in their crappy laptops.