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

[Joce640k]

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

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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

[Joce640k]

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

YMMV.

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?

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:Don't worry

[Wootery]

and some of the staff

Relevant Dilbert strip.