SSDs - State of the Product?

Santilli

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I hope the amount was not much.

100 bucks: ebay. Returned it to China once. Sat in a post office there, and was shipped back.
Now I'm trying it again, with faster numbers, but the same general lag and stutters.

They just contacted me to ship it back to them, which I'll be happy to do. Problem is, they keep trying to get me to pay for it. Shipping it back, with insurance, and delivery confirmation was 33 dollars, though this was refunded, thanks to ebay.

I'm insisting they send me a label they print, with their proper address, and pay shipping. I think, with out all the bells and whistles, it will cost about 10 bucks to ship, without out confirmation, etc. Problem is, addresses from China don't seem to translate well onto
our shipping labels, and forms.
 

LunarMist

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My OCZ Vortex SSD that has been used only a few hours per month for less than a year is already crapping out. Writes take far too long and hesitation sometimes freezes the computer. What is the best way to destroy the drive, for example, open the covers and break up the circuit boards and memory chips into pieces? :idea:
 

ddrueding

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My OCZ Vortex SSD that has been used only a few hours per month for less than a year is already crapping out. Writes take far too long and hesitation sometimes freezes the computer. What is the best way to destroy the drive, for example, open the covers and break up the circuit boards and memory chips into pieces? :idea:

That would do it. Have you tested the drive separately?
 

timwhit

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My OCZ Vortex SSD that has been used only a few hours per month for less than a year is already crapping out. Writes take far too long and hesitation sometimes freezes the computer. What is the best way to destroy the drive, for example, open the covers and break up the circuit boards and memory chips into pieces? :idea:

Open it up and smash the board with a hammer.
 

LunarMist

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I could not easily figure out anything from their website the last time I checked it. There is no end user support other than forums as far as I oculd determine. I have tried the hdderase utility but it does not work with the large amount of RAM present.
 

jtr1962

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My OCZ Vortex SSD that has been used only a few hours per month for less than a year is already crapping out. Writes take far too long and hesitation sometimes freezes the computer. What is the best way to destroy the drive, for example, open the covers and break up the circuit boards and memory chips into pieces? :idea:
Any zerofill software ought to be enough. Unlike magnetic disks, by their nature SSDs don't partially retain older data when sectors are overwritten. A cell is either a zero or a one. If you flip everything to zeroes, the old data will be completely gone beyond the ability of even the NSA to recover. Destroying it seems a waste of a (potentially) useful to someone SSD.

And I'm surprised the manufacturer has no means of restoring the drive to its former performance level.
 

jtr1962

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Here's some interesting info on the subject

TRIM is a brand-new ATA command that the OS will issue to the SSD when a certain request is made, such as Delete, Format or Discard. What it does is rather simple, but it's immensely helpful. When you either delete a file, or format the entire SSD, TRIM will purge both the data and the link to it, so in essence, it's gone.

The final statement in the last paragraph is the reason for this article. One of the more overlooked aspects of TRIM, as amazing and helpful as the command is, is that once it's issued, your chance of data recovery has essentially gone to 0.
 

Bozo

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You could download the trail version of O&O Defrag and see if it's version of Trim helps your SSD. Be an interesting test before you trash the drive.
 

sechs

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My OCZ Vortex SSD that has been used only a few hours per month for less than a year is already crapping out. Writes take far too long and hesitation sometimes freezes the computer. What is the best way to destroy the drive, for example, open the covers and break up the circuit boards and memory chips into pieces? :idea:
I might suggest RMA'ing the drive and selling the replacement....
 

LunarMist

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It was a hundred dollar drive in Q1 and is not worth the hassle. Besides, who wants a nasty old refurb and who knows what kinds of disgusting data it may have contained?
 

sechs

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Besides, who wants a nasty old refurb and who knows what kinds of disgusting data it may have contained?
I dunno. I've never heard of anyone getting a refurb drive from OCZ.

And I will take a nasty old refurb if the price is right. I've gotten a lot of perfectly good reworked parts on the cheap.
 

LunarMist

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The Callisto is too plain and blocky to be cute. ;)

It is a bit faster on another controller. The SSD is oddly a bit thicker than the usual 9.5 mm drive. Don't you think it will be a good Christmas present for someone as a boot drive? :)
 

LunarMist

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Do you think it will be much more expensive than Intel X-25E series SSDs per GB? I didn't find any prics.
 

CougTek

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For speed, I would wait for drives using the SandForce2 controller, due out early next year (in two months). If it's just near to be as good as they claim it will be, it will wipe the floor clean on a performance perspective. That, or the OCZ Revo2.
 

LunarMist

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I don't trust OCZ worth a damn and two of them on a RAID 0 controller does not help that much. I hope the SandStorm II is better than the original. My 2 year old X25-E is still the fastest single drive I have and that is becoming ridiculous. The basic SandStorm is cheap and fast enough for most uses though.
 

time

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I've looked at the websites for Corsair, G.Skill, MachXtreme, Patriot and Solidata. Only MachXtreme appears to be offering updated Sandforce firmware; it's 3.20. This makes me lean very heavily towards the firm that actually bothers to pay for production-ready updates and make them available to their customers. :-x

Corsair is finally offering a firmware update for their Force drives.


From the Mach Xtreme site:

FIRMWARE 3-4-3 UPDATE (2010-10-28 )

Description:

1. Improved latency of the device
2. Added a diagnostic function to read the device ID of each flash die
3. Added capability to disable DIPM
4. Removed a rare panic that was triggered improperly when the SATA link is dropped during a write operation
5. Changed CDU Identify data to regenerate with FW download
6. Fixed the secure erase operation to rebuild the SMART log directory information
7. Fixed a case where sequential write with IOMETER 2006 could cause the drive to drop from the system

FIRMWARE 3-2-0 UPDATE (2010-09-21)

Description:

1. Added Config Drive Unique support to configure temperature sensor device type
2. Added “pderase” command for use in ecliApp
3. Fixed Map Flush to properly refresh the list of clean blocks
4. Modified Event Log to include more information on aborted commands
5. Fixed a potential time-out issue
6. Fixed Cancel test issue
7. Corrected the self-test lost descriptor
8. Corrected the list of non-data commands

FIRMWARE 3-0-5 UPDATE (2010-04-22)

Description:

1.Flash consolidation: update to flash memory configurations in general, to update write credits (affects performance)
2.Fixed issues in root (system file) block recycling algorithm. This issues might cause a drive installed in a laptop to fail
3.The Diagnostics Flash Test was enhanced
4.TRIM support changed to support determinate operation
5.Added optimization to reduce sleep recovery time
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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And so, not quite three months after I shipped the drive back, I got a replacement Vertex EX 60GB drive from OCZ.

That's some fine servicin' there, OCZ.
 

Handruin

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When I went to pick up an order from MicroCenter last week, I ordered four sticks of the crucial RAM. They listed having more in stock than in actuality so when I got there they were trying to pawn off some OCZ memory to me. They guy behind the counter insisted the OCZ was much better quality than the crucial brand. After going back and forth for a bit, they ended up giving me corsair for the same price I paid for the crucial. I wasn't sold on the argument that OCZ was much better quality than crucial.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I can understand that OCZ might not get tons of RMA requests for commodity RAM, but 80-odd days for a $700 drive? Granted that I wasn't calling to complain, but given that RMAs to Crucial and Intel are sent back overnight or second day shipping, it's a little hard to swallow.
 

Handruin

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Three months is pretty bad. Did they send you back your original drive or did you get a refurb? I just wonder if they fix originals and lacked parts and time. I can't imagine that would do that, but you never know.
 
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