SSD Experiences?

[mercblue281]

I can’t speak for the latest versions of the Vertex 3. 

I can tell you i’ve had the most excellent experiences with:

• an OCZ 240GB Vertex 2 that’s been in my laptop for almost 2 years. 
• an OCZ 120GB Vertex 2 that’s been in my HTPC for 6 months.
• an OCZ 120GB Vertex 2 in my workstation (1 year)
• 2 Intel X25-M’s in office laptops (1.5 years i think)
• a 64GB WD SiliconEdge Blue in an ITX/ION HTPC (1 year old)
• a 64GB WD SiliconEdge Blue in my grandparents laptop (1.5 years old)
• an Intel 320 80GB purchased in June to replace an OCZ Agility 2

Problem Drives:

• 128GB WD SiliconEdge Blue died after 1.5 years as an OS drive in a desktop
• 60GB Agility 2 that only worked right for 6 months before failing in my parents HTPC
• 60GB Vertex 2 at work that failed immediately or was DOA (i don’t remember)

OCZ was prompt with replacements under warranty. Western Digital took awhile (had serial number database problems) but honored their warranty as well.

So with a decent sample size – i’ve run into a couple of problem SSD’s.  However- there have been many more successes thus far.  Given the young life of some SSD’s I can’t claim that they will all make it well past their warranties but so far so good.

[jrandeck]

Just to add my experiences:

I have a first gen Vertex 120GB in my work laptop that’s been going strong for 1.5 years so far.  SSDLife says I’ve used 70% of it’s life span at this point, though.  It gets used pretty heavily.

I bought 2 60 GB Agility 2 drives last December.  One is still running as the OS drive in my wife’s desktop, but the other recently quit being recognized by the system.  I ran it in a desktop PC for a few months, then it got moved into my HTPC when I rebuilt that a few months ago.   I’m still waiting on the replacement from OCZ.

I also have a 120 GB Vertex 2 that was giving me problems with an older motherboard.  I’d get frequent blue screens with the SSD, sometimes before Windows finished installing.  The computer was working fine without the drive so I RMA’ed it, but the replacement has the same issues on that motherboard.  I moved it into my server and am running a few VMs on it now which seems to be working fine.  I’ve also started seeing the same blue screen messages on the old PC without the SSD now (though much less frequently), so I’m thinking there’s something going bad on the motherboard that the SSD was more sensitive to.

 

 

[oliverredfox]

From my end:

30gb OCZ Oynx would randomly disappear in one system, works great in the 2nd computer and now it stays there full time.

60gb OCZ Vertex 2 works great but doesn’t play nice with sleep mode on either of my computers.  But with how fast it resumes from hibernate, it’s a moot point.

At this point, I’ve gotten so used to running my main apps off the SSD that I really want a bigger one so I don’t have put larger apps on of the HDD.  And other than what appears to be some weird hardware compatibility between my SSDs and certain motherboards, they work well.  It does make me wonder why a standardized format like SATA when done via SSD doesn’t play nice with certain systems (perhaps they do something slightly off spec).

[Aaron Ledger]

[quote=jrandeck]

I have a first gen Vertex 120GB in my work laptop that’s been going strong for 1.5 years so far.  SSDLife says I’ve used 70% of it’s life span at this point, though.  It gets used pretty heavily.

[/quote]

You might want to try a secure erase on your SSD and see if SSDLife reports higher life span. If anything, it will restore your write performance to stock. I did this on my G.Skill the last time I built a system up and it went from 81% back to 100%. I’m really not sure how accurate the life span estimates of SSDLife are, but it is an interesting tool to have.

[skirge01]

Again, thanks everyone for the models and success stories.  This has mostly backed up my original thought that I need to wait a little while, if I’m intent on getting a Vertex 3 or similar generation for the server.  However, it also makes me seriously consider getting a Vertex 2 for the interim, testing the server with that and then move it to the HTPC when I finally pick up the Vertex 3 next year.

[mpatnode]

So I believe the reliability issues around SSDs is completely overblown, and my own experience backs that up.

I’ve had a 128GB Cosair P128 SSD as the ONLY drive in my HTPC now almost 2 years (Oct 09).   According to CrystalDiskInfo it has 6936 power-on-hours (289 days)  I assume this is less than a year because it’s not counting S3 sleep time. 

I record ALL my shows to the SSD and then move them to my ReadyNAS NV+ after commercial processing via DVRMSToolkit.   I record roughly around 80G of shows a week (Aug total/4).

System performs great, even with my ancient P35 motherboard.   My SSD health status is at 98%.

The motherboard/CPU upgrade is next on my list, mostly to get better video processing speed since I use the HTPC to convert VCRs, and they could really benefit from more post-processing.   Though it would be nice to upgrade the entire disk I/O chain to 6Gb/s.   But I think I’ll upgrade the poor NV+ sparc before a new SSD.  Need to open it up and see if I can replace the motherboard with something a bit more modern.

[jrandeck]

I wanted to update this, just in case someone’s keeping track.

The replacement Agility 2 drive I put back in my HTPC crapped out on me Saturday night.  (Running on an Intel H67 motherboard)

I had a 60 GB Solid 3 I bought for another build that I ended up not doing, so I updated it to the latest firmware and restored my HTPC image from WHS onto that, but it wouldn’t boot.  I ended up reformatting a conventional hard drive from another PC and using that for now.

Two more RMAs to OCZ.  I’m not real happy with their products at the moment.

 

[PAPutzback]

I’ve got a kingston v series in my HTPC and it has been running fine for almost two years now. Another 120 gig one in another pc running about the same length of time and two more Vertex SSDs in my gaming pc for over a year. No problems on any of them. I’d read the reviews on Newegg and grab the least problematic one.

[skirge01]

Since I started this thread, I better chime in.  I’ve got a Vertex 2 in my work laptop and it’s been running great for about 4 months now.  I figured the work computer would be a good place to “test” the reliability of these SSDs… on someone else’s dime.    I was so satisfied with it that I went ahead and ordered a bunch more for other laptops at the site and even bought a Vertex 3 for home.  I did ensure that all the drives had the latest firmware installed prior to using them, even though OCZ pretty much tells you NOT to do that and to instead only do it if you’re having problems.

[phoneguyinpgh]

I have had a 2yr old 120G Corsair in my HTPC for 5 months that was in a laptop for almost 2 years before the laptop itself died.  I was having some drive issues a few weeks ago, but it turned out to be a failing SATA port on the MB that my 640G-WD recording drive was connected to.  Once I moved the WD drive to a different SATA port everything was back to normal.  I’ve had no issues at all with the Corsair though it is only SATAII.

[mpatnode]

Just passed the 2 year mark for my Cosair P128 in my HTPC.   I record to the SSD, run commercial detection at night and then move the shows off to the NAS, so it get’s plenty of work.   CrystalDisk info says 9372 power on hours (I assume the drive is powered down when idle) but that’s still over a year and 98% health status.    I believe it said 98% the day I installed it as well.

[captain_video]

I’ve been running a Kingston SSD in my main PC for a couple of years now and I’ve had zero problems.  My last personal HTPC build included a Crucial 64GB SSD, which is working great.  I’m somewhat dismayed to hear the latest horror stories with the OCZ SSDs because they’ve been on sale a lot lately and I was thinking about getting one.  They used to be very highly regarded.

As an afterthought I should mention that my 60 GB SSD in my main computer was at 59.5 GB capacity at the time I wrote this post (it actually showed only about 2.71 GB of available space left).  I see absolutely no difference in performance with it being this full.  A standard hard drive would have slowed to a crawl at this capacity.

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