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Storage OCZ Vertex 450 Dead

Discussion in 'Tech Support' started by Dae314, 25 Jul 2013.

  1. Dae314

    Dae314 What's a Dremel?

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    R.I.P my poor 450 who died after only 3 weeks of use T_T.

    This thread is half a lament, half a "well what do you guys think?". I already put in for RMA on the part since I was getting close to the 30 day mark after which it would be infinitely harder to replace the part.

    See below for tl;dr

    The story of her final days is a tragic one full of sudden loss and mystery. The last 3 weeks were glorious sessions of straight 25 second boots after I finished updating the new Windows install. Not even a single blue screen or bit of lag. However tonight was different. Tonight when I booted I went straight to BIOS OK, maybe I did something stupid and told Windows to boot me into BIOS at next boot lets just restart. Then I booted there again. And again... OK wtf is up. I checked the physical BIOS button, it wasn't triggered. I disabled the physical BIOS button, BIOS still coming up, my boot device order was fine, what's the problem? Boot to SSD through boot manager: back to BIOS. Well ****. Windows rescue CD to the rescue?

    Got the cmd prompt open lets see what got mapped at boot... C:\ data... wait that's weird C:\ should be OS... D:\ external drive E:\ CD drive F:\... nothing... Where'd the OS drive go? It was in BIOS? Restart one more time into install Windows mode. Fk something's definitely messed, maybe the Windows install just got majorly corrupted by... little dust demons or something. Lets just reinstall Windows, I have a backup from Sunday on that external drive. Well at least the SSD is showing up in this screen, but it's saying it's completely unallocated space! No wonder it didn't show up in the cmd prompt. We'll just fix that now, "install"... *error cannot install on this volume, check BIOS drivers blah blah...* Guess that means it's time to RMA :waah:.

    TL;DR
    Booted straight into BIOS when trying to boot off SSD. SSD visible in BIOS but not in recovery console cmd prompt. SSD visible as install location as unallocated space but Windows reports cannot install here for whatever reason. Decided at this point that there was no recovering the drive and it was time to RMA.

    I highly doubt that I'll be able to get any data off the drive, but I have recent backups of it (not that there was much on it anyway, I used it solely as a boot and a few programs drive) so anything lost can be regained. Anything people manage to pry out of that drive will be useless as well, any sensitive data is encrypted either on my internal data drive or eHDD backup drive. MAYBE someone could pry out my passwords from chrome, but I don't think that drive's even readable anymore.

    I'm kinda curious what happened though. There was nothing weird about my last session or shutdown. This computer's connected to a UPS that should've suppressed any surges that came through. Are SSDs just prone to randomly kicking the bucket like that? If so, what's the failure point? I'm not sure I'll ever find out.

    Since I made system images off my setup when it was dual drive, do you think I'll be able to restore that image onto just the data drive or will there be problems? While I was in the command prompt, I backed up the raw data from my data drive on to the eHDD also, so I don't mind wiping out the data drive to put the OS on and allow me to work while I wait for the replacement to arrive.
     
  2. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    Dae314 likes this.
  3. miller

    miller What's a Dremel?

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    My OCZ 128 Vector lasted about a month from new and then wouldn't boot it also disappeared from the BIOS, (AHCI enabled) I even booted a live Linux distro on a DVD which usually finds any drive on a system but the Vector was not found, there was no warning the drive just failed and when I did an RMA to Scan they tested it and said it was dead and I got a new drive in about ten days, so far it's been alright although it has knocked my confidence in SSD's.

    I saved an image of the SSD to the other HDD in the system and cloned it to the new SSD drive, I only used the disk imaging utility that Windows 7 has, it's basic but works alright, if you've used this as well there is a tutorial on how to clone a drive here.
     
  4. GoodBytes

    GoodBytes How many wifi's does it have?

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    As I always say, if your SDD passes 1 month (every day usage) then it will be solid. Keep your old on your HDD and backup all the time your stuff. If you pass this period, it's most unlikely that'll have any issue with it. SSD always fail without warning.

    Also, I height recommend, before putting any data on it, to make sure it has the latest firmware.

    My OCZ Vertex 4 is solid. I got it since the SSD was released.
     
  5. MjFrosty

    MjFrosty Minimodder

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    I've seen more OCZ SSDS than I can count, and more have failed than not. I know everyone has their own experiences but they do statistically have the the highest failure rate by some margin, especially the Vertex range.

    Just horrible drives.
     
  6. GoodBytes

    GoodBytes How many wifi's does it have?

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    Actually, it's because people continued to buy the well over discountined OCZ Veretx 3 and Agility 3, which was a period where all SandForce based SSD were failing, and where the chip manufacture that OCZ select was making crap chips (talking about having everything against you). At the time OCZ was the cheapest SSD around, so the demand was high.

    When it comes to SSDs it's always best to buy the latest generation, and make sure you have the latest firmware, at least for now. SSD is still new technology. Manufacturing process is not the best.
     
  7. miller

    miller What's a Dremel?

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    I bought the OCZ 128 Vector as it was getting rave reviews (micro mart mag) not the cheapest by far but it was considered the best of the new bunch, actually, thinking about it I've bought a few "Editors Choices" in micro mart over the years and most have not lasted that long :confused:
     
  8. Dae314

    Dae314 What's a Dremel?

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    Thanks for the hint on the toolbox. I knew about it for firmware upgrade purposes, but I forgot that it could also be used to securely erase the drive as well. I think I might try that. I wonder if it'll fail too o_O'''.

    Anyway, the 450 is one of the newest SSDs from OCZ running the Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller and when I installed it initially there was no firmware update because the drive was only released like June 2013 ^^;. It shouldn't have any issues related to any of the other drive's controllers since I think the 450 is the only drive running Barefoot 3 right now.

    I suppose if this second one kicks the bucket on me I'll ask for a refund instead of a replacement and jump on an Intel or Crucial drive. Good to know SSDs always fail without warning, at least I know what to suspect first if the rig suddenly dies on me like that again ^^;. Live fast die in a sudden ball of fire I guess.

    On the stuff about Windows image backup again, I can't find anything that will tell me what happens when I have a C: and D: drive image backed up and I try to restore the image on to one drive ._.'''. Assumably what should happen is the image should go on the one drive (assuming it fits which it does) as 2 partitions. I should probably take the second drive out of the image to avoid confusion in the future >.>. I plan to clean install Windows on the new SSD so I shouldn't have issues with going from a dual drive image to dual drives and making sure the right drive gets the right data x_x.
     
  9. Dae314

    Dae314 What's a Dremel?

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    Alrightie so from pure experimentation I found out how Windows Image Backup handles an image of 2 drives:

    It forces you to provide two drives of equal or greater size than the imaged ones in order to drop the image down.

    Now my experiment stopped here because I was too lazy to partition my remaining drive since the replacement is coming in next week, but presumably you could partition one drive yourself into correctly sized partitions and mount those partitions to fake the software into recognizing two drives.

    Also, I'm not going to test this, but I believe if you imaged C and D, you're going to need to make sure the drives you want the C and D data to drop on are matched to the correct letter. I'm just going to go in doing that because I don't want to deal with issues if my drives are mixed up.
     
  10. Dae314

    Dae314 What's a Dremel?

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    Yup so the replacement died yesterday. This time it was nice enough to give me a SMART error instead of just not doing anything.

    Sadly the replacement lasted 3 months (2 months over Amazon's warranty) and OCZ was recently acquired by Toshiba. Luckily after a little begging Amazon agreed to take the drive back for a refund.

    I just invested into an Intel 530 since it had a pretty good sale.

    This time my backup solutions were a lot more robust. I was able to repartition and image my secondary drive with my original OS image, and my Windows file backup restored most* of my data files. Acronis has been 5 different kinds of awesome for me since it saved my butt when Windows 8.1 bricked my system and now saved me having to rebuild my OS on my secondary drive.

    *Windows file backup was absolutely atrocious. The way files are kept, if nothing about the file changed the date stamp on the file doesn't change. When I tried to restore the latest version of everything I got a TON of stuff I'd deleted (and a restore time of 2 days). Now that would be fine if I could go back and delete backups from 3 months ago and have the files I removed during that time go poof but it just isn't that easy. If a file doesn't change but still exists in a new backup, the date stamp on it doesn't change. I didn't experiment (for fear of data loss) but I'm pretty sure that deleting an old backup from 3 months ago will wipe out some of the files that didn't change in those 3 months but weren't deleted. Anyway I just hand picked my way through what to and to not restore (which was much harder than it needed to be). Oddly enough even though I didn't delete ANY historical backups Windows still missed some files in the restore (I have no idea how I told it to backup the entire D drive...). I'm probably going to switch completely to Acronis to image both my OS and Data drives...
     
  11. Unicorn

    Unicorn Uniform November India

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    Vertex drives are notoriously unreliable. I've had several die on me in the past 3 years and have concluded that they are not to be trusted. I'm now running Samsung 840 Pro and EVO drives in almost all my own rigs and laptops with no problems so far.

    I'm also an Acronis True Image (2010) user and cannot fault it. As a matter of fact I'd be completely lost without it.
     
  12. Otis1337

    Otis1337 aka - Ripp3r

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    I got my SSD for £40 from the marketplace here... so i couldn't refuse with me been on a tight budget.
    After about 2 months use its still running fine as my OS drive.

    I do feel like im living on the ragged edge tho with it!
     
  13. Margo Baggins

    Margo Baggins I'm good at Soldering Super Moderator

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    You think windows backup is bad now, you should of seen NTbackup in days of old THAT was a lousy backup solution. Then again they are both free products so can't give them too much hate.
     
  14. Dae314

    Dae314 What's a Dremel?

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    Ya, I have to give it that. I haven't tried the new file history backup, but I don't think I'm going to. It wasn't like I lost a LOT of data, my main gripe is just how it's organized and how annoying it is to hand pick what to restore (if you're restoring folders you have to pick them one-by-one no shift+click 4 u). But hey it got me about 95% of my data intact so I'd say it's OK for a free backup solution :p. I paid for Acronis though so I might as well use it. I didn't use it before because I figured a file backup would be more space efficient than any image backup schemes.
     
  15. Margo Baggins

    Margo Baggins I'm good at Soldering Super Moderator

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    Most image back up solutions these days can do granular restore, so you can still restore files from them. Don't use acronis, never have, always use symantec system recovery, but everyone raves about acronis so it can't be bad.
     
  16. Dae314

    Dae314 What's a Dremel?

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    Well I don't know if this is Windows being crappy or Acronis being awesome, but my C drive has about 35GB used and all the Acronis backups take up 146GB (about 4.17x as big). My data drive (backed up by Windows) has about 85 GB used and Windows uses about 1TB (about 12x as big).
     
  17. Unicorn

    Unicorn Uniform November India

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    That's Acronis being awesome. It compresses backups very nicely :thumb:
     
  18. Fat Tony

    Fat Tony Minimodder

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    I was told by the counter assistants at SCAN that the only reason they sell "refurbished" OCZ SSD's is because so many of them come back.
     

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