SSD reliability?

prowla

Dammit! I bought an SSD disk (OCZ Petrol 125 GB) a couple of months ago, and it seems to be playing up.

My PC froze a couple of times and I had to power it off by holding the power button (I tried Ctrl-Alt-Del, but after the screen went black for a while I got a dialog saying that it had failed to display the task management and power options).

So, I powered it off again and this time it wanted to run a checkdisk on my C: drive; it has been sat at "Deleting corrupt file record segment 138832." for a good 5-10 minutes now.

jayme1

While doing my research on an SSD to buy I read [STRIKE]a few[/STRIKE] a lot of things about OCZ SSDs failing and also about how older SSD controllers aren't nearly as good as new controllers, coupling that info with the fact I had an OCZ PSU that failed which is also a common problem with that PSU I decided to steer clear of OCZ and get a Crucial M4, reading your post only reaffirms my decision.

Looking at reviews of your model basically it doesn't look good , loads of cases of it failing within 3 months, looks like you'll have to contact the place you bought it from I'm afraid to say.

this thread on Overclock3D seems o be having the same problem as you before it died, should be a formality but make sure you're backed up

Jamie_Cortez

Yea the Petrol series were not that great im afraid.

If im brutally honest never buy anything made by OCZ.

prowla

Thanks for the replies (even if I don't like what you are saying!:)).

It ran a 2nd chkdsk and now it says "File record segment 138832 is unreadable.", so it looks like it is indeed kaput. (It's just said "6 percent complete/ (138834 of 204544 file records processed)".)

I got it from PC World, so I'll be going back tomorrow. I'm just going to have my PC check its memory as well, just in case it's that and not the disk, but the same segment giving an error is kindof pointing the finger.

In terms of backups, this was just the OS and my data is on another drive in the machine, and I have copies of things on an external drive), and I run some things within VMs that I keep copies of, and I have a 2nd machine with a similar setup (the one I am now using). So basically with a new drive I'll need to install the OS again (Windows 7 64-bit) and the apps, and then it should be good to go.

It's a shame about the disk, as it was definitely quick.

Lil306

SSD's themselves are reliable but the Petrol is probably the budget end of the model. You don't hear as many problems from the Vertex series. It could be that your model has bad firmware or bad memory chips, I think OCZ use 3 different manufacturers (Sandforce, Marvell) and I think the bought out Indilynx

You couldn't go wrong with a crucial M4, I might even upgrade myself for a bit more performance :

Jamie_Cortez

Another set of SSD's that have their own controller software and are getting great reviews are the Samsung drives.

http://www.dabs.com/products/samsung-128gb-830-series-sata-6gb-s-2-5--ssd-basic-kit-819N.html?q=Samsung&src=16

prowla

My BIOS diagnostics said it had a fault too, so it looks like that's it.

I guess I'll try a different brand then; either way I need a system disk.

Toxteth_OGrady

+ 1 for Crucial M4 and Samsung 830.

fwor

Toxteth_OGrady wrote: »

+ 1 for Crucial M4 and Samsung 830.

+ another 1 for Crucial M4 and Samsung 830 - I have both (both on recommendation from T_OG as it happens).

The first one I bought was a Kingston S100 which failed at just under a year. Like you, I only put the OS on the SSD, and everything else on a conventional HDD, so all that was lost was the time to reinstall the OS.

wonka

I don't have one myself, but I have heard that in general SSDs are less reliable than hard disks. But the huge gap in performance makes up for it.

It does force you to take backups very seriously.

prowla

Thanks for the comments - I took back the OCZ one and got a refund today.
I've ordered a Crucual M4 from Amazon and it should be here in a few days (their free postage).
In the meanwhile I'm installing an OS onto a spare 80 GB hard disk I had, to ride me though, and then I'll transfer that onto the new SSD when it comes..