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OWC SSD's Die Fast?

I bought my 240GB OWC SSD on April last year and since then not a single problem ever. Im very very happy with its performance and stability.

I highly recommend OWC. No need for TRIM and the speed is still top top after 6 months since the last time I formatted the drive.
 
andreiru said:
We should have a survey of people posting their brand and time of death in a chart somewhere. That would be useful reading before buying one.
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Actually not. Unless you account for the drives that do not fail you're not getting a useful reading. 100 failed drives out of 100,000 is one thing. 100 out of 1,000,000 is another.

That's why posts about "my acme inc. drive failed so they are all generally bad" aren't all that overall informative. Any drive manufacturer who sells a large number of drives will have a number of field failures.
 
I have two MACbook Pros running OWC SSD 250GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSDs. I just lost my third one today. Purchased in May 2011 first two lasted about three months with two week seperation in failures and the there has just lasted just 6 weeks. We'll see how long the fourth drive lasted. I'm not swapping in one Macbook Pro and using the original HD in the other. Slow but works, for now.
 
Mercury Extreme is running just great over 12 months old.

Only thing to be very, very wary of is updating these so-called TRIM patches. Not necessary on Mercury Extreme as they have a built-in 'garbage removal' system. The patch can cause problems and if you have activated it, do a Google on removing.

The Mercury Extreme has a three year warranty so no problems. Over the years have experienced ALL major brand drives failing, even brand new out of the box.
 
Bought an OWC 120GB SSD in January and started having problems with it in April but couldn't trace it to an error on the disk (running all sorts of diags to find out). After yet another disk crash last week I finally got an error code that was reproducible. Set up a live chat with OWC and they sent me an RMA number. Frustrating and definitely not instilling a lot of confidence in me. Not in regards to OWC as they have been great but in the SSD technology itself.
 
I had a 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 which lasted 2 minutes; refunded.

My OWC 115GB 3G is currently being RMA'd; that lasted just over a month.
 
tripleg said:
Bought an OWC 120GB SSD in January and started having problems with it in April but couldn't trace it to an error on the disk (running all sorts of diags to find out). After yet another disk crash last week I finally got an error code that was reproducible. Set up a live chat with OWC and they sent me an RMA number. Frustrating and definitely not instilling a lot of confidence in me. Not in regards to OWC as they have been great but in the SSD technology itself.
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Hang in there. SSD's can be rock solid reliable. Unfortunately, Sandforce based drives (such as OWC, OCZ, and a few others) are notorious for reliability issues.

FWIW, I purchased a WD Green drive at Christmas that's gone tits-up already... So even good old HD's are not infallible. My 3 Intel Gen1 SSD's from 2009 are still working as good as the day I got them (knock on wood).
 
VirtualRain said:
Hang in there. SSD's can be rock solid reliable. Unfortunately, Sandforce based drives (such as OWC, OCZ, and a few others) are notorious for reliability issues.

FWIW, I purchased a WD Green drive at Christmas that's gone tits-up already... So even good old HD's are not infallible. My 3 Intel Gen1 SSD's from 2009 are still working as good as the day I got them (knock on wood).
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Especially "good old HD's". One of the major factors for SSD was the supposed (lack of) premature death. Oh well, growing pains. So far no issues with my SF-2200 OWC's. Time will tell. I've got the 5-year warranty.
 
My intel G2 80Gb SSD (in my HP DM-4) and my crucial m225 128Gb SSD (in my whitebook) have been running great going on a year and a half now...

I originally had the 80Gb intel drive in the whitebook but wanted to dual boot and put the crucial drive in for the extra partition after a few months of using only OSX and having some issues at work not being able to load winXP (unfortunately).

My WD Scorpio blue 64Gb SSD is going on 2 yrs old and its been in an eeePC 1000H (now sold), the HP DM-4 (above that got swapped to the intel drive when I got a deal on the intel drive) and it now resides in an AMD X6 1090 build = still going strong.

I just got a corsair Nova (60Gb SSD) to install in a Core i7 - 2600K build also (and hope it will be reliable like my other 3 SSD's above).

Just some of my own experiences based on my machines with winXP, win7 and OSX, good luck guys and gals.
 
OWC SSD 480 GB died after 2 months

Mine died as well after only 2 months. Mac Book Pro froze while working in Powerpoint, restart stopped with a gray screen. Only after I disconnected the internal SSD I was able to boot from USB drive.

Return was not a problem and got a new one immediately. Still was without a computer for a week and lost productivity. I purchased the SSD for increased reliability, now it seems to be the opposite.
 
thorsten said:
Mine died as well after only 2 months. Mac Book Pro froze while working in Powerpoint, restart stopped with a gray screen. Only after I disconnected the internal SSD I was able to boot from USB drive.

Return was not a problem and got a new one immediately. Still was without a computer for a week and lost productivity. I purchased the SSD for increased reliability, now it seems to be the opposite.
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What MBP? The 6G OWC's do not work in the 2008 Models. They die or are not negotiated correctly on the bus only 1.5Gb not 3Gb. There is a super small bit of text on OWC's site mentioning this. Apparently it is a Sandforce thing and 2008 Macbook Pro Unibody.
 
ever since my owc extreme pro 120gb went tits up, i've been back to my tried and trusted scorpio blacks for my mbp and mac pro. funnily, i don't really feel much of a diff with the scorpio black on my mbp, app launching and all. i don't reboot much if at all, so that kinda softens the blow a tad.
 
Like the OP, I was very close to purchasing an OWC Mercury SSD to install as a system drive in a MacPro. However, I'm a bit skeptical now. I'm looking for something STABLE. Regardless of superior warranty and support, if an OWC drive goes down, you're up the preverbal creek until it can be replaced.

Having said that, I'm going on 1-year with my 2-drive iMac CTO, one of which is the Apple 256GB SSD. Much slower than the OWC Mercury, but so far, no issues.
 
Most of these companies don't actually make these drives, they just buy from original manufacturer and rebrand them. OCZ is a prime example of this! So most times they don't go through the same QC. They are just crossing their fingers here and give you a decent warranty while they are at it.
Stick with OEMs like Crucial, Intel, Samsung and etc...
 
Elisha said:
Most of these companies don't actually make these drives, they just buy from original manufacturer and rebrand them. OCZ is a prime example of this! So most times they don't go through the same QC. They are just crossing their fingers here and give you a decent warranty while they are at it.
Stick with OEMs like Crucial, Intel, Samsung and etc...
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Not entirely true. There isn't an original manufacturer of SandForce based SSDs. SandForce (soon to be LSI) only makes the controller. The OEM (OCZ, OWC etc) designs and manufactures (or use a manufacturer like Foxconn) the actual PCB. That allows them to choose the NAND supplier and decide the NAND configuration as well.

Besides, there are only a few companies which manufacture everything from the controller to the final PCB. Crucial uses Marvell controllers in their SSDs, but they do manufacture the NAND (subsidiary of Micron). Intel uses Marvell controller in their 520 Series as well, but the other SSDs use an in-house controller.

Actually, OCZ will enter the NAND business next year, so they will also have a unique SSD (Indilinx i.e. OCZ controller + OCZ NAND).
 
derbothaus said:
What MBP? The 6G OWC's do not work in the 2008 Models. They die or are not negotiated correctly on the bus only 1.5Gb not 3Gb. There is a super small bit of text on OWC's site mentioning this. Apparently it is a Sandforce thing and 2008 Macbook Pro Unibody.
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I have the mid 2009 model and bought the 3G OWC model. But it would not work with Firmware 1.7. I had to manually downgrade to Firmware 1.6 which results in only 1.5 Gb SATA speed.
Still great speed improvements.
 
Then go see a doctor or use the proper word ;)

My OCZ drives are running just fine and they are already 2 and a half years old. Speed has stayed stable over time which means that I don't see much difference in benchmarks, real life stuff, etc. They work and they still are fast. Lot's of others have that exact same experience with OCZ and any other brand. It's just like with hdds, everybody has its own experiences and its own favourite. Simply put: there is no good or bad ssd.
 
Darby67 said:
Uh? So you just called it a day and didn't RMA it? Easy to do, one of mine died and OWC customer service was great, back up and running in no time.
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Uh yeah I got a replacement. Which I sold off, pronto.
 
t0rr3s said:
Uh yeah I got a replacement. Which I sold off, pronto.
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Got 2 of the new 6G 240GB with the Toshiba toggle NAND and SandForce 2282.

1 Worked perfectly. The other one was hosed. I RMA'd it, they replaced it with a unit that works fine. No problems since then.

Except... I paid out a buncha cash for 2 new SSDs, the replacement they sent me was not new (according to SMART readings, it had been powered on for 55 days of continuous use before they shipped it out to me). Kinda ... b-llsh-t, but whatever, they both work extremely well. 484/write, 526/read, when RAID0'd & just slotted into the optical drive bays of a MacPro 5,1. Fastest speed I've ever had off dual SSDs on native Mac Pro controller.

OWC as an entire company is kinda hit and miss for me personally. I've purchased 10 of everything and had no problems, and I've purchased 1 thing, that goes back 3 times and never works right until they finally send a new unit after wasting a lot of my time (and money on return postage, not to mention credit-card holds if you demand they cross-ship immediately).

Edit- To be fair to 'em, I like OWC. Having purchased stuff from 'em since back in the late 90s, my personal experience has been-

85% - Very positive.
15% - WTF, are you kidding me with this ******?
 
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VirtualRain said:
Hang in there. SSD's can be rock solid reliable. Unfortunately, Sandforce based drives (such as OWC, OCZ, and a few others) are notorious for reliability issues.

FWIW, I purchased a WD Green drive at Christmas that's gone tits-up already... So even good old HD's are not infallible. My 3 Intel Gen1 SSD's from 2009 are still working as good as the day I got them (knock on wood).
Click to expand...

The Caviar Green drives seem to have a higher failure rate sadly. I liked the concept of a drive with low power consumption :(. The Caviar Black drives have been much smoother in performance for me than the Seagates I used in the past, but Seagate is really not so great these days.
 
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