OWC SSD's Die Fast?

[derbothaus]

For more than a few of these more puzzling than obnoxious. There seems to be folks reporting their 6Gb/s SSD not working well. Probably, because the controller is a 3Gb/s. A 3Gb/s SSD is a better match and almost certainly not going to have link negotiation speed problems.

All true. I was annoyed by OWC's claims that it is completely backwards compatible. Then they updated their website a few months after my purchase with *except 2008 MacBook Pro. I only noticed the change right after my SSD died while I was researching possibilities for RMA. I have other 6G drives running just fine on Mac Pro 3G. It was a SF issue in the firmware where a 6G negotiates on THAT 2008 at 1.5Gb. So obviously not happy. I may also be in the minority.

 

[kevink2]

My OWC SSD drive was purchased 1 year ago this week. 240GB boot drive in my 2008 Mac Pro. No problems so far. Universe of 1 for my testing. Probably not statistically large

But when a week ago I decided to replace the drive on my Macbook Pro, it was with the 512GB Crucial M4 since price was significantly lower than OWC right now.

 

[Schismz]

FWIW, running the same OWC SSDs in RAID0 for boot on a 12-core Mac Pro. Still not experiencing any further issues. <Knock on aluminum.>

Will probably switch out to the Accelsior sometime around rev 2 or 3.

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 ******?

 

[silvercircle]

They're quite nice, but since I'm from overseas, I'm having a big headache, since they won't refund any taxes I'd payed on the drive and also won't pay taxes on a new drive (although other companies do).

Yes, never order from OWC when they have to ship outside the US.
If it goes wrong (and many OWC SSD drives die early) you have to pay for sending your order back + 2 times the taxes.
My Mercury Electra 6G only survived 10 minutes.
Returning it for a replacement is very expensive.
I wonder what they do with the returned SSD's?

 

[drkmstr]

Owc 240gb

I purchased an OWC 240gb back in November of 2010 it died June of 2012 sent it back to OWC and they sent a new drive which lasted less than a month. When I called them about the most recent one they were great they gave me a UPS label so the return will only cost me down time.

I am thinking about going back to my stock drive and using the SSD for backups. The drive crashes are just annoying. I know it can happen with any drive but uptime is more important to me than speed right now.

 

[rGiskard]

Another OWC failure

Just registered to note that I had an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD flake out in a 2010 17" MacBook Pro. The MacBook would hang for no reason, requiring shutdown, or sometimes it would spontaneously shut down itself. I swapped out the Mercury Extreme 6G for a Kingston HyperX and the problems ceased.

I believe the drives use the same SandForce SF-2281 controller (or does the OWC drive use SandForce SF-2282?). I already had the HyperX, otherwise based on this thread I would have bought an M4.

Normally I avoid OWC products, as I find them pretty but overpriced. This drive came with the MacBook, which I bought used. Still going through an RMA process with OWC via the seller, what a monumental PITA.

Once OWC sends me the replacement drive, I'm selling it and buying either a couple m4 or 830 SSDs to set up as a RAID 0 volume in my Mac Pro I'm not sure which to go with, some reviews say the GC is better on the 830, some say on the m4, none say it's very good on either. It bugs me that Samsung can't pay someone a week's worth of wages to develop a firmware updater for Macs, so I'll probably go with the m4.

 

[FluJunkie]

Mine is 1.5 years old at this point, and running fine.

 

[Decelerate]

Damn. These drive crashes are a bit troubling. I have been considering an ssd to beef up my mac before using windows 7 with parallels, but might have to rethink this as the ssd would be my only internal drive...

 

[derbothaus]

Damn. These drive crashes are a bit troubling. I have been considering an ssd to beef up my mac before using windows 7 with parallels, but might have to rethink this as the ssd would be my only internal drive...

Have you seen the crashes with HDD's? 5-10x more frequent.

 

[FluJunkie]

Damn. These drive crashes are a bit troubling. I have been considering an ssd to beef up my mac before using windows 7 with parallels, but might have to rethink this as the ssd would be my only internal drive...

Back things up. There should never be an "only" drive, SSD or mechanical.

 

[mourip]

I am on my second replacement OWC 128G SSD i.e. 2 died, each within about 6 months. Actually they just reflashed the first one. The Mercury I have now seems stable...so far.

The good news is that OWC is fast at replacing them and their waranty is long. The boot for my Win7 bootcamp drive is an Intel. That has been a fantastic drive. Very solid and plenty fast.

I just upgraded my Mercury to an Accelsior card so we will see how that goes...

 

[michaelx8]

SSD's on 2008 Mac Pro - mixed experiences

I have two OCZ Petrol series SATAIII 128GB SSD's in an Early 2008 Mac Pro running Lion with 6GB RAM and four other data drives totalling 7TB

I have had three SSD's overall, one was replaced

These two will soon have to be replaced

I've had a few months out of one of them (really fast boots and shutdowns, good performance), but it crashed today - really very badly - data loss, never nice

I hadn't used the other - I had originally intended it to be a "scratch" disc for FCPX projects (I had to upgrade the video card to install this) - but by the time FCP has imported and bloated AVCHD to .mov files, even an hours video would fill the 128GB drive

When the first SSD crashed today I thought I'd install Mountain Lion on the second - no joy

Both SSD's freeze Disk Utility when you try to "erase" (i.e. format) the drive. I am using external firewire and SATA docks to try to reformat them, but I dont think that's the problem

I have now read bad reviews on this model

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227780

linked from here

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3827337?start=0&tstart=0

I'm getting rather tired of fixing the mac. I switched to Apple as I thought it was more stable than Windows, but why a defective disc (if they are defective, they seem to be) should crash the whole OS I have no idea.

I'm rather suspicious of Apple, they have a penchant for deliberate proprietary exclusion of users' interests (no SD on ipad or iphone, no flash on anything, no .flv in Final Cut, I paid a fortune for the mac version of my ATI Radeon HD5770) - I wouldn't be at all surprised if this extended to making it tricky to use third party SSD's in macs so that they can charge ££££ for 'apple' versions. in my view, this firm says they make things easy for users, but their main priority is shareholder 'value' - i.e. building a business to lock you into their store

I dont know whether to be more despairing of OCZ or Apple for all the time I am about to waste, again, trying to get a computer working properly.

 

[J&JPolangin]

...I'd stick to intel or crucial SSD's, they may not be the fastest drives out but they seem to be more reliable than OZC or OWC drives from what I've read and my own personal experiences in the 4 win or OSX machines I own with SSD's in them...

 

[VirtualRain]

I dont know whether to be more despairing of OCZ or Apple for all the time I am about to waste, again, trying to get a computer working properly.

I'm sorry to hear your problems with OCZ and their Indilinx controllers. However, I'm not surprised... your problem is probably OCZ... they are the worst company for validation testing their SSD's. Why did you choose OCZ? You will probably find that nearly everyone here endorses Samsung, Intel, or Crucial SSDs. At any rate, this is off topic... this is an OWC thread you should probably start a thread on OCZ/Petrol so others don't follow in your footsteps and end up with the same headaches.

 

[derbothaus]

...I'd stick to intel or crucial SSD's, they may not be the fastest drives out but they seem to be more reliable than OZC or OWC drives from what I've read and my own personal experiences in the 4 win or OSX machines I own with SSD's in them...

You may want to be more specific on models. Intel 520 is Sandforce same as OWC and OZC. But I have one and it is awesome and incredibly fast. Beats the OZC MaxIOPS and HyperX in most things so saying it is slow is just wrong. You are probably referring to Intel 300 series and Crucial M4 is also very fast so maybe you are referring to older tech. Samsung 830 are fast and very reliable.

 

[elvisizer]

Both SSD's freeze Disk Utility when you try to "erase" (i.e. format) the drive. I am using external firewire and SATA docks to try to reformat them, but I dont think that's the problem

External docks can definitely cause problems when reformatting disks. Take the 5 minutes to put one of the drives inside the Pro to find out for sure if the docks are the problem or not.

 

[J&JPolangin]

You may want to be more specific on models. Intel 520 is Sandforce same as OWC and OZC. But I have one and it is awesome and incredibly fast. Beats the OZC MaxIOPS and HyperX in most things so saying it is slow is just wrong. You are probably referring to Intel 300 series and Crucial M4 is also very fast so maybe you are referring to older tech. Samsung 830 are fast and very reliable.

Yeah, I have intel G2's, crucial M2's and crucial M4's in my machines...I also don't buy anything Sony or Samsung given a choice as both their customer service sucks from personal experience!

 

[R3k]

Hi. Just to add...

I am a fan of OWC, do spend lots of $$$ there, better company than most.

However, our operation has seen a 23% failure rate of the Mercury Extreme SSD's we have purchased over the last year and a bit..3 out of 7 have just stopped working entirely, no longer even appearing on any system.

2 x 480 gb drives purchased a year ago that are going fine.

1 x 240gb drive as part of an 2011 imac turnkey program upgrade, still going fine after 8 months.

1 x 240gb that failed after 5 months.

1 x 240gb purchased 2 months ago, going fine.

2 x 480gb drives purchased a little under 2 weeks ago. 1st failed after 2 days, the 2nd after a week.

Luckily, all the failed drives were part of Mac Pro systems that were well backed up...However, I hope the 2011 Imac stays healthy though cause that will be a pain to replace.

I'm not Irate or anything, just concerned.hmmm.

 

[johnnydanger79]

OWC 120gb Extreme Dies... Twice.

Just had my second 120GB OWC Extreme 3G SSD fail. Two complete failures in just 8 months. Virtually no use of the drives as machine was in sleep or off about 90% of the time. They're replacing with the newer Electra SSD. I gave up on thinking these things were reliable and have a complete Time Machine backup ready to go, but it's pretty ridiculous for so many drive failures in such a short time period.

The drive cost me $180 in january, and has so far cost me $30 in return shipping to get the warranty replacements. Not a happy customer...

 

[fernando.kreutz]

Yes, never order from OWC when they have to ship outside the US.
If it goes wrong (and many OWC SSD drives die early) you have to pay for sending your order back + 2 times the taxes.
My Mercury Electra 6G only survived 10 minutes.
Returning it for a replacement is very expensive.
I wonder what they do with the returned SSD's?

I believe they fix wathever is wrong with the board (probably the chipset) and then sell it refurbished. I'll never buy an OWC SSD again. Now I have 2 Corsair Force 3 SSD's, both are going strong. On my laptop, it's running since march, no issues yet. Not to mention the 3 year warranty.

 

[silvercircle]

I believe they fix wathever is wrong with the board (probably the chipset) and then sell it refurbished. I'll never buy an OWC SSD again. Now I have 2 Corsair Force 3 SSD's, both are going strong. On my laptop, it's running since march, no issues yet. Not to mention the 3 year warranty.

I have the same Corsair Froce 3 SSD and it runs fine. I use TrimEnabler, I don't know if this is really necessary.

 

[fernando.kreutz]

I have the same Corsair Froce 3 SSD and it runs fine. I use TrimEnabler, I don't know if this is really necessary.

It is, otherwise TRIM will not work, since OS X only support it on Apple SSD's. You have to be aware that you need to re-enable TRIM after OS software updates. You can check if TRIM is active under Apple logo > About this Mac > More Info > System Report > Serial ATA.

What TRIM does, is a parameter where the OS can tell the SSD that data has been deleted from that sector/block/whatever on the drive. This reduces garbage collection activities, because now the drive knows what has been deleted right away. SSD data retention is quite complicated, because you can't just erase a single block in a cell, you have to write 0's to the whole cell. If there's DATA that can't be deleted in that cell, it has to be moved to another cell, to get back the space on that cell. There's where garbage collection comes in, it does that job when the SSD is idle. I'm not sure that what I wrote is accurate, but you can check it out on wikipedia.

 

[jeremyx]

I was going to upgrade by 2012 MBAs SSD from 128 to 240. OWC seems to be the only option, but this topic is little troubling. Any experiences with the Aura Pro 6G drives from OWC?

 

[johnny5k]

Chalk up 1 more OWC DDS failure after 8 months

My 240GB OWC Mercury Electra 6G just died. It was fine last night, but when I tried to log in this morning it froze on the login screen, and since then I can't see the drive at all. 8 months - sounds like it's almost standard. Hopefully I haven't done too much since my last backup, about 3 weeks ago.

Is there a way to set up a raid system or some kind of auto-backup, so I always have a mirror copy of my boot SSD on a partition of another drive? I have a 750GB drive in there, that I could partition if I could mirror the SSD to one of the partitions. This way I'd always be covered if the next SSD fails. If I were in the middle of a presentation & my SSD failed it would be disastrous, but if I had a mirror backup, I would just have to boot from the mirrored partition & it would just be a hiccup; I'm surprised that with the SSD failure rate so high this isn't common practice.

 

[Weaselboy]

Is there a way to set up a raid system or some kind of auto-backup, so I always have a mirror copy of my boot SSD on a partition of another drive? I have a 750GB drive in there, that I could partition if I could mirror the SSD to one of the partitions.

You can setup Carbon Copy Cloner to automatically clone your SSD to an external partition like you want. Once you setup the clone, just click "schedule this task..." and pick the frequency/conditions you want to the clone.

This creates a bootable clone you could boot and run the system from if you had to.