OCZ Vertex 2, dead within 6 months?

[aftermidnight]

Video demonstrating boot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd6aoFfWoOY

Last night I think I witnessed my SSD dying out.

It started with Firefox being sluggish as usual, but when trying to save an image I instead got an popup from Windows saying something along the lines that the file-picker was unable to start.
Opened the image into Chrome, tried to save it again but Chrome crashed all together.
Next step was to close everything and reboot but at that point Firefox had frozen up.
Control-alt-delete worked up to the point where I selected Task Manager, which froze up Windows itself.
I hold the power button for a few seconds to force it to shutdown and press it again to boot up.
Attempt to start in Safe Mode with Network capabilities for updating/troubleshooting but after the windows logo it halted at a black screen.
Force it to shut down and boot it up again and that NTFS Disc check thing starts, and for the first time in my live actually finds a bigass list of issues at hand.
Presumably fixes them and continues to Windows, halts at black screen again but sit it out... Blue Screen of Death!
Reboots itself, attempt Safe Mode, Black Screen, Shuts off, NTFS Disc check, less results but results sure enough, continues to windows, black screen, blue screen of death..

At that point I saw the cycle just continue itself and cut the power to preserve the rest of my system.
Unplugged my SSD, in with my old HDD; booted fine. (Granted I'm missing everything incl. graphics drivers atm)


I never had a drive die on me before, but judging from the above; is it safe to assume that it has? (For warrenty)

[Beasty]

Sounds more like Windows dying than your drive. I had a Vertex LE go completely dead on me within about 6 months so it is possible that it's on the way out. RMA was pretty painless.

[aftermidnight]

Just tried several things, starting with hooking the SSD up as secondary drive;

Using HDD Windows to disc check it, halts at 68000~ files
EaseUS Todo Backup Free 4.0 to create a backup of the drive to port files to another, halted at starting checks
OCZ Toolbox to update firmwire, doesn't recognize drive
Using HDD Windows to check drive properties freezes explorer

[Deleted]

Just tried several things, starting with hooking the SSD up as secondary drive;

Using HDD Windows to disc check it, halts at 68000~ files
EaseUS Todo Backup Free 4.0 to create a backup of the drive to port files to another, halted at starting checks
OCZ Toolbox to update firmwire, doesn't recognize drive
Using HDD Windows to check drive properties freezes explorer

Have you checked for latest Firmware? It could well be the SSD is fine as i had similar problems with an OCZ Agility3 all i did was update the Firmware and used OCZ secure erase with a fresh install of windows on top.I worked a charm and has done ever since.
As for toolbox not seeing ur drive i had that problem too ( its a pain but it worked ) just install a normal HDD install windows and then plug in ur SSD as you would a storage drive it should find it then.

---------- Post added 2012-01-24 at 12:27 PM ----------

Have you checked for latest Firmware? It could well be the SSD is fine as i had similar problems with an OCZ Agility3 all i did was update the Firmware and used OCZ secure erase with a fresh install of windows on top.I worked a charm and has done ever since.
As for toolbox not seeing ur drive i had that problem too ( its a pain but it worked ) just install a normal HDD install windows and then plug in ur SSD as you would a storage drive it should find it then.

Sry mate just realised you have tried the above (half asleep here)

[D_K_night]

yeah the SSD is done. I would investigate warranty options.

[Beasty]

Just tried several things, starting with hooking the SSD up as secondary drive;

Using HDD Windows to disc check it, halts at 68000~ files
EaseUS Todo Backup Free 4.0 to create a backup of the drive to port files to another, halted at starting checks
OCZ Toolbox to update firmwire, doesn't recognize drive
Using HDD Windows to check drive properties freezes explorer

Aaah, yeah that's sounding quite like it's on its way.

[Sephiracle]

Welcome to using OCZ SSDs.

[aftermidnight]

Any chance that if I send it up to OCZ they can recover/clone the data on it; or will they likely just toss it and send me a new one?

[suggar]

Welcome to using OCZ SSDs.

it's one of the reasons i won't go with OCZ SSD's the have a pretty high failure rate from what i have been reading
most companies are pretty good about check your warranty

[Mnementh]

Sadly the reliability of the OCZ drives doesn't seem to be great but performance is pretty rock solid. I have myself a 120gb Vertex 3 drive and from the moment I started using it, it'd crash once(ish) per week with a issue saying it can boot from the drive. It only took a reset to fix but still annoying.

[Doylez]

Mine recently died as well, after 1 year... OCZ - never again.

[Porcell]

I had a Vertex 2 that died about a month or two after I built my system back in May of last year. RMA'ed it and got a new Vertex 2 and haven't had any problems since then.

[GG you got me]

OCZ is notorious for dead SSD's unfortunately. Better to go with samsung/crucial/mushkin/patriot/hell even corsair. If you want secure stability and you're not worried about write speeds (in other words you just want faster seek times), the Intel Sata II ssd's are commonly accepted as the most "reliable" SSD's, but not the fastest.

[Deleted]

I got a vertex 2 , had since 2 summers ago. No issues with it and still provides the same benchmarks.

[aftermidnight]

I had a Vertex 2 that died about a month or two after I built my system back in May of last year. RMA'ed it and got a new Vertex 2 and haven't had any problems since then.

What is RMA short for? And did they transfer lost data onto your new vertex?

[Biernot]

What is RMA short for? And did they transfer lost data onto your new vertex?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_..._authorization

And if you ask a SSD/HDD manufacturer the latter question, prepare to get laughed at...
Your data is exactly one thing: your data, and not theirs. They don't give a shit about it, and if you find someone who might transfer data from a dead drive to a new one, brace yourself for a four-figure bill.


EDIT:
The thing with the data isn't that they just don't care, but the legal problems if they handle your data. I experienced a nice little hiccup with such a thing sometime ago:
We (the company i work in) replaced a faulty hdd for a customer and RMA'ed it to the manufacturer. By a (un)lucky chance, the drive was repared and send back to us without the data on it being erased. Normally if you get a drive back from RMA it is blank (or should be, as was re-sealed from the manufacturer), so we put it back into our stock (we keep repaired products in a separate stock to replace faulty customer units and to spare them the long RMA wait). Not long after another customer had also a faulty unit from the same model, so we immediately replaced it with the first mentioned drive.
Long story short: The second customer discovered the data on the disc and contacted the former owner of the disc. One of those two customers was a law firm and the data on the disc was "not for public eyes" (nothing really top-secret, but sensitive nonetheless). You can imagine the hell that broke lose...

[Evildeffy]

Do you by any chance have Norton Anti-Virus 2011/2012 or Symantec Endpoint Protection installed? I've come across several installs which Norton/Symantec was causing a Vertex 2 to refuse to boot or crash hard, and only on a Vertex 2.

If so, manually move the Norton/Symantec dir (from another PC) from the SSD to a random location, and see if it'll boot after that.

I know it sounds strange, but Norton/Symantec is infamous for these things.

[aftermidnight]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_..._authorization

And if you ask a SSD/HDD manufacturer the latter question, prepare to get laughed at...
Your data is exactly one thing: your data, and not theirs. They don't give a shit about it, and if you find someone who might transfer data from a dead drive to a new one, brace yourself for a four-figure bill.

Alright, thanks

Do you by any chance have Norton Anti-Virus 2011/2012 or Symantec Endpoint Protection installed? I've come across several installs which Norton/Symantec was causing a Vertex 2 to refuse to boot or crash hard, and only on a Vertex 2.

If so, manually move the Norton/Symantec dir (from another PC) from the SSD to a random location, and see if it'll boot after that.

I know it sounds strange, but Norton/Symantec is infamous for these things.

I have neither