OCZ SSD Test panel - Two Year Test Run Comes To An End

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 05/01/2017 04:29 PM | source: | 48 comment(s)

Two years ago there was a lot of discussion about the endurance of SSDs, failure rates and so on. OCZ at the time had to fight off a bit of a reputation and claimed that their SSDs had extremely low failure rates. At that time Guru3D proposed an idea to OCZ, give us 10 SSDs, we’ll ship them towards 10 forum users and we’ll keep track of them for two years.

The two years have now officially passed, and a lot of things happened (while nothing happened with all SSDs), OCZ is no more, they have been purchased by Toshiba. Toshiba is still selling OCZ SSDs as part of their branding. Yeah it is amazing how much has happened ever since we started this test in May 2015.

We have continued and monitored the the test panel group for two years now. And if you want to have a peek, feel free to look at the results from the test panel in theforum linkage below. All OCZ Vertex 460A SSDs are still up and running, none of them have had a failure and all of them show good to close to advertised performance values. Most panel members even have 98% lifetime left on their SSDs despite using and abusing their SSD as daily OS drive and some have written A LOT of TBs.

Personally I have to say that is has been a pleasure watching and following the test panel as it also confirms my strong believe in NAND based storage solutions being durable, long-lasting and trustworthy. Pretty much all panel members have been able to post their scores and benchmarks on a monthly basis dureing these long two years, much thanks for that. Albeit OCZ might not be around as a standalone company anymore, we do like to thanks Tobias and Bernd from (back then) OCZ for having the guts to take part of this test as really it was a ballsy thing from them to agree to. I think it is safe to state if you invest in a proper SSD, it will last you for many many years.

Have a peek at the latest updates, some panel members still need to add the final May 2017 results though.

Going strong even after two years of usage

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Silva
Senior Member

Posts: 1992
Joined: 2013-06-04

#5426790 Posted on: 05/01/2017 05:54 PM

My Crucial MX100 is about 2.5 years old and is at 96% health.
Sure does require some care and I have HDD's on the system to do the heavier workload, but SSD's are really great tech.

schmidtbag
Senior Member

Posts: 7431
Joined: 2012-11-10

#5426794 Posted on: 05/01/2017 06:06 PM

FireFox does a LOT of writes to my SSD, I know I have up to about 20 windows open each with Many tabs.
I have moved the Temp Internet files directory to a RAM drive to reduce writes and also have moved my pagefile to the same RAM drive.

Initially the pagefile was used very little at all for a long time. However more recent changes to the way FireFox works have seen it using the pagefile Heavily despite my PC having plenty of free RAM (32GB installed). It is now to the point that FF over a day pulls close to 10GB or pagefile !!!
I just disable the caching in my web browsers entirely, on PCs that involve an SSD anyway. The performance improvement of the cache is nearly negligible in my eyes, and I don't have to worry about anything being outdated.

I find it strange that your paging file got utilized so much despite your large amount of RAM. Maybe you had a memory leak in one of the extensions?

The way Windows handles paging files is great for those who don't have enough memory, but it is incredibly inefficient for those who have an abundant amount like yourself. I wish there was a Windows equivalent to Linux's "swappiness".

I'm considering using my spare M.2 slot for a 16-32GB SSD for caching purposes. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any drives that small that are PCIe based; a SATA-based drive would be slower and have worse latency.

Bansaku
Senior Member

Posts: 159
Joined: 2009-08-20

#5426796 Posted on: 05/01/2017 06:11 PM

I have been using an OZC Agility 3 60GB since launch and it still has 99% life left!

Humanoid_1
Senior Member

Posts: 959
Joined: 2009-10-14

#5426797 Posted on: 05/01/2017 06:11 PM

I thought the most questionable part of SSD reliability was the lack of usage. I remember hearing how enterprise SSDs had compromised data integrity after a week of being powered off. I also recall hearing specifically only enterprise SSDs had issues, but consumer-level models were generally reliable.

I think at least one of the 10 testers should've filled the drive with various sized files and then leave the PC off for a full month between tests. Then do SHA256 sums or whatever to make sure everything looked correct.

I remember that too, was from a very reliable source too.
Consumer SSDs were also said to have their data compromised in a powered off state after periods leading up to 1 year as I remember it.

Pretty worrying really, surprised I've not heard any more about it since then. Would be very interesting to hear an update or some testing on newer generations of SSDs.

SSD_PRO
Senior Member

Posts: 180
Joined: 2013-02-07

#5426802 Posted on: 05/01/2017 06:34 PM

I thought the most questionable part of SSD reliability was the lack of usage. I remember hearing how enterprise SSDs had compromised data integrity after a week of being powered off.

Many SSDs show data and/or firmware corruption within a month if left with no power source. That isn't really a realistic usage pattern though as most users apply power periodically. As for storage drives that remains a primary concern.

It is a sad deal what happened to OCZ. They had many, many missteps and tried to do too much with too little. They had good support, great top end products but some junk in the value segment. Value drives should have been slower but not less reliable but again that isn't realistic. Many users bought Agility drives and the infamous Petrol and - splat - time for new undies.

OCZ as a brand is strange even now. They have a nice RD400 that is competitive with the 950/960 Pro and the VX500 is a nice drive. Toshiba seems to be affecting support, as their Windows-based utility has been "temporarily unavailable" for a couple months. I assume it has compatibility problems with CU since the alt versions are available. Apparently the lights are off in that department now.

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