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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Hughesy
Senior Member

Posts: 357
Joined: 2012-05-13

#5426824 Posted on: 05/01/2017 08:00 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.
That data was from end of life SSD's, not fully functional drives.

schmidtbag
Senior Member

Posts: 7432
Joined: 2012-11-10

#5426826 Posted on: 05/01/2017 08:03 PM

Firmware updates as you noted, which Toshiba/OCZ do have available for their TL100, TR150, and RD400. It also performs SE, should you have an older drive and require a fresh start or performance restoration. Less common but necessary for my purposes, it gives DAS control so I can have correct activity lights in my 6 drive dock. It's minor but still if advertised like it is on product pages, their own website, and box it should actually exist for use.

What is SE? Secure erase? Because if so, there are other programs for that. If you keep the Windows disk optimization enabled, that should be all you need for performance restoration. But for me personally, I don't use SSDs+Windows for long enough to know how fragmentation and such gets in the way. My experience with SSDs+Linux has remained pretty consistent.

Assuming I fully understand what DAS does, I'm sure there's some software alternative, though I'm not aware of any ones that are Windows compatible. At the very least, the Windows 8+ task manager is pretty useful when monitoring usage between multiple drives.

If you have a drive dock, shouldn't that be responsible for controlling the LEDs? Also I think there are SATA controllers that allow for individual LEDs per port.

One of the nice perks of ATA was the status pin could be tapped into.

Embra
Senior Member

Posts: 1496
Joined: 2014-11-19

#5426829 Posted on: 05/01/2017 08:07 PM

I have two OCZ Vertex 4's. They have been solid, never and issue.

kapu
Senior Member

Posts: 5377
Joined: 2006-12-22

#5426841 Posted on: 05/01/2017 08:35 PM

Hello.

I Got Crucial M4 250 GB just after review here on Guru, running like new since then , about 6 years. SMART says 99% health , no errors , everything looks like new.

I wonder when it will die ? It doesnt report total GB written tho , dont know why....

Silva
Senior Member

Posts: 1992
Joined: 2013-06-04

#5426845 Posted on: 05/01/2017 08:45 PM

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