OCZ Vertex 3

I needed an SSD drive quite urgently (long story), so I decided to buy the one in subject (120GB) based on some research on line, and use it to upgrade my Intel x25-m 80GB system disk; and, move the x25-m to another machine.

Upgrade from Intel to OCZ was seamless and took just 10 minutes (after a year of daily usage, I am still amazed at SSD performances), and now I am also using the mb SATA3 controller. So all seems good (crossing fingers).

Still, now that I have some more time, I'd like to get some opinions from you guys on the Vertex 3. What do you think? I hope this is as a good unit as it would seem from some superficial research on line.

If you had to buy a SATA3 SSD today, in the range of 120/160GB, what would your ideal choice be?

I don't have one (yet), but the current SATA3 Sandforce controllers (as used in the Vertex/Agility 3 series units) really appear to the best on the market. That's what I would buy if I had to spend my own money on one today.

Cheers

Great. Thanks Mark. I've read some compatibility issues here and there (did not deepen my reading), but so far my main PC is as fast as ever and it's been on for 48 hrs streight....

Excellent. I also have now caught up on emails, and there do appear to be some compatibility issues for both Win7 and some BIOSs, having to do with the default states of "Link Power Management" (LPM) when connected to certain Intel SATA controllers.

Not sure about all of that yet, but I love the Sandforce3 specs!

I have an asus rampage3, and the vertex 3 is connected to the on board sata 3 controller. So far, i confirm no issues at all. Upgrade from intel x25-m was done through the old and usual temporary mirroring method, so i had a mirror running for few minutes made up of one disc on the sata 2 controller and the other on the sata 3 one, and that worked just fine as well. So far this vertex 3 seems as good as it can be. :-)

... and after few months working flawlessly, I am now getting BOSD once in a while. I would say this is happening once a week in the last three weeks, and twice this week in particular. Symptoms are just identical to the many I read around the web, including OCZ Forums themselves: system hands, BOSD, when you reboot no drive is found. Power down, power up, all is ok.
I am reading all the attempts at fiddling with drive parameters in order to avoid this, even with latest firmware, and it is a ridiculous waste of time IMO, as crashes seem to be happening with latest firmware as well.

I hope this does not get worse. And I hope a working firmware is released soon.
Or, I am going to return it and get an Intel 510 instead.

I would do a full backup of that SSD and then upgrade the firmware and do a secure erase. Once that is complete you can restore the backup to the SSD and everything should be fine. Also make sure you don't let the drive go to sleep, I even disable sleep and hibernation on the machines that I have installed a Vertex LE or Vertex 2. I am currently not running an SSDs in a laptop as I've had two Vertex LE drives fail in laptops.

I use Vertex (indilinx) and Vertex-2 (first-gen sandforce) in my notebooks, and they've been rock solid for more than a year now. But the machines NEVER run MS-Windows; only Linux.

I did have a sandforce unit die recently inside a USB enclosure.

My first one was like that I tried a bunch of stuff to fix it but ended up doing an RMA and they sent me a new one. The new one has not had any issues.

All that I am reading around the web concerns firmware and compatibility with SATA controllers, and specifically for Vertex 3 - so, SATA6 -. This seems to be supported by the fact that many, including me, notice that occasionally the drive is not seen upon boot, before the OS even kicks in. In addition to this, when my system crashes, always the bios fails to see the disk at next reboot.

It seems unlikely, to me, that the OS is responsible, also in light of the fact this same system has run successfully on another SSD. But still, what is exactly your idea, Mark? Do you have any reference for this? If this is as you suggest, maybe I should be looking at MS Knowledge base.

I am reading that many are installing latest firmware to no avail, so my guess is that there's something more serious that that. I am afraid an RMA is the way I'll go to. I just hope they ship me a new drive before I send them the faulty one.

For me I had to send the old one in before they would send the new one. They did send me a new in retail package one back though I figured I would get a "refurb".

Matt, how long have you been using your new unit? What I find a bit surprising is that in my case (and for many others, it seems), issues arised only after months (3) of usage.
This is making me consider to move to a different product (possibly Intel 510 series). With the SATA2 Intel I had before, the system was already blazing fast. I really don't "need" more speed.

I have an Agility 2 mine had issues almost right after I got it. The new one has been going without an issue for 7 months so far. It took about two weeks to get a new one but I mailed the bad one ground.

I had to send them mine before they would send me a new one also. I got a new SSD in the retail package, but it has firmware 1.07 on it and it has completely resisted all attempts at upgrading it (the upgrade icon on the interface never activates).

One thing I did differently this time was instead of using the SSD as a system disk, I only use it for programs that I care about the extra speed on. Currently, that means that I install a bunch of games that I want to load quickly on it As nice as the 15 sec boot and login was, reinstalling everything just isn't worth it to me. Reinstalling a few programs is a lot less of a hassle (especially since the majority are on Steam and I can just let it go overnight).

Ok, so, since my Vertex 3 is my system drive and I don't feel like reverting back to standard HDD and proceed with the drive RMA, I decided to try a firmware update first, even though it does not seem to be particularly useful based on what people are saying.
I could not use the standard OCZ tool for windows as it won't work on the system drive your OS is currenrly running from. I assumed the fastest way for me was to run it from a Windows PE boot, but decided to follow the recommended OCZ procedure, which was anyway quite simple and clear.
I downloaded the Linux ISO they prepared, burned it, booted from it, updated the firmware from 2.06 to 2.13, and rebooted the system.
All seems to be ok now, but we'll see what happens by leaving the system up and running for a while, as I would notmally do anyway. Unfortunately the drive failures seem to be totally random, so all I can do is wait.
I'll let you know what happens.
It is really annoying having to go through the all RMA process, even though that is possibly the wisest thing to do now.


Edit: interestingly, the OS detected something "new" upon boot after the firmware update, and asked me to reboot once more, which usually is required only when you update some system driver. In any case, rebooted and here I am.

Edit 2: This is a fairly powerful and new machine, loaded with RAM, and I am still amazed at how all these reboots and updated where performed so quickly I can't still realize they're actually completed. I feel as I'd been browsing the net and downloading tools and info all the time, when in fact I also spent 5 minutes (literally) burining an ISO, rebooting in Linux, updating the firmware, rebooting Windows twice. How can't you love technology? I mean, apart from ending up with a semi-faulty SSD Drive, of course .

Write it to a USB stick; it's even faster.

If you haven't already, you should run SSDTweaker to disable some of the different things that shouldn't run on SSD boot drives with Windows.

You should also check out unetbootin. I used it make a live usb version of Ubuntu that I used to update the firmware of some OCZ ssds.

Mark, any thoughts on OCZ Vertex 4 drives? My MacBook drive just died and I'm looking for a replacement.

I haven't used any Vertex/Agility 4 series drives yet. They should be fine -- Indilinx controllers inside, but no experience.

For Mac's, the Crucial M4 drives seem to be the go-to units. I'd stick with those in any Mac I owned.

Cheers

Samsung 830 drives also work well in a Mac. Apple has used them for some of the SSDs they include from the factory. I found a number of Mac owners happy with theirs prior to buying mine.

You will also want Trim Enabler once the drive is installed. OS X has TRIM support, but only enables it for OEM drives. This app simply adds the drive ID to the whitelist.

I've been running a Samsung 830 in my MacBook Pro 13 2011 for about a month so far, with Trim Enabler. Work well so far.

Thanks guys. Good info.