OCZ Vertex 3

[NickelPlate]

Hi All,

Since I upgraded my system recently, it's become painfully obvious to me that my once cutting edge Velociraptors are a huge bottleneck in my system. So I'm in the market for an SSD. Intel would normally be my first choice but as I'm a bargain hunter, lately Tigerdirect routinely has been offering the 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 drives for $59.99. Now I've read both good and bad things about OCZ drives and I also know the V3's aren't the latest tech either but would still probably be light years faster than the HDDs I have now.

All comments welcome. I'm just trying to decide if I should pay the extra 30 bucks and go with a Intel 330 or bite the big bullet and go with the Intel 520 series, or go for the OCZ bargain. The Intel drives seems to be the most highly regarded everywhere I go.

Cheers,

NP

 

[Hellhammer]

While Vertex 3 is not the most reliable drive, it's not like they are all defective. I would definitely buy one for that price because you get full warranty after all - just be aware that issues are more likely than with Intel SSD for instance.

 

[thelastjuju]

just be aware that issues are more likely than with Intel SSD for instance.

or Corsair
or Kingston
or Samsung
or Sandisk

basically anyone else to ever produce an SSD :whiste:

No matter how heavily discounted, I would still go with any other brand for peace of mind.

 

[NickelPlate]

Ugh I just checked the website and there's a rebate involved with the OCZ drive. Suddenly, I'm less interested.

 

[anttir]

I've been perfectly happy with my Vertex3 on my ASUS laptop. I had some trouble first making sure it was aligned with the OEM windows and all but after that everything's been just great. Windows installer automatically disables indexing and some other thing. If you have a new mobo you can put four Vertexes in raid-0 and the mobo still does the trim correctly.

Just remember to make daily backups elsewhere.

 

[Smoblikat]

or Corsair
or Kingston
or Samsung
or Sandisk

basically anyone else to ever produce an SSD :whiste:

No matter how heavily discounted, I would still go with any other brand for peace of mind.

You mean lack of mind. There were problems with the initial releases of sandforce controllers, they are very much solved now.

 

[Zxian]

or Kingston

If you're going to throw out a list of "reliable" SSD manufacturers, you should make sure the list only includes "reliable" manufacturers. I've got two dead Kingston SSD VNow+ drives at home, and the V200 series that's available now aren't much to write home about either.

SF-2281 issues affected ALL SF-2281 drives until Sandforce released the fix nearly a year ago.

The Vertex3 should be fine for the OP's needs. BSOD issues are extremely rare now provided the drive is running the latest firmware.

Complaining about OCZ because of bleeding edge SF-2281 issues and reliability of their SF-1200 based drives is akin to never buying any MSI because they had a bad round of motherboards roughly 10 years ago (exploding caps anyone?).

 

[dave_the_nerd]

It comes down to risk / reward. If OCZ drives have a 5% failure and everybody else is at 1%, then is a 5% chance of having to RMA the drive worth it if you save $30? What's your time worth?

I have a Vertex 3 90GB. It's been running fine for four months. No BSOD or anything. Hopefully it will continue to do so.

Complaining about OCZ because of bleeding edge SF-2281 issues and reliability of their SF-1200 based drives is akin to never buying any MSI because they had a bad round of motherboards roughly 10 years ago (exploding caps anyone?).

Not exactly. The cap issues effected almost everybody for a while, because only like one factory made the darned things and they were shipping bad ones all over the place for months.

 

[anttir]

The Vertex3 should be fine for the OP's needs. BSOD issues are extremely rare now provided the drive is running the latest firmware.

Complaining about OCZ because of bleeding edge SF-2281 issues and reliability of their SF-1200 based drives is akin to never buying any MSI because they had a bad round of motherboards roughly 10 years ago (exploding caps anyone?).

Yeah, well, there's no harm in making daily incremental backups to an external disk, or?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yeah, well, there's no harm in making daily incremental backups to an external disk, or?

... who doesn't back up regularly, OCZ or not.

 

[Zxian]

It comes down to risk / reward. If OCZ drives have a 5% failure and everybody else is at 1%, then is a 5% chance of having to RMA the drive worth it if you save $30? What's your time worth?

The statistics that have been thrown around the net are return rates, not failure rates. I also mentioned that the SF-1200 Vertex2 drives were a bit of a sore thumb in that department. They have poor reliability, which is different than a stability issue that plagued all SF-2281 drives. The number of Vertex3 drives that have outright failed is likely on par with other SF-2281 based drives.

 

[bryanW1995]

Hellhammer had it right. If it was really $60 for the OCZ and $90 for the 330 series, then that would be hard to go with the intel. However, it sounds like the rebate has turned the OP off to the OCZ, which is likely a blessing in disguise, anyway.

@OP: I would check prices on intel 330, samsung 830, crucial m4, and plextor m3. If they're the same price, samsung>plextor>crucial>330 series.

 

[NickelPlate]

The more research I do the more I'm leaning toward the Samsung 830 series ATM. 120GB isn't really enough for me anyway but if there weren't any rebates I'd still be tempted to buy the OCZ.

If one has an SSD is it worthwhile to pickup a small msata drive (my MB has a connector for one) and setup Intel Smart Response? Or does that become totally unnecessary?

 

[sequoia464]

I've got two dead Kingston SSD VNow+ drives at home, and the V200 series that's available now aren't much to write home about either.
.

Are those Kingstons the regular V+ with the JMicron controller or the V+100's with the Toshiba controller?

 

[Zxian]

Sorry, I got the product name wrong (they had too many almost-the-same names back then). They're 30GB SSDNow V Series Boot Drives. One of them is fully dead, and the other one seems to have issues staying connected to the system.

 

[Railgun]

I'll keep saying it...

Have 4x 120G Vertex 3s in RAID0 on an Areca card and has been solid since Mar '11.

Gave another in a laptop (Dell M1530) that has seen its fair share of sudden power loss since the beginning of this year and also solid.