SSD = wow

Alanstrainor

quarryman wrote: »

awesome, did not know this.

Yeah it's dead handy when doing a format and reinstall, i have my pictures and music on one disk and then just point the photos and music to the new location when i reinstall windows.

TheDoc

WEll absolute nightmare.

The OCZ Vertex 3 was an easy install, popped in my 64bit windows install and it installed the whole thing in under five minutes.

The RAM was easy and is being recognised as 8gb. So all is going well.

Went to upgrade my GPU and bang problems.

I run a radeon 5750 and got the latest drivers from the ATI website and when it reboots after install this blue screen pops. It goes too fast for me to read but I read it saying something about dumping physical memory. Cant find any information on the internet other then its an issue with the driver.

Really annoying me, going back through old ATI drivers to see if I can find one that works.

The SSD itself I'm happy with boot time seems faster but i havnt been able to test been too focused on upgrading this damn GPU

And I cant be certain if its related to the Windows 7 64bit install, the change of ram or the SSD.

All fingers are pointing to the drivers because everything is fine in safe mode and even fine when i uninstall the gpu drivers, just i need them to run games as they keep saying " cannot find display" something.

Will update as I go along but so far its being the OS upgrade thats being a big letdown

Monotype

Check the RAM with memtest.
Memtest.org (you need to boot it from disc or USB).

Leman

TheDoc wrote: »

WEll absolute nightmare.

The OCZ Vertex 3 was an easy install, [...]

I think we found your problem.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/08/ocz_bsods_ongoing/

Agility 3 and Vertex freezing and BSOD occurrences are still being noted on OCZ's forum. A stream of firmware upgrades, from v2.06 to v2.09, has reduced the number of users experiencing the problem, but 33 per cent of respondents on a forum poll are still faced with non-working drives. Another 20 per cent don't get BSODs but do experience freezes when the system hangs.

That's a >50% failure rate...

The OCZ drives with the Sanforce controller are either Liquid Sex or utter Tripe that BSOD even with latest firmware and more often than not just simply Brick themselves, and it seems you got one of the latter. It's caused by OCZ not bothering to test the controler chips which means a fair number of them are faulty.

It's not a problem with your RAM, it's the SSD itself. I also had problems with an Agility 3 (same controller, just crappier Flash :P) RMA it asap and get a Crucial M4 (cheap, solid but a little slow on the writes) or Intel (if you are made of diamonds and money).

TheDoc

Leman wrote: »

I think we found your problem.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/08/ocz_bsods_ongoing/


That's a >50% failure rate...

The OCZ drives with the Sanforce controller are either Liquid Sex or utter Tripe that BSOD even with latest firmware and more often than not just simply Brick themselves, and it seems you got one of the latter. It's caused by OCZ not bothering to test the controler chips which means a fair number of them are faulty.

It's not a problem with your RAM, it's the SSD itself. I also had problems with an Agility 3 (same controller, just crappier Flash :P) RMA it asap and get a Crucial M4 (cheap, solid but a little slow on the writes) or Intel (if you are made of diamonds and money).

I got it all sorted, simply picked the ATI Driver candidate from earlier in the year, not the latest one and I'm up and running.

Very impressive results. My games are notibly faster and smoother and my PC is notibly faster on bootup and throughout manouvring.

Very impressed and a happy camper

the untitled user

Leman wrote: »

I think we found your problem.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/08/ocz_bsods_ongoing/


That's a >50% failure rate...

The OCZ drives with the Sanforce controller are either Liquid Sex or utter Tripe that BSOD even with latest firmware and more often than not just simply Brick themselves, and it seems you got one of the latter. It's caused by OCZ not bothering to test the controler chips which means a fair number of them are faulty.

It's not a problem with your RAM, it's the SSD itself. I also had problems with an Agility 3 (same controller, just crappier Flash :P) RMA it asap and get a Crucial M4 (cheap, solid but a little slow on the writes) or Intel (if you are made of diamonds and money).

Some people suggesting the freezes are due to Intel's matrix storage manager? I've seen this mentioned as a possible fix: http://solutions.unixsherpa.com/2010/03/25/the-device-deviceideiastor0-did-not-respond-within-the-timeout-period/

Also noted a few people saying on the Corsair forums their BSODs went when they switched to a SATA2 port... could this be a problem with SATA3 controllers?

I've gone an ordered myself a Corsair Force 3 120GB, should have it sometime next week. The Sandforce controllers have reliability issues, but corsair have been pretty proactive about sorting out dodgy drives compared to OCZ, recalling the entire first batch! So, despite my rational mind telling me I'm an idiot, I thought what the heck...

fingers crossed (>.<)

TheDoc

For transparency I'm using SATA 2 ports.

Kadongy

I have 120gb agility ssd. It is connected to sata 3 port. I was getting bsods but I think they were unrelated to it and they stopped after I installed a better cooler for the cpu. I was getting system hangs coming out of hibernation though. I dont know if these are still occurring as I set my computer not to go into hibernation.

Tar.Aldarion

that happens a lot in windows with normal hdds too

TheDoc

Well the problems have started

Two days no issues great performance

Today I started getting blue screens saying issues with my video memory manager.


Not sure if its the RAM or SSD, both as OCZ.

I'm sending overclockers a support ticket to see what they advise. If it keeps up I might revert back to my old 4GB ram and see if that resolves it,

Fluffy88

You can be pretty certain it's the Vertex 3 as most of the OCZ SSD's are infected with that problem. Try removing it and installing Windows onto your HDD and use it for a few days without the SSD plugged in to see does that resolve it.

I'm on my second Vertex 2 for the last 6 months now and it has been perfectly fine so far. *touch wood* However the original one I had decided to brick itself after an hour's use.

Recovered

I'm on my first SSD drive and, like the rest of you guys, I'm loving it!

Apparently the failure rate is quite high but with this type of performance, worth it!

As per the hot/crazy scale:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html

Alanstrainor

Jaysis lads, hope my ssd lasts more than a year! Should get it today and I'll be reinstalling the OS this evening.

o1s1n

I've an SSD in my upgraded Amiga A1200...does that count?

quarryman

Recovered wrote: »

I'm on my first SSD drive and, like the rest of you guys, I'm loving it!

Apparently the failure rate is quite high but with this type of performance, worth it!

As per the hot/crazy scale:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html

jaysus, those eventual failure rates are scary, ie 100% within 18 months).

Alanstrainor

quarryman wrote: »

jaysus, those eventual failure rates are scary, ie 100% within 18 months).

Here's hoping that the guy running that system did something pretty stupid to cause all those drives to fail! Like running them in an oven or something!

I'll just setup a regular backup of the drive and keep most important data on my hard disks.

Fluffy88

Well once you place all your Documents, Music, Pictures etc ... on the HDD then your going to be fine if the drive fails as you will only lose the OS and programs which are all re-installable. The only thing that isn't safe is your AppData folder. Which stores program data like your bookmarks in firefox. So really that's the only thing you need to backup.

And all the "My ..." folders can be placed on a different drive very easily with Windows. Just right click the folder and choose the Location tab then place the folder on your HDD somewhere. Simple and safe

And if you really wanted to be safe, you could do that. Then just make a system image of the C Drive from time to time and then everything would be dead safe.

quarryman

Found some tips on Windows 7 with an SSD. A few ways to trim the footprint.

Tar.Aldarion

Fluffy88 wrote: »

Well once you place all your Documents, Music, Pictures etc ... on the HDD then your going to be fine if the drive fails as you will only lose the OS and programs which are all re-installable. The only thing that isn't safe is your AppData folder. Which stores program data like your bookmarks in firefox. So really that's the only thing you need to backup.

And all the "My ..." folders can be placed on a different drive very easily with Windows. Just right click the folder and choose the Location tab then place the folder on your HDD somewhere. Simple and safe

And if you really wanted to be safe, you could do that. Then just make a system image of the C Drive from time to time and then everything would be dead safe.

Can you change appdata location? would have to for each program? luckily chrome has syncing online, so handy.


seems ssds fail a LOT, are they alll returned

TheDoc

Touchwood all is ok today.

TBH the SSD comes with a three year warranty from OCZ so I'm not overly concerned, they also state they will replace the drive with a better model down the line if it does fail.

I'm too much of a " a but sure its grand" guy to RMA ****, its just little hickups that I'm sure I can iron out with firmware upgrades etc.

Fluffy88

No I don't think you can. Well you can't do it the same way as documents, pictures, downloads, movies, music and those folders. It would have to be a per-program basis if it supported it.

And if it fails within the warranty then of course it's returnable. So if your getting an OCZ make sure it has a good warranty But I think most of the reliable SSD drives should outlive it's usage. They do have limited write cycles but in a consumer spec pc it should have no problems lasting a few years. Plus you didn't even get one so don't worry about that til you do :P

Outkast_IRE

I went for the intel 320 120gb ssd, extra money i know but i havent had one intel built component go on me yet , and their reliabilty stats for their drives speak for themselves

TheDoc

WEll now my World of warcraft keeps crashing and on the detailed error report it displays an error relating to memory and read something on the SSD

So it does seem the SSD is the source of the problem. Pretty poor considering it was €120 piece of hardware.

Have contacted overclockers about the issue. Will apply the firmware updates to see if this resolves anything, if not will then look into replacing the drive for a different brand.

The pity is the OCZ one I have has double the read and write speeds of its Intel counterpart : /

Yep, try the 2.09 firmware if you haven't already done so.

TheDoc

Well here is a problem, it seems that I cant run the update from a drive running windows....so....like..what?

Install windows on my secondary hard drive?
Remove windows from SSD?
Upgrade firmware
Then reinstall windows on SSD?

I seem to recall that they have a downloadable Linux live CD that can do it.

TheDoc

Karsini wrote: »

I seem to recall that they have a downloadable Linux live CD that can do it.

Can you explain in more detail please?

I knew I saw this earlier

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?89670-Tools-for-OCZ-SandForce-Driven-SSD-s

Direct link: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/staff/ryderocz/linux_iso/ocz_fwupd_1.00.zip

Leman

I did tell you. The OCZ drives are a pile of garbage.