OCZ are dust.

[WalkinTarget]

So I meet the guy and he shows me the Vertex 4. We discuss how it was used and how he tested and formatted it. He then pulls out another SSD, a PNY XLR8 120gb SSD that he had written in Sharpie on it 'BAD'.

He said he had formatted all of them together, and the OCZs showed 119gb after format, but the PNY showed 118gb, so he assumed it had found bad blocks on the SSD, marked them as such, and decreased the actual drive amount. I think he neglected to realize this was a 120GB SSD, not a 128 like the rest.

SCORE !!!! Two SSDs for $45 !! No idea what I'm gonna do with the PNY, but I guess I can pop it in the Win8.1 preview rig and put it through its paces.

[Apache Warrior]

You always get the good deals.
Apache

[Dead...Again]

LOL nice WT!

[K PhaNTOM]

I respect that. I'm too lazy to look for a deal.

[WalkinTarget]

Well, it seemed like it was gonna be all peaches n cream, but at 51% of the SSD copy (from a Kingston 40gb to the PNY 120) it started spitting up read error after read error. NoOoOoOoOo !!!! Yea, seller was right. It's dying at a rapid pace. I already checked for an RMA, but PNY REQUIRES an invoice, so no go.

You'd think that tiny 40gb would be damn near full with Win 8.1 preview on it, but it only took 21gb with the install and apps I use, so no loss in the end.

The Vertex 4 copied over cleanly from the Kingston SSD, and it SMOKES that older consumer grade SSD. Unfortunately, the drive was 75% full after imaging. OCZ SSDs switch from performance mode to normal mode after filling over 50%, so the drive was running slower than it should. I found this to be quite odd, since I usually keep things tidy. Turns out I had accidentally set my Steam folder to the C: drive (oh, the humanity !!) and once that fat 24gb folder was moved, I was back in business and well under 50% full.

Holding onto the Kingston 128 SSD as a backup in case the Vertex would OCZ (haha - its a verb now !!) on me.


Edit: Managed to update its firmware from 5.02 to 5.07, ran numerous utilities to test its health, full checkdisk scan, write to zeroes, then popped it in an old Pavilion laptop and installed Windows 8.1 - and its working again !! At least it installed cleanly and after a few hours of usage seems to be usable. It failed a full disk copy before my efforts, but at least I can use it in some capacity (testbed laptop in this case) but with no guarantees it won't up and die.

[juneau]

Them good deals can be risky.