Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   Controlled Chaos
   Member

   Hi folks

   Just over a week ago I bought one of these OCZ refurbished SSD. Arrived the next day on only a free delivery option. First thing to say is that the instructions included, if you can call them that, are pretty useless, just basic generic 'check your computer supplier on how to do this', nothing of any help.

   Manged to clone my boot drive HDD to the SSD with a free version of Macrium Reflect as AOMI that I had downloaded last week said it didn't support the drive, but only after the end of the cloning not before. Had a few problems getting the SSD to boot and then realised I had to make the new C: drive 'active'

   It is said that the bios settings for the drive have to be changed to AHCI instead of IDE on the SATA interface which I did, but no joy there. Would only boot when bios set to SATA IDE. Worked a lot faster than from the HDD as expected............................

   until.....................................

   switched on the next morning to find that the drive would not boot, not was it recognised by the bios or any 'rescue disk'. Dead as the proverbial DoDo.

   Reported to Ebuer and ask for a RMA, had no contact apart from a automatic email from the system, so managed to get through to the support dept today. After explaining what I had done and what had happened, I was told that 'You must not clone your drive to the OCZ SSD from a standard HDD, you have to do an OS install direct to it.' That means not being able to move all the items installed on the original drive to it as far as I am concerned, not good. I was told that the only SSD drives that can take cloning from HDD to them are Samsung 800 series and the Intel drives.

   If you look at the page on eBuyer there is no info on the above, if there had been I would not have bought it in the first place. I was told that it was necessary to do quite a bit of research before purchasing SSD's which I had done, but you would have thought that a seller would have this info available on the relavent page to make it easier for potential buyers?

   If you look at this page Clone to SSD on OCZ you will see that cloning of old HDD IS supported, so WTF? :-(

   Anyway I am getting a refund for the cost and will probably go for another HDD and steer clear of SSD's as apparently, 'they can last a week, or a year, no way of knowing.'

   Not a happy bunny :^(

   Posted 11 years ago #
2. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   Actually the place to go for info, advice etc. on OCZ SSDs is the OCZ forums -- been a while since I've been there but that's where all the real info, advice, updates etc. were located.

   As far as migrating your system disk to an SSD, the Paragon forums are where I'd also look -- *If* I remember correctly they had one or more white papers related to SSDs as well.

   As far as relying on any seller rather than the manufacturer resources, I've personally never found that to be anywhere close to a good idea.

   Now, as far as cloning goes, I've always used either Acronis or Paragon -- I've posted a few times how for that sort of thing I'll simply restore a Paragon disk/partition image backup on the desired target. Acronis used to be faster booting to one of their CDs/USB sticks [may still be AFAIK], but I've taken to booting to LiveXP [reboot.pro] & running Paragon apps portably. Paragon apps are on GOTD from time to time, they have [or had] an app specifically for migrating to an SSD, they've got some free versions, & BDJ frequently has their stuff on sale. Versions of Acronis are available free from many hard drive manufacturers, e.g. if you've got a Seagate or Western Digital hard drive you can download their version & it'll work on any drives in your system as long as it can see a Seagate or WD drive, whichever applies.

   That said, the chief limitation of migrating to an SSD AFAIK is they're usually smaller than the average system drive/partition. The way I handle that sort of thing is defrag to pack everything at the start of the drive/partition, then shrink the partition, getting rid of most free space, then do a backup/restore/clone. If you don't want to alter the existing system disk/partition it works to backup/restore or clone the system drive to a VHD, then do the shrinking partition etc. there.

   "It is said that the bios settings for the drive have to be changed to AHCI instead of IDE on the SATA interface which I did, but no joy there."

   The way SSDs work, AHCI works a bit better for them, that's all -- with regular drives it's a coin toss in my experience. Ideally you should install to either IDE or AHCI, not swap afterwards, but you can find plenty of directions on-line spelling out what changes need to be made to or in Windows, which varies depending on the OS version. Switching over in the bios *should* be trivial, but it can't hurt to research [Google] the motherboard or PC used to see if there are reported problems or glitches -- there are an awful lot of junk models out there, & the bios on a great many motherboards tends to be an almost science with quirks, problems & such common.

   "Anyway I am getting a refund for the cost and will probably go for another HDD and steer clear of SSD's as apparently, 'they can last a week, or a year, no way of knowing.'"

   Yup... I buy a lot from a company called newegg [newegg.com], & they tend to have a lot of user reviews for most products. The people doing the reviewing may or may not have a lot of tech experience/knowledge, but it doesn't take any to say whatever arrived DOA or died very soon afterward. Whether you're buying a conventional drive, a hybrid, or another SSD it pays to see that make/model statistical record so-to-speak. And FWIW, conventional hard drives can fail just as suddenly, & apparently with some models, just as often as any SSD. Generally speaking, you can pretty much count on conventional hard drives lasting the warranty period -- don't know how much they do this currently, but where a company offered the same drives with one or 5 year warranties, the one with the longer warranty was the far better drive, as if they took those with questionable test results & sold them with one year warranties rather than scrapping them. Read the fine print! It's not unheard of for hard drive warranties to start on the day they're manufactured, so a drive sitting on the store or warehouse shelf for 9 months only has 3 months of a 1 year warranty left.

   A final couple notes... when comparing SSDs look for the testing methods they used to come up with the rated speeds... particularly for larger files, write speeds tend to be vastly lower than stated, & to get their rated results *you have to use their specific testing method(s)*. Also, don't know what's available outside the US, but the price you paid for a reman doesn't seem all that great -- that size is the sweet spot that's being heavily discounted right now during sales... again *If* I remember correctly should be around $175 or less new.

   Posted 11 years ago #
3. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   I wanted to add an additional note that's almost off topic in case it's useful to anyone...

   Hard drive partitions have a volume serial number that can change when you switch from IDE to AHCI [it happened to me] &/or when you swap drives. Some software uses that serial number as part or all of a hardware ID for licensing DRM. You can change that serial number to whatever you like very easily -- Google & you'll find a few apps, or else check out Sysinternals at microsoft.com -- they have an app for that too.

   It may be worthwhile then to write down the existing number, then after switching to AHCI or swapping drives changing the number back so it matches. TO view the existing serial number go to a command prompt, go to the root of the partition, e.g. C:\, & simply type dir & press enter.

   Posted 11 years ago #
4. 

   ChrisS
   Administrator

   I was told that the only SSD drives that can take cloning from HDD to them are Samsung 800 series and the Intel drives.

   
   Complete BS. As Mikiem points out, SSDs are typically smaller than conventional HDs so you want to do a selective transfer of files but in no way are SSDs "new install only" devices. The retailer was just trying to get you to take the blame for their failure. "We stand behind our sales"... so far behind that you can't see us.

   'they can last a week, or a year, no way of knowing.'

   
   Yep. SSDs have the standard electronics "bath tub" failure curve. A lot die early, then you have a long life with few failures, then a mass extinction. The biggest problem with the failures, though, is that they die immediately. You get no indication that a drive is going bad, it's like an incandescent bub, it just dies.

   But, the real issue is the OCZ drive. OCZ hasn't had a good reputation for a number of years. I will admit, though, that if I were to buy an OCZ drive it would be a refurbished one as it's already failed and allegedly repaired. So, in theory anyway, the early death would be out of the way.

   Posted 11 years ago #
5. 

   Controlled Chaos
   Member

   Thanks for the replies about this.

   I am going to hold fire on getting an SSD for the time being and probably get new HDDs, and give it a bit longer before trying again, by that time the GB-price ratio may have come down a bit and reliability improved.

   I am going to keep this bage bookmarked now as there is some very helpful info whatever way I go. I must remember next time to look at the comments on the manufacturers web sites rather than the retailers.

   BTW my m/b is an ASUS M4A88T-V EVO with 8gb ram and a Phenom x4 CPU.

   Thanks again
   John

   Posted 11 years ago #
6. 

   Whiterabbit-uk
   Games Guru

   My first SSD was an utter failure. It cost a lot of money for the 250GB version and only lasted 6 months. I lost valuable images and other data which I'd not got around to backing up. I did purchase another SSD because I liked the fast boot up times.

   When I first installed my operating system (back then it was Win 7) it was booting up in 24 seconds, the fastest I've ever had a computer boot up. The second one is still going strong a year later with no problems, so, fingers crossed, lol.

   p.s. I purchased Corsair SSD's

   Posted 11 years ago #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.