Computers & Electronics

OCZ SSD frequently becomes undetected

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Deal Addict
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Aug 15, 2013
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Toronto

OCZ SSD frequently becomes undetected

This is an HTPC build:

Mobo: ASUS P5KPL-CM
CPU: E5200
RAM: 4GB
OCZ ARC 100 120GB
320GB HDD
HD 7970
Xonar D1
WinTV-HVR-1850

Recently the PC started to turn off every couple weeks with SSD being undetected message in BIOS. Unplugging the PC power (power cycling) brings it back.
Is that a bad SSD that needs to be replaced or a motherboard?

There's no SATA 3 or AHCI on this motherboard and the drive health is 99%

Image

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16 replies
Deal Fanatic
Jul 30, 2003
6632 posts
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Toronto
I will suggest replace SATA cable. I had a similar issue recently, changed cable and that fixed it. YMMV
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Deal Expert
Aug 2, 2004
38385 posts
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East Gwillimbury
I suggest you ditch the drive. OCZ drives are bad news

When Toshiba acquired OCZ, I thought things would get better. I purchased 5 OCZ drives two years ago and every single drive gave me problems. Constant disconnections. Reboots, drive failures etc.
Deal Expert
Mar 23, 2004
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Gee wrote: I suggest you ditch the drive. OCZ drives are bad news

When Toshiba acquired OCZ, I thought things would get better. I purchased 5 OCZ drives two years ago and every single drive gave me problems. Constant disconnections. Reboots, drive failures etc.
Out of:
Vertex 60GB
Vertex 2 60GB
2x Vertex 3 120GB
2x Agility 3 60GB
Vector 150 240GB
Vector 180 120GB

Out of the 7 drives, only two were purchased after the Toshiba buyout (the Vectors) and even then the Vectors are both OCZ designs based on Barefoot 3 M00 with the 150 just being the later edition with the post-Toshiba label on it and the 180 being a full "Toshiba-era" drive but still the same as the 150 with just the PFM+ addition and the ShieldPlus warranty.

Never a problem with any of them and all are still working fine. Only minor exception is the Vertex 2's small incompatibility with Haswell and later PCHs, but this only affects it as a boot drive and given it affects all SF-12xx drives, not really a specific failure on OCZs part.

Any SSD (or drive for that matter) can give you problems. OCZ is hardly the "bad news" people make them out to be. I've even heard of the "almighty" :rolleyes: Samsung drives failing too, so it's not like we can't talk about other brands' failures either.

Before just concluding "oh it's OCZ" and ditching the SSD, keep in mind there's other areas of failure that are a possibility. If there's another SSD on hand, by all means swap it to try it out but if there are other components to swap don't just rule those out either.
Deal Expert
Aug 2, 2004
38385 posts
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East Gwillimbury
One quick way to determine the issue is to swap out the drive with any drive you have on hand. Even a 5400 RPM notebook drive will do.

I am inclined to say it is the drive based on my experiences but I'm sure not all the drives are duds.

If swapping out the drive resolves the problem, then you know the cable, power supply etc is working properly. The reason why I push the drive is because when I had issues, I thought it was everything but the drive and I wasted days and weeks tracking down the problem. In the end, it was the drive for me. Every time.
Deal Fanatic
Apr 20, 2011
7747 posts
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ON
ES_Revenge wrote: ...
Never a problem with any of them and all are still working fine.
...
Any SSD (or drive for that matter) can give you problems. OCZ is hardly the "bad news" people make them out to be. I've even heard of the "almighty" :rolleyes: Samsung drives failing too, so it's not like we can't talk about other brands' failures either.

Before just concluding "oh it's OCZ" and ditching the SSD, keep in mind there's other areas of failure that are a possibility. If there's another SSD on hand, by all means swap it to try it out but if there are other components to swap don't just rule those out either.
My vertex is still running today. Shouldn't be possible if you believe everything you read on the internet ;)
Of course, it's mostly useless at only 60GB capacity after 7 years, but it still runs Windows on my secondary computer.
The only time it disappeared in BIOS was when the SATA cable was loose. Replaced it with the locking style and back in business.

Cable is cheapest/easiest place to start.
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Dec 1, 2010
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ES_Revenge wrote: Out of:
Vertex 60GB
Probably the best SSD I owned in my entire life. Went through 3 OSes on this thing. XP, Vista, 7 on a non-AHCI motherboard running it in IDE mode SATA II/3Gbps always leaving only a few gigs of free space. Sometimes would even get no hard disk space messages. LOL.

Eventually I ran out of write cycles, the controller didn't die, unlike my Samsuck EVO. Great drives, shame the NAND was completely written off. :( My first SSD purchase, expensive as hell too as I recall.
Deal Expert
Mar 23, 2004
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heyyahblah wrote: Probably the best SSD I owned in my entire life. Went through 3 OSes on this thing. XP, Vista, 7 on a non-AHCI motherboard running it in IDE mode SATA II/3Gbps always leaving only a few gigs of free space. Sometimes would even get no hard disk space messages. LOL.

Eventually I ran out of write cycles, the controller didn't die, unlike my Samsuck EVO. Great drives, shame the NAND was completely written off. :( My first SSD purchase, expensive as hell too as I recall.
Out of curiosity did the Vertex stop working after you ran out of write cycles? Or did go into read-only or something?

Funny enough my original Vertex was used probably the least of all the above. I got it after the Vertex 2 and it was mainly used as a car SSD for music (so very little writes, it was used daily for reads but only writes once in a while for updates) but then--I can't remember why--but I started using one of the Agilitys for that purpose and then the Vertex did nothing up until recently where I used it temporarily on a new build to install Windows and do stability testing. I upgraded it to the "special" Arowana firmware just a couple weeks ago, not realising this had been released for these old-skool Barefoot drives.
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ES_Revenge wrote: Out of curiosity did the Vertex stop working after you ran out of write cycles? Or did go into read-only or something?

Funny enough my original Vertex was used probably the least of all the above. I got it after the Vertex 2 and it was mainly used as a car SSD for music (so very little writes, it was used daily for reads but only writes once in a while for updates) but then--I can't remember why--but I started using one of the Agilitys for that purpose and then the Vertex did nothing up until recently where I used it temporarily on a new build to install Windows and do stability testing. I upgraded it to the "special" Arowana firmware just a couple weeks ago, not realising this had been released for these old-skool Barefoot drives.
It went into a read-only state. I noticed because I started to get blue-screens at boot in a loop at of no where, drive was still detected in BIOS. Had a backup so tried to do image restore, stuck at 0%, thought the image was bad so decided to do fresh install, would lock up/boot loop install screen. Restored image to a mechanical drive, computer booted up and worked just fine. So I figured the SSD was toast.

I threw it in an enclosure and managed to run CrystalDiskInfo x64 and came up as Health Status Bad 0% E9 Remaining Life: Current 0, Worst, 0, Threshold 0, Raw Values 000000000000

I was able to open it up in Windows explorer a few times after that but it was agonizingly slow like worse then USB 1.1 slow. Tried to copy on it, error msgs, tried to copy off sometimes would go, sometimes would fail, other times would just completely freeze explorer (not responding). But Windows and Linux did see it, as well as the BIOS, and I was able to see files. But I figured it was dying. As it got worse and worse to try to even read from it. Just eventually gave up, took it apart to see what it looks like on the inside then scrapped it.
Deal Expert
Feb 29, 2008
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ES_Revenge wrote: Out of curiosity did the Vertex stop working after you ran out of write cycles? Or did go into read-only or something?

Funny enough my original Vertex was used probably the least of all the above. I got it after the Vertex 2 and it was mainly used as a car SSD for music (so very little writes, it was used daily for reads but only writes once in a while for updates) but then--I can't remember why--but I started using one of the Agilitys for that purpose and then the Vertex did nothing up until recently where I used it temporarily on a new build to install Windows and do stability testing. I upgraded it to the "special" Arowana firmware just a couple weeks ago, not realising this had been released for these old-skool Barefoot drives.
Interesting. I juts built a new Ubuntu server this week I pulled out an old SSD from the closet for the boot drive. I had a vertex 128gb Barefoot sitting in a box, as well as an old x25-M that belonged to my father. Both drives are at least 8 years old. Both had excellent SMART parameters. I remembered the flakiness of the old Indilinx drives, so decided to use the x25-m for the build. maybe should have pulled out the OCZ.

Anyone know what the lifespan of these drives is, assuming you don't hit the write limit?
Banned
Sep 16, 2006
1010 posts
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Barrie, ON
change SATA cable. If this does not solve anything, change sata port. Still nothing? Change SATA power cable to a different one from your power supply (if this is a laptop none of those are possible).

Honestly though that machine is horribly obsolete. You should really replace the whole thing when you can afford it.
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Aug 15, 2013
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Mistersprinkles wrote: Honestly though that machine is horribly obsolete. You should really replace the whole thing when you can afford it.
Might keep it until Icelake, right now, there are no mATX Kaby Lake motherboards with HDMI 2.0
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Mar 23, 2004
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TruBrush wrote: Might keep it until Icelake, right now, there are no mATX Kaby Lake motherboards with HDMI 2.0
Icelake is a long ways a way. You still have the "let's-rehash-this-again" Coffee Lake to wait through, and then Cannonlake thereafter. I'd imagine Icelake won't come about in reality until 2019-2020.

And really there are none? That's weird, 'cause I think there's ITX ones no? But then again mATX has become less popular in the last few years. It seems people either build 7-slot "monster" ATX or go with really compact ITX builds. Not many people care about the in-between.
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Feb 29, 2008
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ES_Revenge wrote:
And really there are none? That's weird, 'cause I think there's ITX ones no? But then again mATX has become less popular in the last few years. It seems people either build 7-slot "monster" ATX or go with really compact ITX builds. Not many people care about the in-between.
Just built an mATX PC, and I cut my thumb in the damn case cause it's so cramped. If did and mITX build I'd loose enough fingers to go on disability. Then the nut jobs in teh off topic forum would blast me for taking govt handouts. No thanks. mATX for me.
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Aug 15, 2013
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ES_Revenge wrote: Icelake is a long ways a way. You still have the "let's-rehash-this-again" Coffee Lake to wait through, and then Cannonlake thereafter. I'd imagine Icelake won't come about in reality until 2019-2020.
Some of us are getting a special kick out of using a pre-2009 hardware, so 2020 seems about right: q6600-4-gigs-ram-still-going-strong-1801281/

I might go as far as shooting for a life beyond silicon. Can you image upgrading a computer once per material? Like this is my silicon build, and that is my indium gallium arsenide rig.
Image
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Dec 3, 2005
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i have a similiar experience with my OCZ vertex 3 max iops drive. built a system few ago but hardly used it as it periodically shuts off, then the drive is missing.. decided to start using the system more recently and got to the point where the system shuts down every other day. changed the sata port, still have issues, changed the sata cable and was good for two weeks and started shutting off again. read that upgrading the firmware and enabling hot plug in bios would remedy the issue. found the latest FW to be 2.25 (for my drive) and installed the app to update however gaves me the message "command rejected by device". contacted OCZ (now Toshiba) not knowing if they would support such a legacy drive, but they were most helpful and pointed me a more updated FW 2.27B which is the latest and detailed instructions on how to the FW (not the tool that is found online).

sorry for the long winded story, but suggest you to check with them if its the most upto date FW and also enable hot plug if you can..

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