Sandforce 2xxx

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madmattd
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Sandforce 2xxx

Post by madmattd »

I know of one or two of our members that purchased new SSD's based on the Sandforce 2200 controllers (OCZ Vertex 3/Corsair Force 3/etc). I hope you are aware that Corsair has recalled all of the 120GB drives based on this controller. http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... l-in-sight

Some interesting stuff in that thread. There is a ton online about this. The bottom line is that there are major issues with the new Sandforce drives, even worse than the 1200 series controllers that had their own issues (I'm holding my breath with the Vertex 2 in my desktop).

While only the 120GB Force 3 have been recalled so far, more is imminent. There are countless reports of BSOD and randomly dying drives based on the new Sandforce. FAR MORE than even with the earlier Sandforce which had a ton of failures as well.

OCZ has swept almost any hint that they might be affected here as well under the rug, which they are great at. This is after all the company that changed their Vertex 2 drives from 32nm to 24nm tech mid-production, without changing part numbers, despite significantly different performance between the 2 techs. Still advertising the older, faster, 32nm specs. (False advertising basically).

Personally I am staying FAR away from OCZ. I had trouble with my Vertex 2 initially, and their "support" was useless at best. I found Dell's Tech Support to be more informed and knowledgeable in my interactions with them recently. And most of you know I was pretty pissed off at Dell (and still am to an extent). OCZ is basically telling people having issues with drives that it has to be an issue with those peoples' hardware. Forget about the fact that it is happening on basically every type of system configuration out there.

I am seeing some rumors of legal action against all companies that used the barely (if at all) tested controllers. This is quickly becoming a major mess, Ive been quietly observing this for the last 2 weeks.

Good luck to those that have these new Sandforce-based drives. Me, I will be getting an Intel or Crucial/Micron drive for my laptop. I recently got to put a Intel 320 series 120GB drive in my work desktop (which btw blew the RAID 0 Velociraptors out of the water in responsiveness and speed), and it went flawlessly. My co-worker got a C300 128GB for his new desktop, that too went flawlessly. These 2 companies have over an order of magnitude lower DOA instances (around 0.5% versus ~2.5%) and also have proven reliability (again a magnitude of order or more lower failures down the road). Intel raised their warranty to 5 years shortly before this Sandforce fiasco.


TLDR: Sandforce 2200 fail. Stay with Intel and Crucial. They are just as fast anyway in incompressible data performance (which is more what you see in real life). And virtually no issues. They test stuff extensively, Sandforce doesn't.
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Mullet
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Re: Sandforce 2xxx

Post by Mullet »

I have been reading the same thing Mat. I am going with the Intel 510 120GB. They may not be the fastest but Intel drives are very reliable. I think OCZ is going to get burnt pretty good over this. HDD's are on there way out except for data storage. Right now I use maybe 40GB of space out of my WD 640.
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Re: Sandforce 2xxx

Post by Stephen »

see the thing is your only seeing a hand full of people who are getting bad drives, and i bet 75% of those people dont know how to properly install and maintain those drives using them as if they would use a regular hard drive.

and in the other hand are lots of people whos ssd's are just fine and arent complaining so you dont see a large discussion of there having no problems, and probably actually know how to use them properly.

i have a vertex 3 120gb max iops edition and havent had one hick up yet plus im on amd system with native sata3
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Re: Sandforce 2xxx

Post by madmattd »

Well Stephen, I have to disagree overall. Yes, you typically only hear about the issues. The fact is that the shear VOLUME of issues is staggering. Many of them are on their second or third SSD (of not more) and had no issues previously. I know such a person personally, he did everything by the book and still has BSODs coming out his ears (well, he RMAd it but yea).

Corsair is at least going in the right direction by admitting an issue and recalling some drives. I expect the rest of their Force 3 series to come shortly. They ADMITTED there is a big hardware and firmware issue. OCZ claims it is an issue with only 1% of their drives, which might be true but I highly doubt it given their history. They say they are working on a firmware only fix. Maybe that is all that is needed, but OCZ's firmware updater has a history of bricking drives (and I'm talking about those that follow OCZ's flashing instructions TO THE TEE, not the people that don't know jack).

Yes, there are people with no issues. Some had no issues initially but 2 months in, forget it. I sincerely hope you have no issues Stephen, but I would expect there to be a recall on all Sandforce drives very soon. The fact is that Sandforce is a company that has been around for maybe 2 years (less I think). They are small and have limited testing capabilities. Unlike Intel and Crucial/Micron.

If I wasn't using 100 GB now on my laptop's C drive (programs and Windows only), I'd get the 120GB Intel 510/320 or the m4 128GB. I'm probably going to get the Intel 320 160GB soon. It's far superior to the 510 series in random IOPS (especially on the Read end).

Mullet, the thing is that the Intel drives are right there with the Sandforce drives in incompressible performance, which I say matters more than compressible anyway. There is little performance difference between the "top" SSD and the mid-tier which Intel is above anyway.

I will NEVER buy an OCZ product again after their treatment of me with my Vertex 2. It refused to boot in AHCI mode before Windows installation. It worked fine in IDE. OCZ told me to buy a new motherboard. Apparently a mainstream x48 chipset barely 2 years old is too old for them. I basically told them to shove it. I installed in IDE mode and did the BIOS switch instead. After the initial blue screen, all was fine.
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Re: Sandforce 2xxx

Post by Mullet »

Wait till these puppies hit the market!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4452/inte ... ifications
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Re: Sandforce 2xxx

Post by Stephen »

its not like its ocz or crucial's fault that there are some faulty sandforce controllers.
and sandforce worked with ocz on the vertex drives so there probably less prone to the problem.

and now that ocz owns indellix they probably wont be using sandforce after the current drives.
and mine never installed in ahci mode either but after changing the registry and bios again it booted into it no problem
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Re: Sandforce 2xxx

Post by madmattd »

Stephen wrote:mine never installed in ahci mode either but after changing the registry and bios again it booted into it no problem
Gotta love that one. I've used both Crucial and Intel drives when helping others with their systems, and they worked in AHCI right out of the box. No screwing around with it. That right there is a win.

Those 700 Intels are nice, but stay away if you are looking for a laptop one, lol. Sucks way more power than any other SSD. Actually, the 710 doesn't even look that hot. Mediocre random reads, terrible random writes, marginally better write speed, mediocre read speed. The PCI one, however, looks like it is aiming at the Revodrive. Nice. Gonna cost some serious coin though.
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Re: Sandforce 2xxx

Post by Stephen »

it did the same with my intel x-25 80gb
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Re: Sandforce 2xxx

Post by madmattd »

Ordered a Crucial M4 today, got an awesome deal on it. 10% coupon and Newegg PAID ME $13 to get a Windows 7 Home Premium -> Professional Upgrade with it (combo deal ftw). Since I refused to pay Dell the extra $160 or whatever ripoff it was for Premium, that was a nice bonus. Free is good, less than free is just awesome. I was just going to get the 160GB Intel, but yea.

More and more bad news about the Sandforce 2200 drives every day. I thought there were issues with them in gen 1, but wow, way more now! OCZ has apparently released a new firmware that alleges to fix the BSODs, but most people seem to still be getting plenty of them. If the horrible firmware updating of OCZ's didn't just outright brick their drive that is.
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