# Vertex 4 Sudden Death Syndrome



## Hood (Oct 12, 2012)

Anyone had any luck with Vertex 4 drives? My 128 GB version lasted 15 days before it just left the building while my machine was running at idle, shut down by itself and never booted again, no drive recognized in BIOS.  I had used only 15% of the drive, just running Windows 7 64bit and a few programs.  Luckily I had purchased it locally and was able to return it under their 30 day return policy.  While there, I chatted with one of the sales staff about which brands and models were being returned a lot, and he admitted that a lot of Vertex 4's were being returned in the first 30 days with the same problem.  He also said that Vertex 3's had the same problem a year ago, but were now okay.  We talked about speed vs reliability and he even knew the names of the different controllers and their associated problems. So when he said that he couldn't remember ANY Crucial M4 drives being returned, I said "I'll take it!" - so far so good.  The speeds are not as high as the Vertex 4, esp. the write speed, but it still feels fast, and more importantly, it just feels more stable, consistent, and predictable, even at a 4.4 GHz overclock.  The OCZ drive never felt the same twice running and you couldn't ever predict how fast it was going to work.  Hopefully this Crucial drive will last a long time - I get tired of reloading Windows and everything else every 2 weeks!


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## Mussels (Oct 12, 2012)

my vertex II lasted only 3 months.


SSD's dont give warning  signs like mechanical drives, they just up and die.


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## Nordic (Oct 12, 2012)

That alone reduces my ssd choices to samsung and crucial m4


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## Flibolito (Oct 12, 2012)

james888 said:


> That alone reduces my ssd choices to samsung and crucial m4



yup I love my M4s but I think im going to try out a 840 pro soon when they come out.
All my crucials have been 100% perfect for over 1 year.


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## Hood (Oct 12, 2012)

Mussels said:


> SSD's dont give warning signs like mechanical drives, they just up and die.



Why do they all have the Mean Time Between Failure spec at 2 million hours?  That's over 228 years!  What a joke!  No SSD lasts more than 5 or 6 years as far as I know, and many don't last a month, so how do they calculate this ridiculous figure?


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## Delta6326 (Oct 12, 2012)

The crucial m4 is a great reliable drive, it's not the fastest, but its one of the top most reliable ones. The best performance and reliability is the Sammy 830 and hopefully the all new 840.



Hood said:


> Why do they all have the Mean Time Between Failure spec at 2 million hours?  That's over 228 years!  What a joke!  No SSD lasts more than 5 or 6 years as far as I know, and many don't last a month, so how do they calculate this ridiculous figure?




Those are theoretical figures it would never happen.


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## Mussels (Oct 12, 2012)

Hood said:


> Why do they all have the Mean Time Between Failure spec at 2 million hours?  That's over 228 years!  What a joke!  No SSD lasts more than 5 or 6 years as far as I know, and many don't last a month, so how do they calculate this ridiculous figure?



they're based on the flash memory. its the controllers that are dying.


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## Velvet Wafer (Oct 12, 2012)

Hood said:


> Why do they all have the Mean Time Between Failure spec at 2 million hours?  That's over 228 years!  What a joke!  No SSD lasts more than 5 or 6 years as far as I know, and many don't last a month, so how do they calculate this ridiculous figure?



for my vertex 3, its actually 10 years till total failure (down to 8.8 here) already killed 2-3 indilinx barefoot drives long before that, and they always showed their lifetime correctly, nearly exactly to the date predicted by ssdlife, even tho their lifetime was only about 9 months for the 32gb version, as predicted.of course that does not account for premature controller failure, but as long as it does not fail, this should be its realistic running time.
 i dont know where you got your numbers from, 228 seems a LITTLE too high


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## Hood (Oct 12, 2012)

Flibolito said:


> yup I love my M4s but I think im going to try out a 840 pro soon when they come out.
> All my crucials have been 100% perfect for over 1 year.



I'm so glad to have that confirmation; Thank You!  Now I feel even better about my choice of the M4.  I would much rather have reliability than speed, but I'm always on the lookout for a drive that can do both.  I had hopes for the Corsair Neutron GTX series, because they are wicked fast, but I see almost 35% negative reviews from people who bought one (DOA's, bluescreens, sudden-death-syndrome, etc.).  So I believe you are right - the Samsung drives seem to be the only viable upgrade path for now and they're unproven - but then again so are all other new drives until they have at least a year behind them without a significant percentage of failures.  If anyone comes out with a super fast and super reliable drive, their corporate future is assured.


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## Hood (Oct 12, 2012)

Mussels said:


> they're based on the flash memory. its the controllers that are dying.



I think you're right, it's the controllers that go south in a sudden failure, but as I understand NAND flash chips, after x number of re-writes to each block, it performs slower until eventually it's about as slow as a hard drive or slower.  But the 2 million dollar question is, can anyone design a controller chip to last long enough to wear out the NAND chips?


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## jihadjoe (Oct 12, 2012)

I have a rather old Intel SSD 320. Never gave me any problems.

For something as critical as a drive I'd tend to go with companies with a solid track record. For SSDs that would be Intel and Samsung. The X25s and 810s/820s have pretty much proven themselves in the enterprise so I have no trouble giving money to their makers.

Crucial seems to be getting pretty good rep with their M4s, meanwhile feedback on OCZ has been nothing but bad.


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## Steevo (Oct 12, 2012)

I love my Agaility 3 drives. Once firmware and a bit of tweaking sorted some issues I have not had a single issue with them.


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## OneMoar (Oct 12, 2012)

Mussels is correct:
they need to make ssd's with changeable controller boards its not the NAND its self that's self destructing but the controllers never buy anything OCZ all there ssds are garbage every drive they release has firmware issues or suddenly self destructs
your choices are in order from best to meh,
intel:
samsung:
Kingston:
pretty much anything that isn't sandforce is ok in my book
sandforce needs to die its bloody garbage when it comes to reliability
a drive that gives me 600MB/s but will only last a year at the most is absolutely useless 
ill take the drive that _only_ gives me 350-450Mbs get two of them and run them in raid 0 =/
a friend of mine went though 6 Vertex III drives in the coarse of two years he finally gave up and bought a intel 520


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## Jstn7477 (Oct 12, 2012)

My Corsair Force 3 120GB has been flawless for a year, even with nearly 10TB reads/writes. They seem to be one of the good vendors of SandForce SSDs. My parents also have a Crucial M4 64GB and while it is slower, it has been just as reliable as my Corsair.


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## OneMoar (Oct 12, 2012)

A ssd should always be paired with a 7200RPM or better platter disk with at least 64MB of cache
setup a backup-suite to image the ssd onto the platter drive every week and you won't need to be worried about it 

SSD's are disposable anyone running a SSD AND NOT doing weekly backups is asking for the dataloss gremlin to pay them a visit and I hope they get one
the reason for getting the platter drive with a large cache is that its less stress on the ssd and reduces lagg whilst running a backup AND doing something else

the setup I built for a friend is as follows
Samsung MLC SSD 2X80GB raid 0
Western Digital WD RE4 WD1003FBYX 1TB X2 Raid 1


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## Shurakai (Oct 12, 2012)

OneMoar said:


> Mussels is correct:
> they need to make ssd's with changeable controller boards its not the NAND its self that's self destructing but the controllers never buy anything OCZ all there ssds are garbage every drive they release has firmware issues or suddenly self destructs
> your choices are in order from best to meh,
> intel:
> ...



Don't forget Crucial, none of that sandforce crap and personally I've never had a single one die, 5 in various machines with near 2 years on the clock.

I went through so many Vertex 3's and Agility 3's before I bit the bullet and tried out Crucial for the first time, good times.


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## Novulux (Oct 12, 2012)

Had mine for 2 months now, I'll be sure to post should it die on me.


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## Steevo (Oct 12, 2012)

OneMoar said:


> Mussels is correct:
> they need to make ssd's with changeable controller boards its not the NAND its self that's self destructing but the controllers never buy anything OCZ all there ssds are garbage every drive they release has firmware issues or suddenly self destructs
> your choices are in order from best to meh,
> intel:
> ...



You do know that Kingston uses sandforce, and Indillix is just a Marvell chip that has been overclocked and a new firmware written right?


Please, stop talking trash about, you know a guy, who knows a guy. SSD's are still not quite mainstream, and as such you should expect to need to configure and tweak them to get the performance, or durability. Then factor in that some users still don't get how and what a SSD is and does for them other than ohh, it goes faster.....


SSD's have parts that fail, but unlike a mechanical HDD where if a bearing starts to fail and causes the disks to vibrate, spin at an incorrect RPM, or lockup there are no mechanical parts to replace. I think of them like a laptop battery, when its dead, its dead. Performance will probably decline first, but it will die. 

Once you have gotten past the fact it will die, unlike most computer components, just factor if you are comfortable paying that much for the performance and risk, and what your threshold for failure is and the backups.


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## Liquid Cool (Oct 12, 2012)

As I mentioned in another thread...I had a laptop with a bad motherboard(HP 8510p) pushing insane voltage into one of my Samsung 830's.   It finally fried the controller of the 830, but it actually still worked for quite awhile...long enough to get the data off of it.  Tough little bugger in my opinion...and again I'll mention Samsung actually overnighted the replacement.  They offered, I didn't ask.

I'm sold on these Samsung drives, I'm hoping the 840's are just as reliable.

Best,

LC


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## OneMoar (Oct 12, 2012)

Steevo said:


> You do know that Kingston uses sandforce, and Indillix is just a Marvell chip that has been overclocked and a new firmware written right?
> 
> 
> Please, stop talking trash about, you know a guy, who knows a guy. SSD's are still not quite mainstream, and as such you should expect to need to configure and tweak them to get the performance, or durability. Then factor in that some users still don't get how and what a SSD is and does for them other than ohh, it goes faster.....
> ...



O good lord .... 
I trash talk based on experiences both systems i use regularly just because they aren not at my home does not mean I don't configure/fix/tweak on them regularly> who the hell do you think replaced all 6 vertex drives and installed the 520.... 
yes all hardware fails but I have not had a mechanical drive(that I have installed) fail on me (from natural causes) in over 7 years the oldest drive I own is from 1996 and it still functions perfectly you are right SSD's ARENT ready for general use there getting there ... but not yet ... hence the recommendation to make sure you are running at a scheduled backup and last I checked kingston was using the Marvell controllers still overclocked or otherwise Marvell has been around a lot longer then OZC and its not "overclocking" if they come from the factory like that 
to further take apart your post
bearings in hard drives don't fail the """bearing"" are usually the last thing to go 80% of the time is the controller the rest is usually servo/r/w head related. out of the 100's of dead hard drives I have seen I have seen ma-by 20 where the bearings them selves have gone bad (motor != bearing)
[trolling]sheesh you think people on this board would learn that I know everything and not attempt to argue with me [trolling/]
unsub in 3 . 2 1 .......


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## Steevo (Oct 12, 2012)

If i came across harsh I didn't mean to. 

Anytime anyone starts trash talking any component like HDD/SSD I almost always refer them to the Google study on hard drive failures.


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