OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30GXXX 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Pros: I've been using one for 4 years as the OS/boot drive on an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 system running Windows XP Pro with no problems. I mainly use this system for editing videos and the CPU, GPU, and hard drives often run at 100% for over 8 hours at a time. This is way beyond even the most extreme gaming systems, and Home and office computers don't even come close. I had over 30 years experience in computer hardware before I bought it but still read the OCZ furums for info. I offloaded most of the write operations from Windows XP and the internet browsers to a 10,000 rpm HDD to spare the SSD from the writes because this SSD is not good at that. As long as you know it's strengths and weaknesses and use it properly it will last. It's great for applications where you need to access random small files but limited writes. It's best used for storing small files that need quick access like a small web server or flight simulator programs.

Cons: It's a very early model SSD so you need to update the firmware before you use it. It has a slow write speed and won't hold up to constant write operations compared to newer SSD's. It's not a good choice for a system drive.

Other Thoughts: Read the OCZ forums about this drive and SSD's in general. Use them for applications where they are good. If you want an SSD for a system drive use an Intel SSD with an Intel controller but still make backups every day. If you want speed, buy an SSD with a Sandforce chip but don't use it as a system drive. Use it for storing programs/games on, and use two 10,000 rpm drives in a RAID 1 configuration for the system drive.

Pros: read/write speeds are what the claim to be. Much faster than normal hard drives, good price

Cons: bought 2 drives and one year later one dies, followed by the other within a week. I send both back and get 2 new drives overnight shipped from OCZ. 2 weeks pass and one of the 2 new drives fail. This time OCZ pays for return shipping and upgrades both drives to vertex 2-40gb drives. (they arent making these anymore) +2 eggs for OCZ being AWESOME hopefully these vertex 2 drives last longer.

Other Thoughts: OCZ is sending me the V2-40gb drive as a replacement because they "arent mass producing them anymore" So bear that in mind before you buy. I would HAPPILY buy from OCZ again and I recommend them to friends. Their RMA department is probably the nicest, easiest process i've used in 15 years of playing with hardware.

Pros: There are no pros to OCZ products unless you are USPS or an online backup provider, both of which are absolutely necessary in the case of OCZ SSDs.

Cons: The initial SSD I received was DOA. The replacement died after 4-5 months with absolutely no warning. I was using my email client and it suddenly stopped responding, as did all my other applications.
Clearly this company's total R&D and Quality Control budgets amount to exactly $0 per year and they don't care what rubbish they ship to customers.
(In case you are wondering I waited 4 days after the failure to calm down before writing this review.)
I will be asking for a refund, although I suppose I will be expected to pay return shipping again to replace one piece of junk with another. One more failure and RMA's will have cost me more than the initial purchase price.

Other Thoughts: I rely on Newegg to select quality vendors and products. I was failed miserably in this case.

Pros: Fast

Cons: I bought 4 of these drives originally and all 4 were defective OCZ replaced all 4 of them once already. Now, one of them just went stone cold dead, nothing. I have to say that buying these drives from OCZ has been a HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT! It has cost me a LOT of extra money in shipping them back and has cost me a LOT of wasted time diagnosing failures. OCZ, you guys have a very poor quality product.

Pros: Fast. Was reliable.

Cons: Small, died in 2.5 yrs

Other Thoughts: It finally died on me. I'm going to RMA it and use the replacement for my netbook and see how that goes.

Manufacturer Response:

We aplogize for the problem. Please visit the link below and create a support ticket to begin an RMA for a replacement drive. We are happy to offer setup advice to insure proper operation and reliability on our support forums at the link below. We care about our customers and are here to help. Thank you

External Link(s):

OCZ Support Page|

OCZ Support Forums|

Pros: Worked well while it lasted

Cons: Drive died after a few months on a low load.
Was using this drive to host a mc server and just failed less then an hr ago going to have to explain why the server is now down to all the players.

First I noticed a slight decline in speed then the drive started just going more and more downhill from there till now when I cant even start the server up and a read/write speed of 1.7Mbps.

Other Thoughts: Never buying another ocz product again Have had other problems with their ram before but decided to give a chance with their ssd.

You get what you pay for going to go buy a REAL ssd this time rather then waste my money on this and have more lost data.

Don't buy unless you don't care about your data

Manufacturer Response:

We aplogize for the difficulties. We will be happy to look over your setup and make suggestions to help with your issues. Please visit our support forums at the link below and post for assistance. You may also visit the 2nd link below and create a support ticket to arrange for an RMA. We care about our customers and are here to help. Thank you

External Link(s):

OCZ Support Forums|

OCZ Support Page|

Pros: everything its to do write.

Cons: had this drive everyday since 2009 now i read it runs even faster with a firmware update but i cant get it to update from a older 1275 version to 1.7 i would really like to know where or what i need to do to get to V1.7. tried it and it gives and error

Other Thoughts: besides that its awesome i paid twice as much as what is being asked now. but i love it , hopefully this drive doesnt ship with 1275

Manufacturer Response:

We aplogize for your update difficulties. Please visit our support forums at the link below and post for assistance. We care about our customers and will be happy to help you successfully perform the FW update. Thank you

External Link(s):

OCZ Support Forums|

Pros: The drives look to be very well constructed. Impressive performance on the older models. Black drives look wicked in a computer case.

Cons: I have 3 of these and 2 of them have already had to be RMA'd. OCZ products are not reliable and the cavalier attitude of their support staff is laughable. The 3 drives I had were older models with 135/230 R/W's. What does OCZ do to replace these drives? They send out drives that perform half as well. People, it only takes one inferior drive to screw up your RAID array.

Other Thoughts: Don't waste your time on OCZ products because they will burn you in the end.

Pros: Worked great when it did run. Any SSD is blazing fast compared to disk drives. I had no issues until it suddenly was undetectable leaving my data unrecoverable.

Cons: I had no warning before it failed. It caused my computer to pause for a bit during POST after it fails to be detected. I attempted to get it to work on 3 different computers and neither of them detect anything. I guess this means I get to take it apart and look inside!

Other Thoughts: I was doing my thing, went to work for 8 hours, and when I returned my computer couldn't detect it. I bought this on April 2, 2010. Probably reinstalled 4 operating systems on it through out its life and I used it daily. I loved this thing up until the moment it died. This was the first SSD I bought so I was skeptical, I kept all of my important files off of it.

Manufacturer Response:

We sincerely aplogize for the problem. Please visit the link below and create a support ticket to arrange for an RMA. We will be happy to assist you. Thank you

External Link(s):

OCZ Support Page|

Pros: Reads between 150 and 175MB/s on SATA II (3.0GB) Asus board pretty well. Nice box, cool sticker with it. Boot time is between 25 and 30 seconds (after post.)

It's an SSD, it's fast(ish).

Cons: While the speed is roughly (give or take) 3 times faster than a typical 7200 HDD, my 64GB Crucial I purchased on the egg is at least 25% faster than this. This drive seems like it needs a firmware update for more speed, but shipped with most recent version, unclear if an update is coming.

Looking back I think this drive is designed to SATA II only, double check that, as you might not gain any speed if you go to SATA III (6GB) at a later time.

Other Thoughts: If you're not too worried about the specific speed numbers, but are concerned about the price number - this is a good starter drive, and should be plenty for Win 7, so long as you drive as much other stuff as you can on secondary drives. Windows 7 Pro x64 is about 18GB fully installed.

First couple tries I thought maybe this item was DOA, but turned out to be a bad sata cable I had from previously - wish these drives actually shipped with a cable.

Also, disregard CRC warnings on HDTune, they're false positives per online forums.