Did you ask Ralph what he plans to do for all the shareholders he lied to and completely screwed over? For all that he talked about trimming the operation to improve overhead and being transparent to the shareholders, we now find out that the staff size is primarily the same and they never stopped burning through their cash developing new products for which they couldn’t produce. It defies logic how a CEO would continue to spend this kind of money without making a profit. The acquisition by Toshiba feels like a shady backroom deal that was a win for everybody but the shareholders. It was dishonest by Ralph and as their leader, it’s difficult to trust anything OCZ/Toshiba does in the future.
Unless something's changed, it uses Micron's 2-bit MLC 20nm 128Gb NAND. So yeah, technically that bit is off. I think the point Anand was meaning to get across was that the M500 is very competitive in price, or it was last I checked.
I highly doubt Toshiba will have 3D NAND early next year, this year they are shifting to their second gen 19nm node, next year they should go 15nm (or so). It would be surprising if they have any significant volume of 3D NAND before 2016. At least NAND prices this year seem likely to decline at a solid pace (unlike last year). Growth in smartphones and tablets is slowing so we might see some oversupply if NAND capacity goes up some 40%.
This is what they always say in the short term. Look at Skype and Microsoft. "We're not going to change anything. We're keeping things the same. Don't worry. Everything is going to be the same."
Now that Tony Bates is gone, the way is made clear to start tearing down the walls and smoosh that peanut butter together with that vaseline.
The same will happen to OCZ. It's inevitable. As soon as Toshiba sees what's working and what's not with OCZ, they'll cull away the extraneous and bring the small bits that work in-house. OCZ will cease to exist.
The world will be a little better off. OCZ is a blight, has been a blight since the early days of rip-off memory that wasn't even tested at its proper speeds, and continued to be a blight even after PC enthusiast sites were desperate for SSD's to be great and ignored all the signs of real problems from the vast majority of OCZ models released.
Even now, a lot of those sites ignore the rampant issues OCZ has had by recommending them because, "Yes, they had a lot of problems, but now they're fixed." They were always "fixed now" even though the next time you'd read about them, they were again "fixed now" because apparently they were broken the last time when we were told they were "fixed now."
So you'll forgive me if I don't wait until Toshiba grinds OCZ up into paste and rids themselves of all the people responsible for years and years of horrible products.
As this is my first post in this thread please allow me to identify myself as an OCZ Storage Solutions employee.
Hello HisDivineOrder, thank you for all your comments. OCZ has always been focused on delivering high performance and many of our products do indeed cater to high performance/enthusiast customers. The company has undergone many changes, especially over the last two years where there has been a large focus on delivering not just the highest performance but the highest quality as well. We believe that quality comes from the top, something that the new management put great emphasis on. This has included significant updates and investments in designing for quality, enhanced processes, the drive to bring controller and firmware technology in house, stringent vendor and NAND qualifications, enhanced testing/validation, as well as improvements in manufacturing. These changes have had a very positive effect and our current Vector and Vertex family of products exhibit a very low RMA rate, and we continually strive in all areas to deliver the best high performance SSDs to the client market. The combination with Toshiba enables us to further enhance our products with premium quality NAND, as well as earlier access to NAND during the development phase.
Should you have any product issues please do not hesitate to contact our customer service team who will be more than happy to support you. We appreciate all the support from all our valued customers as well as your feedback, all of which we will use to continually improve our service level and product offerings. Thanks.
Thanks for chiming in, it's always nice when a company engages the community.
First let me start off by saying that i have 8 OCZ drives and not one of them has failed. They are fast drives. (Here's a grievance for you: I purchased 2 vertex 3s for RAID the week they came out for $300 each, only to have the MAX IOPS version released a couple of weeks later for 20 bucks more. I'm digressing, but i never forgot that BS.)
Anyway, when the Vector was released the two primary marketing points were reliability and performance. The Vector came with a five year warranty, and we were led to believe that the new drive had gone through extensive validation and testing, but to be honest the reviews on Newegg didn't really bare this out. As of right now the 128GB model sits at 3 eggs out of five with an large number of those reviewers complaining of bricked drives. (If i recall the 512GB's reviews were even more dismal.)
To the extent that Newegg reviews can be used to gauge the reliability of hardware, what do you have to say about this situation? If you look at drive reviews for most other competitors, the averages just aren't that low. Look at Samsung or Intel drives and the ratings are almost universally outstanding.
This is what, i believe, the parent poster is referring to when he talks bout how the OCZ drives are "fixed now".
I am not trying to kick you guys while your down, i desperately want you to succeed, but you have a very bad perception problem that needs to be addressed sooner than later. Reading through those catastrophic reviews is harrowing for a guy like me who owns 2 extremely expensive Vectors, and to be honest i'm just sitting around waiting for them to fail. (I have a 1tb samsung EVO that i have complete confidence in, but nothing important is going on those Vectors.)
I bought my Vectors day one, given those reviews i wouldn't touch one now. But that's not the worst part for you as a company. The worst part is that, given those reviews after all that marketing talk about reliability and validation when the Vectors were first released, i'm not planning on buying another drive from you ever.
This is what you're up against and it's important that you understand the reality of the situation. Whatever you do do not reply back to this comment with your usual copy/paste response of how the Vector has "really low return rates" and is your "most reliable drive yet". True or not, none of that matters. What matters is _perception_ and the existence of those reviews after all the reliability hype has destroyed the OCZ brand in many people's eyes.
Please understand this it_is_crucial: Your reassurances of the Vectors reliability and low return rates mean _nothing_ at this point, so don't trot them out in response to this reply. Give me something new. Make me believe in OCZ again. Inspire me to go out and buy my ninth drive from you.
One problem with sale-site reviews is they can't take account of product evolution. SSDs improve over time with fw updates (and issues with fw have happened to every vendor, including Intel & Samsung) so today models like the Vertex4 are really good, and the older 2/3 are ok too (I have lots of them, no problems at all). Low ratings from the early days will put people off, when it may not reflect the current situation at all (and additional good ratings won't change the average much).
Thank you for both your feedback and your business. The Vector was the first SSD to utilize our proprietary Barefoot 3 controller and firmware and even in the original form the vast majority of users will experience no issues. However we did find that with certain power configurations if there was any interruption in power, whether that was an abrupt power cycle or an out of specification power surge the initial drives could potentially brick. There was nothing wrong with the hardware but we were able address this via firmware update. This is why the issue does not occur on later Vectors and other series drives that utilize this controller and firmware architecture. All customers that have updated even the very first Vector drives should not encounter any of the reported issues as a result of this power flux/interruption. The current Vector 150 Series ships with the same controller, latest firmware + Toshiba NAND, and does not exhibit this issue. As always if any customers experience this or have questions on how to update the firmware please do contact our customer service team.
We treat all issues seriously and when this issue was initially reported all firmware resources shifted to ensuring there was a quick way to address it even though the vast majority of customers would not be affected. More than anything else, what is “new” here is not only how products are developed and introduced (much more focused product line), but also how the team addresses issues if and when they do arise. Issues that have arisen in the past have all reinforced the fact that in order to address them quickly and support customers we needed to have more control over both the controller and firmware. Which is how we were able to address the very issue you mentioned in these end user reviews, and while we highly value these end user reviewers we also find that customers that have a great experience are much less likely to post than ones in need of support. Still, we welcome the opportunity to have a dialogue with all customers and users.
Thank you again for all your comments and we hope that moving forward we will have the opportunity to earn your business in the future.
Can you tell us when OCZ will issue a full recall for all Vertex 2 drives that had lower capacity and performance after the initial 25nm switch? So far, only customers that know about the fiasco are eligible for a replacement. Those who don't know that they have a duff drive may never contact you so it is up to you to ensure that none of these drives are in circulation
Not what I'd call a "duff" drive. I keep hunting for used Vertex2E units, they're ideal for older systems, testing, etc. I have more than 20 of them now.
I am one of the countless that were burned by OCZ, but it was their RAM that got me. I paid $110 for 2-2Gb sticks of 1066 memory and I had to loosen the timings dramatically to get it to run at that speed. Never once did they run at the rated speed, and eventually both sticks failed, but not before corrupting things badly. I regretted that purchase from the day I installed them, and that was in 2008. Zero OCZ components have been purchased by me since, and zero will be purchased in the future. I love competition, but OCZ certainly isn't providing any with their low quality products. If anything they are forcing consumers to go with the Samsungs and Intels of the world. My 2 cents.
One more thing, for what it's worth, I never posted a review on newegg either, so if you extrapolate the negative reviews x 100, then you are probably closer to the true number of burned consumers who never wasted the time to post a review. I'm not an OCZ basher, I just follow the old rule of screw me once.....
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hosps - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
Did you ask Ralph what he plans to do for all the shareholders he lied to and completely screwed over? For all that he talked about trimming the operation to improve overhead and being transparent to the shareholders, we now find out that the staff size is primarily the same and they never stopped burning through their cash developing new products for which they couldn’t produce. It defies logic how a CEO would continue to spend this kind of money without making a profit. The acquisition by Toshiba feels like a shady backroom deal that was a win for everybody but the shareholders. It was dishonest by Ralph and as their leader, it’s difficult to trust anything OCZ/Toshiba does in the future.Death666Angel - Saturday, March 8, 2014 - link
This is not a shareholder-protection site, it is dedicated to technology. What you are interested in is not covered by this site.A5 - Saturday, March 8, 2014 - link
Not to mention anyone holding OCZ stock after about 2011 or so should've known better. That company was in a death spiral for a long time.sheh - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
Isn't the M500 2-bit MLC rather than TLC?Homeles - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
Unless something's changed, it uses Micron's 2-bit MLC 20nm 128Gb NAND. So yeah, technically that bit is off. I think the point Anand was meaning to get across was that the M500 is very competitive in price, or it was last I checked.hojnikb - Saturday, March 8, 2014 - link
Yep, here in EU m500 is the cheapest drive u can get, even though it's using MLC flash.jjj - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
I highly doubt Toshiba will have 3D NAND early next year, this year they are shifting to their second gen 19nm node, next year they should go 15nm (or so). It would be surprising if they have any significant volume of 3D NAND before 2016.At least NAND prices this year seem likely to decline at a solid pace (unlike last year). Growth in smartphones and tablets is slowing so we might see some oversupply if NAND capacity goes up some 40%.
HisDivineOrder - Saturday, March 8, 2014 - link
This is what they always say in the short term. Look at Skype and Microsoft. "We're not going to change anything. We're keeping things the same. Don't worry. Everything is going to be the same."Now that Tony Bates is gone, the way is made clear to start tearing down the walls and smoosh that peanut butter together with that vaseline.
The same will happen to OCZ. It's inevitable. As soon as Toshiba sees what's working and what's not with OCZ, they'll cull away the extraneous and bring the small bits that work in-house. OCZ will cease to exist.
The world will be a little better off. OCZ is a blight, has been a blight since the early days of rip-off memory that wasn't even tested at its proper speeds, and continued to be a blight even after PC enthusiast sites were desperate for SSD's to be great and ignored all the signs of real problems from the vast majority of OCZ models released.
Even now, a lot of those sites ignore the rampant issues OCZ has had by recommending them because, "Yes, they had a lot of problems, but now they're fixed." They were always "fixed now" even though the next time you'd read about them, they were again "fixed now" because apparently they were broken the last time when we were told they were "fixed now."
So you'll forgive me if I don't wait until Toshiba grinds OCZ up into paste and rids themselves of all the people responsible for years and years of horrible products.
oczstoragesolutions - Tuesday, March 11, 2014 - link
As this is my first post in this thread please allow me to identify myself as an OCZ Storage Solutions employee.Hello HisDivineOrder, thank you for all your comments. OCZ has always been focused on delivering high performance and many of our products do indeed cater to high performance/enthusiast customers. The company has undergone many changes, especially over the last two years where there has been a large focus on delivering not just the highest performance but the highest quality as well. We believe that quality comes from the top, something that the new management put great emphasis on. This has included significant updates and investments in designing for quality, enhanced processes, the drive to bring controller and firmware technology in house, stringent vendor and NAND qualifications, enhanced testing/validation, as well as improvements in manufacturing. These changes have had a very positive effect and our current Vector and Vertex family of products exhibit a very low RMA rate, and we continually strive in all areas to deliver the best high performance SSDs to the client market. The combination with Toshiba enables us to further enhance our products with premium quality NAND, as well as earlier access to NAND during the development phase.
Should you have any product issues please do not hesitate to contact our customer service team who will be more than happy to support you. We appreciate all the support from all our valued customers as well as your feedback, all of which we will use to continually improve our service level and product offerings. Thanks.
BMNify - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
oczstoragesolutions:Thanks for chiming in, it's always nice when a company engages the community.
First let me start off by saying that i have 8 OCZ drives and not one of them has failed. They are fast drives. (Here's a grievance for you: I purchased 2 vertex 3s for RAID the week they came out for $300 each, only to have the MAX IOPS version released a couple of weeks later for 20 bucks more. I'm digressing, but i never forgot that BS.)
Anyway, when the Vector was released the two primary marketing points were reliability and performance. The Vector came with a five year warranty, and we were led to believe that the new drive had gone through extensive validation and testing, but to be honest the reviews on Newegg didn't really bare this out. As of right now the 128GB model sits at 3 eggs out of five with an large number of those reviewers complaining of bricked drives. (If i recall the 512GB's reviews were even more dismal.)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
To the extent that Newegg reviews can be used to gauge the reliability of hardware, what do you have to say about this situation? If you look at drive reviews for most other competitors, the averages just aren't that low. Look at Samsung or Intel drives and the ratings are almost universally outstanding.
This is what, i believe, the parent poster is referring to when he talks bout how the OCZ drives are "fixed now".
I am not trying to kick you guys while your down, i desperately want you to succeed, but you have a very bad perception problem that needs to be addressed sooner than later. Reading through those catastrophic reviews is harrowing for a guy like me who owns 2 extremely expensive Vectors, and to be honest i'm just sitting around waiting for them to fail. (I have a 1tb samsung EVO that i have complete confidence in, but nothing important is going on those Vectors.)
I bought my Vectors day one, given those reviews i wouldn't touch one now. But that's not the worst part for you as a company. The worst part is that, given those reviews after all that marketing talk about reliability and validation when the Vectors were first released, i'm not planning on buying another drive from you ever.
This is what you're up against and it's important that you understand the reality of the situation. Whatever you do do not reply back to this comment with your usual copy/paste response of how the Vector has "really low return rates" and is your "most reliable drive yet". True or not, none of that matters. What matters is _perception_ and the existence of those reviews after all the reliability hype has destroyed the OCZ brand in many people's eyes.
Please understand this it_is_crucial: Your reassurances of the Vectors reliability and low return rates mean _nothing_ at this point, so don't trot them out in response to this reply. Give me something new. Make me believe in OCZ again. Inspire me to go out and buy my ninth drive from you.
Again, thanks for engaging.
MrPoletski - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
Ouch.That's pretty blistering, they can't go and get these reviews pulled from Newegg can they.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
One problem with sale-site reviews is they can't take account of product evolution.SSDs improve over time with fw updates (and issues with fw have happened to
every vendor, including Intel & Samsung) so today models like the Vertex4 are
really good, and the older 2/3 are ok too (I have lots of them, no problems at all).
Low ratings from the early days will put people off, when it may not reflect the
current situation at all (and additional good ratings won't change the average much).
Ian.
oczstoragesolutions - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
Hello BMNify,Thank you for both your feedback and your business. The Vector was the first SSD to utilize our proprietary Barefoot 3 controller and firmware and even in the original form the vast majority of users will experience no issues. However we did find that with certain power configurations if there was any interruption in power, whether that was an abrupt power cycle or an out of specification power surge the initial drives could potentially brick. There was nothing wrong with the hardware but we were able address this via firmware update. This is why the issue does not occur on later Vectors and other series drives that utilize this controller and firmware architecture. All customers that have updated even the very first Vector drives should not encounter any of the reported issues as a result of this power flux/interruption. The current Vector 150 Series ships with the same controller, latest firmware + Toshiba NAND, and does not exhibit this issue. As always if any customers experience this or have questions on how to update the firmware please do contact our customer service team.
We treat all issues seriously and when this issue was initially reported all firmware resources shifted to ensuring there was a quick way to address it even though the vast majority of customers would not be affected. More than anything else, what is “new” here is not only how products are developed and introduced (much more focused product line), but also how the team addresses issues if and when they do arise. Issues that have arisen in the past have all reinforced the fact that in order to address them quickly and support customers we needed to have more control over both the controller and firmware. Which is how we were able to address the very issue you mentioned in these end user reviews, and while we highly value these end user reviewers we also find that customers that have a great experience are much less likely to post than ones in need of support. Still, we welcome the opportunity to have a dialogue with all customers and users.
Thank you again for all your comments and we hope that moving forward we will have the opportunity to earn your business in the future.
djscrew - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
Please tell me you're trolling...semo - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
Can you tell us when OCZ will issue a full recall for all Vertex 2 drives that had lower capacity and performance after the initial 25nm switch? So far, only customers that know about the fiasco are eligible for a replacement. Those who don't know that they have a duff drive may never contact you so it is up to you to ensure that none of these drives are in circulationmapesdhs - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
Not what I'd call a "duff" drive. I keep hunting for used Vertex2E units, they're ideal forolder systems, testing, etc. I have more than 20 of them now.
Ian.
fanofanand - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
I am one of the countless that were burned by OCZ, but it was their RAM that got me. I paid $110 for 2-2Gb sticks of 1066 memory and I had to loosen the timings dramatically to get it to run at that speed. Never once did they run at the rated speed, and eventually both sticks failed, but not before corrupting things badly. I regretted that purchase from the day I installed them, and that was in 2008. Zero OCZ components have been purchased by me since, and zero will be purchased in the future. I love competition, but OCZ certainly isn't providing any with their low quality products. If anything they are forcing consumers to go with the Samsungs and Intels of the world. My 2 cents.fanofanand - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
One more thing, for what it's worth, I never posted a review on newegg either, so if you extrapolate the negative reviews x 100, then you are probably closer to the true number of burned consumers who never wasted the time to post a review. I'm not an OCZ basher, I just follow the old rule of screw me once.....