What's killing my SSDs?

[FattyDave]

I remember ordering all my new computer parts and being very excited! Excited is an emotion I no longer have...

 

My Rig:

 

Case:                     NZXT Phantom 630

Motherboard:         MSI Z77A-GD65

CPU:                      Intel 3770K (stock fan)

RAM:                      2x8GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 1866Hz

GPU:                      Sapphire HD7850 2GB

SSD:                      2x OCZ Vector 128GB

PSU:                      Corsair AX860

 

The History:

 

Once all the part's eventually arrived assembly went fine. Got the RAID0 working with my ssds and installed windows. All seemed well...One thing I did notice (I think this had started happening by this point) often on reboot windows would try and run a Check disk. On the times I caught it I skipped it, but on other times with the ssds it was so fast it didn't matter. and it found no issues

 

Problem 1: About 4 days in, I went to turn on my PC; I believe it had shut down the night before following updates. It was stuck in a boot cycle; I would later find it had a common problem with the board Error 55, which has something to do with the CPU talking to the RAM. This was annoying, but it happens I thought. Was still within the first 28 days so I sent it back to retailer, they were then out of stock so I got a refund and bought the same board from scan.co.uk.

 

Stuck the new board in, switched it to RAID0 and it booted straight in, happy!

 

Problem 2: Come home; turn on computer from shutdown night before. Won't boot windows. Go in to Bios, can only see one Vector. After obvious cable swapping and trouble shooting, pull the drive out, hook it up via USB to my laptop. Nada. Dead drive. Very annoyed! more so that I hadn't backed it up yet. :(. Forums indicate that it's dead and only solution is an RMA. I do just that.

 

New drive arrives seems to work fine. During my research of the dead drive I found some people suggesting a firmware update stopped this from happening. So first step was update both drives to the latest firmware.

 

Stick them both in case, using a new Molex - 2 SATA Power adaptor I bought to assist with cable management. Install windows all working great. Slight problem I notice is that when opening 'playback devices' it takes minutes to open, which is annoying for switching from analogue speakers to my digital headphones.

 

Problem 3: Install steam, install far cry click play! Finally some excitement. Wrong! Hit an error message about some .dll not being found. (Can’t remember). Think I find a program in add/remove program that relates to that dll. Uninstall that and it gets me past that error. But game crashes when loading. Good leads me to loads of posts from when the game first came out but all seem to speak of waiting for a patch for a compatibility issue. I know it can't be a compatibility issues as I was playing no problems before my vector failed so I decide my only option is a fresh install.

 

Format drive and reinstall windows, go direct to installing steam & far cry this time, and it works! Great! Time to play! Go to switch it to headphones and I still have the slow playback devices menu. Quick Google suggests disabling the AMD HD audio device in device manager will fix it! Great, there are 2 to choose from. Pick one and it prompts a restart. Fine....

 

Problem 4: ...get to windows logo....BSOD. Doh! Start up repair can't fix it. No restore points to get back to. Decide to reinstall again. Think this time maybe I get in to windows. Restart and it blue screens. Strangely the keyboard starts to not work during this. It doesn't bring up numlock light on boot and won't let me in to the bios. Get an old PS2 keyboard and that works a bit more but still not quite right. Return from work today with a plan of action. I planned to try once more with a fresh install, and then try just installing on 1 drive and see if either work....many plans.

 

Problem 5: When I arrive at my desk to begin my plans, it won't boot....go to Bios and we've gone 3 steps back! Only one ssd showing in bios. Jump straight to taking it out and plugging it in to laptop. Nothing. It seems to be dead.

 

And that's my story.

 

The Question: Can I really be that unlucky? Is there some underlying problem here that is breaking my drives? The PSU perhaps?

 

I'm guessing I'm going to have to RMA the ssd again. I installed the remaining ssd in the system last night and installed windows on it, seemed to work fine. A little worried that if there is a problem with another component I might be damaging stuff by using it now.

 

Any advice & suggestions would be much appreciated. Sorry for the essay!

 

Thank You

 

 

 

[Warcony]

Hm, maybe some weird power issues going on but you replaced your mobo and it still happened so that makes it an unlikely suspect.

 

Check your voltages in the bios ( 3.3v 5v and 12v). This will make sure there aren't any obvious issues with the psu or mobo.

 

Also make sure you are running the 2 ssds off the intel chipset and not the 3rd party chipset sata ports. 

 

Otherwise it might just be bad luck with OCZ.

 

I'll think about it some more and post again if I think of something else.

[Hyydrah]

I suspect that the drives are to blame.

 

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227915&Tpk=ocz%20vector%20128gb&IsVirtualParent=1

[TyagoDani]

it can be the motherboard controller that is killing the ssd's and doing this big mess, but that's unlikely thought...

[Warcony]

I suspect that the drives are to blame.

 

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227915&Tpk=ocz%20vector%20128gb&IsVirtualParent=1

 

Yea, the vector doesn't seem to be a very reliable drive but 2 of them dying so quickly is odd.

[TyagoDani]

hum... aparently the drive has a HUGE failure rate... i think you should return them and buy another pair of drives. i suggest 840 pro's

[TyagoDani]

Yea, the vector doesn't seem to be a very reliable drive but 2 of them dying so quickly is odd.

can just be bad luck

[Warcony]

^ or just the regular 840s. Both are way better than the vector

[TyagoDani]

^ or just the regular 840s. Both are way better than the vector

yeah but with all this i would go with the pro's for more reliability

[Forza-x73]

Meh, vectors aren't reliable, I suspect it's the drives,  do you have an option to get the new ones and test those out? You should do that...

[jamesisninja]

Yeah, I'm with everyone else Vectors are ALWAYS on sale, and refurbed ones are always available, which means people return them a lot, and they aren't really selling at retail price often, since they get such awful reviews. Get a better brand of SSDs, I personally trust Samsung since friends have had no problems with their 830s & 840s

[FattyDave]

Thank you all for your replies. Apologies for not updating sooner.

 

I followed the advice above an checked the voltages on the bios. All pretty much spot-on and well within the tolerances.

 

I have RMA'd the ssd and will hopefully be sent a new sealed one. Which I will sell. 

 

Agreed on the 840s, how I received the vectors is a long story! I originally order 2 agilities but was sent the vectors at that price after a mess up their end. So I should make some profit on them and that will go towards a couple of 256GB 840 pros.

 

thanks again for everyone's contribution and advice.

[Warcony]

Thank you all for your replies. Apologies for not updating sooner.

 

I followed the advice above an checked the voltages on the bios. All pretty much spot-on and well within the tolerances.

 

I have RMA'd the ssd and will hopefully be sent a new sealed one. Which I will sell. 

 

Agreed on the 840s, how I received the vectors is a long story! I originally order 2 agilities but was sent the vectors at that price after a mess up their end. So I should make some profit on them and that will go towards a couple of 256GB 840 pros.

 

thanks again for everyone's contribution and advice.

 

Good to hear! Hope everything moves fast so you can get those 840s!