SSD Manufacturer OCZ Preparing For Bankruptcy 182
JDG1980 writes "OCZ, a manufacturer of solid-state drives, says it will file for bankruptcy. This move is being forced by Hercules Technology Growth Capital, which had lent $30 million to OCZ under terms that were later breached. The most likely outcome of this bankruptcy is that OCZ's assets (including the Indilinx controller IP) will be purchased by Toshiba. If this deal falls through, the company will be liquidated. No word yet on what a Toshiba purchase would mean in terms of warranty support for OCZ's notoriously unreliable drives."
Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted (Score:5, Interesting)
I must have gotten some of the messed up drives you were supposed to. I bought 3 OCZ SSDs. All three different sizes, each purchased a few weeks apart. Within a year, and fairly close in time, all three died. Died as in DEAD, with no warning or indications of a problem. Not recognized by BIOS, not flashable, one smelled like burnt electronics, DEAD. OCZ happily replaced all of them. But I figured...this is either an unlikely coincidence or their drives suck. Rather than figure out the answer to that, I bought Crucial and Intel SSDs and all have been running for more than twice as long as the OCZ SSDs with no issues.
I knew it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:STILL not accurate and STILL misquoted (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:...and (Score:4, Interesting)
They had loads of issues with their early drives for a few years.
They got rid of the CEO, and changed their approach to quality, but it was too late. Their Vector drives are pretty decent, but they had no one to buy them.
Re:Rule of thumb for buying SSDs (Score:4, Interesting)
The controller chip and firmware.
Most of the controllers/firmware put out by OCZ seemed like beta.
"Anything for a good benchmark score" was their motto. If it was fast, it shipped. Reliability be damned.
Re:Warranties (Score:4, Interesting)
No problems with warranty service on our Toshiba CT scanners.
Re: ...and (Score:5, Interesting)
European retailers publish their return rates by brand, OCZ has consistently been #1 by a wide margin, sometimes having as high as one in five (that's 20% for those of you following along at home) return rates for some models, the brand as a whole has been at around 8% for almost two years now. They're ticking time bombs. By contrast, intel, samsung et all generally have a return rate around 2% which is standard for retail items in general. Something is obviously very wrong. Also you should note that OEMs do not touch OCZ products with a 20 ft pole, you can only buy them at retail which should be a huge red flag.
Re:Warranties (Score:4, Interesting)
Speaking of Toshiba and Canada... I live in Canada, and bought a Toshiba laptop in America after being assured by Toshiba (I called them) that the warranty was international and that I should have no problems at all getting it serviced if there was a problem. The text of the warranty also said as much. The only caveat, they said, was that I'd have to pay the shipping costs out of my own pocket, which was expected.
Fast forward a year and a half, and my laptop needs service. I call up Toshiba Canada, and not surprisingly they won't touch the thing because of where it was purchased. So then I call up Toshiba USA, and... they tell me their repair depot will refuse any packages shipped from outside the US. In fact, Toshiba tells me to find an American friend to ship it to and then have them ship it to Toshiba...
Needless to say, my replacement laptop was not a Toshiba.