Vertex 4 refurbs on Scan - worth having 1/5 the warranty?

[nibbler]

Been looking on Scan recently on a whim to see what SSD prices are like - the vertex 4 refurbs are very cheap but offer only a 1 year warranty. I reckon most of these are likely to be RMAs and as such am a little hesitant about it all - what do you guys reckon?

[Saracen]

I guess it depends on the difference in price .... and I haven't looked.

I guess, in large part, my view is that they are generally expected to be pretty reliable, because no company that wants to stay in business offers a five year warranty if they expect to have to honour it. I'm sure that the normal calculation is that a manufacturer expects x% failure rate over 5 years, and they build the cost of that into the device price.

So ....

- the device appears likely to be inherently reliable, and
- most solid state devices either fail very quickly, or tend to last ages, and
- if you gave a 12 month warranty, that ought to cover the vast majority if "early" failures


Also, bear in mind that "refurbished" can mean a variety of things, from Distance Selling Act returns that have been repackaged to items where a failed part has been replaced and the drive, for all functional purposes, is 'new'.

So, personally the fact that a reputable product is "refurbished" wouldn't unduly worry me. And, after all, odds are in two or three years, you'll be wanting an upgrade to a bigger or faster (or both) drive anyway.

But .... I'm inherently pretty conservative about this kind of thing, and the reduction in warranty does undoubtedly increase the level of risk, so for me, it'd all be about how much of a reduction in price there was, both in percentage terms, and absolute terms.

I'm not sure it's helped much, that that's my opinion.

[realstock]

Unlike HDD, SSDs have a finite amount of writes. Because of this reason alone I would recommend against buying a SSD second hand.

I beleive that Intel offer a 5 year warranty on a range of their SSDs if your worried about lifespan.

[mikolaj87]

My m8 bought vertex 4 about 3-4 months ago and he had to rma it twice now. Only good experience I had with ssd from ocz was with my old vertex 2 and that is the one I would recommend you from the refurbs available online now.

[Agent]

No. Anything with "OCZ" and "SSD" in it's name should be thrown into the pits of hell.

They are the single, more unreliable brand when it comes to SSDs. Avoid if you value your data.

[nibbler]

It's £115 and I think it's a pretty hefty discount. Probably worth it if I go down that road I think given that there is still a 1 year warranty.

[Agent]

It's £115 and I think it's a pretty hefty discount.

While I don't really like just pointing people to Google, if you have a search around for OCZ and SSD experiences you'll understand why they are discounted so much. They have a terrible reputation along with bad reliability.

Ask yourself this: What use is the warranty if the drive dies unexpectedly? Sure, you can get it replaced, but what's the downtime cost for you? and potential data loss?

It wouldn't be worth it for me, but it's your call

[Saracen]

There seems to be two distinct issues going on here ...

1) Is the Vertex 4 a good, reliable drive, and worth buying?

2) Is the discounted, 'refurb' version a bargain, or a risk too far?

I use Crucial drives, so have no personal experience of tbe Vertex 4. But the tone of several posts above appears to answer Q1 with "no". If so, I'd say Q2 becomes irrelevant.

But if your conclusion on Q1 is 'yes', I refer back to my first post.

I must say, the comments above would make me wonder if I want to try the Vertex 4 at any price, even free, for much the reasons Agent gave .... my data, my time, hassle, inconvenience, etc.

But as he said, your call .... and your data.

[mikeo01]

As everyone has said above.

In fact warranty means nothing to me really; in terms of storage devices anyway. If it fails it fails, that means a pain in the back to restore everything and possible data loss.

Also if all your personal data goes, it makes it the most impacting and frustrating hardware failure.

I'd personally look for the most reliable SSD to date and spend the money for a new one if in your budget

[jimborae]

I would also echo Agent's opinion on OCZ SSD drives and have had personal experience of a Vertex 2 dying on me. The other question you need to ask is "is OCZ a company that will around in the near future to handle any warranty claims? " At the present time I would say this isn't all that clear.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/13/ocz_hercules/

[kompukare]

Hadn't read that registry article before. It did make me look up OCZ Wikipedia entry where I found this:
"The NASDAQ gave OCZ until September 16, 2013[11] to file its delayed earnings"
SOURCE: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da...d545638d8k.htm quoted in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCZ.

Well that's soon, so we'll see if anything else is going to happen. But yes a company with at best rather suspect quality control (and that's being generous) which also has accountancy shenanigans is a bit suspect. Their desire to be first with Sandforce hurt them a lot due to firmware bugs but (a) I've heard of lots of hardware failure with their drives too and (b) I've personally had a 50% failure rate with their PSUs (only bough two when they were on offer) and a 33% failure on the RAM.

So I'd probably stay away from these.

[nibbler]

Now that I think about it, I had a vertex 2E which broke on the person I sold it to.... Samsung more on the money then? Or how about Sandisk or Kingston - I probably value capacity over performance.

[jimborae]

Wouldn't/Couldn't recommend Kingston either as I had one of their cheap SSD's for my work laptop and that failed at the 5 month mark. I only use Samsung Crucial or Intel now.

[Agent]

I'm using 3 Kingstons right now without issues, but it's statistically irrelevant. All I can say from my forum /site reading is that there aren't any known issues with them that are unfixed. The V200+ (The plus is important - Sandforce) had some, but they were fixed (As much as they can be anyway).

[nibbler]

And what's the deal with Sandforce - they were unreliable?

[jimborae]

I'm using 3 Kingstons right now without issues, but it's statistically irrelevant. All I can say from my forum /site reading is that there aren't any known issues with them that are unfixed. The V200+ (The plus is important - Sandforce) had some, but they were fixed (As much as they can be anyway).

And guess which one I had????? The fix didn't stick

*Edit* Sorry it was the V200 I had not V200+. Bought it from Ebuyer after the deal was posted on HotUKdeals and I think you'll find there are number of us that ended having to RMA the drive within 12 months all with the same issue namely it wouldn't work after the PC went into sleep/hibernation.