Regular readers will know of the challenge submitted to KitGuru by OCZ – to kill 5 of their ARC 100 Solid State Drives. If you need a recap, then head back to this page posted on December 10th.
Since then, we have been stress testing the drives to see if they would pass the 22TB warranty mark. When we last updated the videos on December 17th, two of the five drives had passed the 22TB mark, and on Christmas day, the other three passed the warranty point.
Read original ‘challenge' editorial on 10th December, HERE.
Read 17th December 2014 ‘challenge' update, HERE.
Leo sent over a video on Christmas day detailing how each of the drives has progressed so far, and we will keep updating these pages until all five drives die – we have no idea how long they will last, but it will be interesting. OCZ are hoping that this test will go some way to repair their reputation which suffered in previous years after well known problems with the Sandforce 2281 controller. OCZ no longer use this controller and have introduced a new ‘ShieldPlus Warranty System' to reassure customers.
The ‘ShieldPlus Warranty system’ eliminates the requirement for ‘proof of purchase’ … if a drive fails. A brand new SSD is shipped to the OCZ customer of the same capacity, in advance. When the replacement is received by the customer they then can then send their old faulty drive back with a prepaid envelope. Yes it all does seem too good to be true, but we can’t find any catch.
Anyway, be sure to check KitGuru regularly for updates on this OCZ ‘death test’. This is the first time any SSD company have proposed this idea with us and while OCZ may end up getting burned with our results we do like risk takers!
Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.
KitGuru says: More updates coming as we get them!
I’m looking forward to seeing how far these drives go, it’s a very interesting test indeed. My very first SSD was an OCZ Vertex (original) and that only died about 2 months ago but seems to have been caused by a brownout or mains power fluctuations as it wasn’t even being picked up in the bios afterwards.
Just installed this exact SSD in my desktop today. Currently migrating my system, am feeling positive 🙂
They are really good value drives, especially with the current sales!
any updates? just got one yesterday and for old SATA2 laptop it’s incredibly fast