Home / Component / SSD Drives / OCZ Challenge update: 2nd ARC 100 drive dies at 352TB

OCZ Challenge update: 2nd ARC 100 drive dies at 352TB

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 original page posted on December 10th.

The drives all passed the warranty figure of 300TB on 3rd February 2015 – one of them failed at 322TB and today the second has kicked the bucket – reading 352TB.

As promised to our readers, we report on any failures -as soon as they happen. This was one of the rules we made clear to OCZ before this project was started. Still, we don't think they will be too annoyed – their warranty terms for these drives are 22TB.

Read original ‘challenge' editorial on 10th December, HERE.
Read 17th December 2014 ‘challenge' update, HERE.
Read 27th December 2014 22TB mark update, HERE.
Read 10th January 2015 100TB mark update, HERE.
Read 23rd January 2015 200TB mark update, HERE.
Read 3rd February 2015 300TB mark update, HERE.
Read 9th February 2015 322TB 1st failure, HERE.
Interview with OCZ on ‘The Past, The Present and The Future', HERE.

So, there you have it – two of the five ARC 100 drives are now dead. How long before another fails? Will any make it past 400TB?

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 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.

Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.

KitGuru says: More updates coming as we get them!

Become a Patron!

Check Also

Kioxia’s first PCIe 5.0 SSDs offer blazing fast speeds with reduced power consumption

Kioxia is launching a new range of PCIe 5.0 SSDs for gamers and content creators. …

6 comments

  1. 22 TB warranty? how long will a 256 Gb ssd last? i have Samsung 840 pro that has written 7 TB on it already

  2. 300TB are nice. If all drives die close to each other then we could assume that 300TBs are to be expected from this model.

  3. Samsung 840 Pro warranty is “5 years (73 TBW for enterprise applications)”. You have a way to go yet.

    The other day on Partpicker these ARCs were £70 for 240GB, now they are £79. Maybe the retailers saw this article.

  4. wow Good game lol

  5. of course take it as a mean time to failure… 😉

  6. Seeing SMART data at 300TB from other screenshots posted, it looks like the NAND on these drives is barely making 3700-4000 P/E cycles before suddenly dying. Even though the warranty is good only for 22TB, I would have expected more from MLC NAND that is supposed to still have plenty of life left at 3000 P/E cycles.

    Why is the write amplification of your drives so high, anyway? Why no mention of it or the amount of P/E cycles reached, which should be a more important indicator of quality of the NAND memory in the SSD than simply the amount of TB written? I’m sorry to say this looks like yet another poorly arranged endurance test.