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Fix your dead SSD with the power cycle method

Dave Farquhar Hardware May 22, 2017October 25, 2018adapter, BIOS, DIY, life expectancy, MBR, ocz, PC, power supply, samsung, sata, SD, ssd, USB 34 Comments

There was a big dustup a while ago about power failures killing SSDs. It turns out that when this happens, you can usually unbrick it. If your SSD died, here’s how to recover or fix your dead SSD in 61 minutes using the power cycle method.

Yes, it really does take 61 minutes to revive a dead SSD, but you only have direct involvement for a few minutes. The rest of the time, you can do something else while you wait for the drive to do its thing. This trick will even let you recover drives that won’t show up in Windows Device Manager or disk management if you transplant them into another machine.

When will SSDs be cheaper than hard drives?

Dave Farquhar Hardware December 3, 2015November 19, 20181980s, budget, CPU, disk, flash memory, GB, hard drive, hard drives, motherboard, NCQ, ocz, RAM, reliability, rpm, SCSI, ssd, TB, vertex

When will SSDs be cheaper than hard drives? Based on history, it’s possible to make an educated guess, and I’m going to do it.

Back in 2011, I noticed that historical hard drive pricing fell in line pretty nicely with Moore’s Law, and predicted that SSDs would do the same. I predicted that SSDs would reach 25 cents per gigabyte sometime in 2016, and was wrong. They hit that price in 2015. So I was late by a few months.

But I’m still willing to try to predict when SSDs will cost less than hard drives. I’ll predict when they’ll hit parity too. SSDs work differently from hard drives but their pricing trend is frighteningly similar.

And it looks like OCZ is no more

Dave Farquhar Hardware November 28, 2013November 22, 2018Bankruptcy, Customer service, flash memory, GB, kingston, ocz, reliability, sandforce, ssd, toshiba, vertex

Last night I saw reports that OCZ’s main creditor is forcing it to liquidate, and OCZ has an agreement to sell most of its assets to Toshiba. Its manufacturing plants and its Indilinx controller technology make Toshiba a good fit; Toshiba makes some controllers and they make flash memory, so this would allow them to expand their SSD business and/or compete with Sandforce by being able to sell a broader line of controllers and memory chips to companies like Kingston. Tuning Indilinx designs to match their own chips would likely improve both speed and reliability.

OCZ was an early contender and was one of the first companies to market a consumer SSD that had a reasonable mix of performance and affordability. The problem was that many of their designs were buggy and they had a poor reputation for customer service. They didn’t get a lot of repeat customers. I had a couple of 40 GB OCZ Vertex drives and they were OK. The problems with subsequent drives scared me away from buying any more.

It will be interesting to see what Toshiba plans to do with the acquisition.

An SSD data loss issue–and how to prevent it

Dave Farquhar Hardware, security March 3, 2013August 3, 2017APC, Bowman, capacitor, capacitors, data recovery, datacenter, filesystem, hard drive, hard drives, infoworld, intel, MBR, ocz, ssd, UPS, vertex

Longtime reader Dan Bowman–probably my very first reader, come to think of it–sent in this article from Infoworld regarding SSDs and data loss in power failure.

It’s not theoretical. I’ve seen it. I also know how to prevent it.

OCZ is in trouble

Dave Farquhar Hardware February 6, 2013November 22, 2018CEO, intel, Micro Center, ocz, PC, samsung, sandforce, seagate, ssd

You know it’s bad when a story about a company ends with the words, “OCZ’s survival is still possible.”

Survival is supposed to be a given.
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Are 80plus power supplies worth it?

Dave Farquhar Hardware January 4, 2013November 21, 2016capacitor, capacitors, cheap stuff, Cooler Master, corsair, heavy gauge, ocz, plastic, plastic toy, power savings, seasonic, tolerances, toy

Are 80plus power supplies worth it? Extremetech just that question recently. Based on their conclusion, not usually, at least not solely for power savings. But it’s an easy way to get a box built to stricter tolerances with higher-quality electronics. Read more

SSD pricing gets media attention

Dave Farquhar Hardware December 24, 2012July 15, 2017amazon, computerworld, Crucial M4, flash memory, GB, hard drives, Micro Center, ocz, reliability, samsung, ssd

It’s not news to my regular readers that SSD pricing continues to drop, but Computerworld noticed that this week.

Everyday pricing is well around 90 cents per gigabyte now, and with some shopping around, it’s possible to do better than that.

Crucial has a new SSD out, but I don’t think I want it

Dave Farquhar Hardware December 8, 2012December 7, 2012anandtech, Crucial M4, GB, intel, ocz, oracle, samsung, samsung 830, sandforce, ssd

Anandtech reviewed Crucial’s new value drive.

Spoiler: Unless you get the drive on sale, pay the few dollars more that it costs to get a Crucial M4, or Samsung 830, or whatever Intel drive is available (I’ve given up on trying to keep track of Intel’s drives; they release drives more often than Oracle releases security patches.)

Linus Torvalds likes SSDs, too

Dave Farquhar Hardware October 18, 2012air conditioner, collections, CPU, excel, extra mile, GB, hard drives, life expectancy, Linus Torvalds, ocz, office 2010, power savings, sandisk, SD, ssd, vertex, windows 7

Linus Torvalds called hard drives evil, nasty platters of spinning rust in an interview this week, while saying he likes SSDs.

I didn’t say it. He said it. Though it’s no secret that I like SSDs too. Read more

SSDs are below $1 per gigabyte

Dave Farquhar Hardware June 24, 2012July 15, 2017Crucial M4, flash memory, GB, hard drive, hard drives, HDD, intel, kingston, motherboard, ocz, reliability, samsung, ssd, vertex

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s getting easier and easier to find SSDs priced at or below $1 per gigabyte. You’ll generally have to buy at least 120 GB of storage to hit that price point, but at this point in time, that’s about the smallest drive I would consider anyway.
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