Got any questions about OCZ SSD...come ask me.

[ocztony]

Hi

I can offer some info for you, such as our new drives, whats coming, new FW etc, however I am not support and not here to talk about old OCZ Technology drives...OCZ Storage Solutions is a new company and is part of the Toshiba group of companies.

If you need support please head over to the forum here http://oczforum.com/ its dead easy to create an account there and the support staff can answer all questions support related.
If you do ask a support subject I will just push a link back at ya to the forum...as I said im not a support rep BUT I will point you right at the people who are there to help you even if Enterprise related.

So..we have Jet Express coming and Vector 180, Jet Express is our new controller, its compatible across many
platforms...M.2, 2.5-inch SATA, and SFF-8639, I am personally looking forward to our M.2 drive

Vector 180 is the last of the Barefoot 3 drives although its high clocked for enthusiast grade performance and also features new Power Failure Management Plus (PFM+) to increase reliability.

All our drives feature Toshiba Nand, going forward this will be A19.

So...what else would you like to know?

Tony

 

[Jetster]

Thanks Tony

 

[ocztony]

Jester..its not a problem

BTW..I was up in Oregon last winter, snowboarding for a week at Mt Bachelor...has to be one of my favourite resorts to date although not big it was very friendly

 

[RCoon]

Has anyone broken your Arc 100 yet?

 

[ocztony]

Still going strong as far as I know, 5 drives all well past warranty writes. I am sure KitGuru will post updates soon.

 

[RCoon]

Last one from me, are your m.2 drives gonna be x2 or x4 (PCI lane-wise)?

 

[happita]

I like that some companies take a forward initiative to help customers in ways that many don't think to be a priority. There's potential to increase the widespread respect or lack thereof that a company has and to diversify itself in terms of how to market itself. Getting an OCZ (or any other company for that matter) rep to go down into the nitty gritty forum space where a lot of PC enthusiasts (mainly geeks like most of us are about PCs) are shows that you guys care.

Thanks for being a part of TPU Tony

 

[rtwjunkie]

Thanks for being here! I too always appreciate when company reps are here to help.

 

[ocztony]

Last one from me, are your m.2 drives gonna be x2 or x4 (PCI lane-wise)?

I will see if i can get some pre release specs for you.

I like that some companies take a forward initiative to help customers in ways that many don't think to be a priority. There's potential to increase the widespread respect or lack thereof that a company has and to diversify itself in terms of how to market itself. Getting an OCZ (or any other company for that matter) rep to go down into the nitty gritty forum space where a lot of PC enthusiasts (mainly geeks like most of us are about PCs) are shows that you guys care.

Thanks for being a part of TPU Tony

I have actually 100k+ posts over various forums with the forum handle bigtoe, i post on XS just as Tony so I have been around a while, the past 2 yrs however forum posting had dropped away for me as we transitioned to Toshiba and I was managing the support forum builds etc. Thats all complete now so I have been asked to once again get down to grass routes and help more online and offer info.
Most people still feel the old OCZ is the new OCZ, i can assure you we are not, its a lot different now, and we have direct access thru Toshiba to nand ...this means OCZ are pushing like crazy to offer the best drives we can now.

Now I know some have ill feeling towards OCZ, I really can't comment on what has passed, only what we are doing going forward. I will also try to settle things like who builds our drives, where the FW comes from, whats coming soon, and if possible post tid bits of performance data (if i can)
So you guys will have facts, not forum fiction to rely on.

I should have vector 180 soon, i have been asked to test on a new high performance platform BUT I will also test on my slower day to day A10 based AMD system as I know not every one has the latest and fastest

 

[Steevo]

What do you use to program the controller originally after assembly, I have a drive that I killed with coolant, OCZ Agility 3 120GB, and after cleaning it will now power up, the fault light doesn't come on, so I am guessing it just needs the BIOS re-flashed on it, I see the TX/RX GND places on the board, and have been thinking about serial connecting it with my USB adapter and seeing what I get out of Hyperterminal.

 

[ocztony]

What do you use to program the controller originally after assembly, I have a drive that I killed with coolant, OCZ Agility 3 120GB, and after cleaning it will now power up, the fault light doesn't come on, so I am guessing it just needs the BIOS re-flashed on it, I see the TX/RX GND places on the board, and have been thinking about serial connecting it with my USB adapter and seeing what I get out of Hyperterminal.

special flash tool... you will never see it sorry, propriety sandforce flasher which can not be released.

 

[peche]

Rebo Drive, does it would perform well on Z68X mobo from gigabytes and intel i7 3770?

Regards,

 

[eidairaman1]

The new controllers dont have the issues the sandforce controllers did?

 

[bubbleawsome]

Is there any way for me to get a free one? (It must be annoying to be asked about that. Like saying if there is no tag it must be free. Sorry for the horrible attempt at humor.)

Seriously, it's great to have reps come in and be proactive like this.
Welcome Tony!

 

[RCoon]

Proof the Agility 3 is capable of actually surviving It's been running my file server OS for years.

That being said, I'm pretty pleased with the offerings OCZ are bringing to the SSD table. Good deals on the ARC 100. It's one of the few contenders to the MX100 in terms of performance and price. I also notice your M.2 SSD's have x4 PCI-E lane interfaces which is a good step in the right direction!

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

What a refreshing attitude to sales and prospective customers

Like the Ronald McDonald of the component world.

I like it.

 

[GreiverBlade]

Proof the Agility 3 is capable of actually surviving It's been running my file server OS for years.

That being said, I'm pretty pleased with the offerings OCZ are bringing to the SSD table. Good deals on the ARC 100. It's one of the few contenders to the MX100 in terms of performance and price. I also notice your M.2 SSD's have x4 PCI-E lane interfaces which is a good step in the right direction!

so do my Vertex 3

 

[ocztony]

The new controllers dont have the issues the sandforce controllers did?

No....plus we write the FW for our own controllers so can attack issues much quicker. I actually talk directly to the head FW engineer when needed.
Our FW team is based in the UK, not the US...just so you know

Rebo Drive, does it would perform well on Z68X mobo from gigabytes and intel i7 3770?

Regards,

If you mean Revo 350...sure it does, HOWEVER, make sure you use one of the primary PCIE slots and always test the card in the port 0 slot (top one ) also as mobo manufacturers have a habit of slowing pcie speeds except for this slot when a none video card is installed to them...no idea why but they do.

I have seen 400MB's gains moving from one slot to another with a revo so its worth the time testing

Always be sure to discharge static and ground yourself when testing any hardware on a PC

Is there any way for me to get a free one? (It must be annoying to be asked about that. Like saying if there is no tag it must be free. Sorry for the horrible attempt at humor.)

Seriously, it's great to have reps come in and be proactive like this.
Welcome Tony!

I used to give out many samples, now the team back in cali and the NL handle sampling so honestly i doubt I could BUT...as our relationship on TPU gets better I may be able to organise some give aways etc...right now though its early days so I can not promise.

lets wait and see how things develop

 

[Aibohphobia]

There are concerns about how hot the first-gen high-performance M.2 drives like the Samsung XP941 run, is that an issue with JetExpress?

I'm interested because many motherboards place the M.2 under the video card so the drive won't get much airflow there plus it'll pick up the heat from the GPU.

 

[Steevo]

special flash tool... you will never see it sorry, propriety sandforce flasher which can not be released.

How about a hint, like is standard 3v signalling used? Is there an AT command to ready the chip to accept the BIOS file or write? Or what is the name of the software used specifically so I can uhhh, think about it.

 

[OneMoar]

How about a hint, like is standard 3v signalling used? Is there an AT command to ready the chip to accept the BIOS file or write? Or what is the name of the software used specifically so I can uhhh, think about it.

try here
http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25650&start=40
the drive is certainly jtag-able but good luck reversing the protocol to actually write firmware
you will need to find the datasheets for the relevant chips and consult them to get started
@ocztony
there should be nothing proprietary about a JTAG interface for recovering firmware we know the sandforce boards have them and its only a matter of time before somebody figures out how to write firmware to the NAND
on a personal note I won't use anything sandforce driven I prefer micron/intel/samsung controllers they are more reliable and less prone to sudden death

 

[Steevo]

So short pins on the BIOS chip to get it to possibly reload the OCZ firmware, may have to give it a try, I will use a spare PC I have so I don't hurt mine.

 

[OneMoar]

So short pins on the BIOS chip to get it to possibly reload the OCZ firmware, may have to give it a try, I will use a spare PC I have so I don't hurt mine.

the drive is probably toast anyway

 

[Mussels]

Hi

I can offer some info for you, such as our new drives, whats coming, new FW etc, however I am not support and not here to talk about old OCZ Technology drives...OCZ Storage Solutions is a new company and is part of the Toshiba group of companies.

If you need support please head over to the forum here http://oczforum.com/ its dead easy to create an account there and the support staff can answer all questions support related.
If you do ask a support subject I will just push a link back at ya to the forum...as I said im not a support rep BUT I will point you right at the people who are there to help you even if Enterprise related.

So..we have Jet Express coming and Vector 180, Jet Express is our new controller, its compatible across many
platforms...M.2, 2.5-inch SATA, and SFF-8639, I am personally looking forward to our M.2 drive

Vector 180 is the last of the Barefoot 3 drives although its high clocked for enthusiast grade performance and also features new Power Failure Management Plus (PFM+) to increase reliability.

All our drives feature Toshiba Nand, going forward this will be A19.

So...what else would you like to know?

Tony

hey tony, long time no see


Even if tony doesn't remember me (i stopped reviewing years ago when 3DChipset went offline), i remember him - he knows his products well.

 

[Steevo]

the drive is probably toast anyway

I agree, but whats the fun if I don't try, even though I plan on getting a new SSD shortly and retiring this one to some other PC, if it survives I who knows what I will do with it.