Laptops and notebooks with faulty Vertex 2 or Agility 2

This thread has been purely made for those users who are having a Laptop or a Notebook with them having an OCZ Vertex 2 or Agility 2 SSD hooked up into their system. The main reason for introducing this thread is that day by day I have been noticing number of users coming up with some of the other SSD related issue in their portable machine and the interesting thing is that the SSD which is causing issue is none other than OCZ SSDs, its either Vertex 2 or Agility 2. I just wanted to know how much of you people comes into this category and also wanted to know and share your experience with this SSD, no matter whether it’s a bitter experience or a sweet one. I am sure there might also be number of people who must have overcame their issue and are now enjoying their laptop having this SSD installed into it. Anyways if there is anyone with any suggestion for those people who are having a laptop or a notebook with a OCZ SSD, please let them know with some proper suggestion and ideas regarding installation and other related things if possible, I hope there might some people who might be helped with this thread.

There is nothing to be worried about the laptop or SSD, seems like the thread has been created to scare most of the OCZ users. Anyways look whoever is using a laptop with a Vertex 2 or Agility 2 SSD always make sure that you have the latest and the newest available BIOS on your machine or get a BIOS that allows the AHCI mode and then test your laptop to see whether your SSD drive have any kind of issue or not. There is another thing which I need to share, heard that there has been a in house testing that has been started which has till now already found one issue. Everyone knows that Dell default storage mode is to IRRT i.e.(Intel rapid restore technology which is found to be formed of Raid 1 and when you switch to AHCI mode it resolves number of related problems. I guess they have tested this thing with Dell Latitude E6400 machine which is one of Dell’s laptop models.

I would like to comment. I have been using a Dell M1330 with Vertex 2 160GB which is already running in AHCI mode and also the system is updated with the latest BIOS i.e. A15. Let me tell you that this Vertex 2 drive is always detected once in 10 to 15 times. That means whenever I turn on the system there are rare chances of SSD being detected. I personally find this whole issue quite irritating and confusing as I have already seen number of users with M1330 who are working fine with their Vertex 2 SSD. They have never complained about their SSD not being detected or something similar to that. Sometimes I feel that I did some mistake with the installation, I mean there might be some unwanted mistake or ignorance committed by due to which the SSD is not being utilized properly. I do really need some serious suggestion other than any useless information, if you really want to help the laptop users who are having problem with the OCZ SSD then please start with me.

I read a lot about this strange incompatibility between the laptops and the OCZ SSDs, still I am not aware what exactly is going wrong between then. I always keep on reading articles related to them and keep on updating myself as I was always willing to buy an extra OCZ SSD for my Dell laptop but just because of such bad reputation of their sync I dropped my idea. But however I will keep on trying to get it at any point of time when I will come to know everything has been sorted out between. Hope this day will surely come and I will definitely get a SSD for my laptop. Anyways coming to the common issue I would surely like to have my comments. once I read on web that if the BIOS of your machine has any reference or pointing to the Fast boot or anything like that which controls the BIOS check then make sure that this thing happen before the system boot so therefore you set them to disable on your laptop, this might prevent the cold boot issue. also another thing I would like to tell to those who has a habit of hibernating or putting their system into sleep, remember that you do not do this if you have a OCZ SSD hooked up into your machine. You are suppose to simply shut down your machine if you are not using it or willing to work on something else other than the machine. Actually the thing is that hibernation and sleep causes your system not to recognize your SSD when it is wake up. This was considered as one of the best recommendation to all the laptop user who are having an external SSD. And believe me after I read this information I simply searched on net to know how much fact lies behind this news and trust me I forums with hundreds of people complaining about their SSD not being recognized by their machine. This problem is one of well know issue until now that has been faced by any of the OCZ SSD user. Better you follow the suggestion if you want to save your system and SSD.

Recently I purchased a Alienware M17x R3 and along with it I got a 200GB OCZ Vertex LE, you know it took me some two to three days in order to just get it working in my system. However this was not so hectic but the big issue for me was the outdated firmware, I was not having idea from where exactly I should get the updated firmware in order to get things work. I was quite irritated with the fact that I was supplied with an outdated firmware, at least they should have provided the device with full fledge updates. Anyways my brother helped me with the thing, he updated the firmware and the switched the BIOS selection from Raid to AHCI that worked for me.

I bought a second copy of E6500 which was working quite well as per my vision before buying it. I managed to install a new vertex 2 120GB into it. And even it worked well without creating any problem. But few days ago when I was working on my machine, I mean when I was browsing in Google Chrome I noticed a BSOD with No drive detected. Now I am a complete non technical guy so I have null knowledge about computers and their issue and therefore this BSOD has left me with no option but to seek help from other. Is there anyone who knows what exactly the main cause of such BSOD is. I doubt that it might be causing due to the SSD and not because of my laptop but then if SSD is the root cause then I must say that this SSD is brand new and not a second copy likes my laptop. There are people who suggestion me with many solutions but the problem is that they are never sure or confident with whatever they suggest, so therefore I never them out. But anyways firmware update seems to be a decent suggestion until now that I have got but will it help me out all the way. the reason I am talking about firmware is because from the time I bought this SSD I never performed any kind of driver or firmware updates until now so therefore hoping that these updates might somehow do some miracle.

I do personally feel that you should go with the firmware updates. Its obvious that whenever you buy any kind of hardware for you computer system you should definitely check out the necessary thing that is required for the device to run. Most of the hardware parts of a computer required driver updates which is must. Even I bought Agility 2 last month for my PC and guess what from the time I bought it, I never had any trouble due to this SSD. It always worked well and fine for me. And the reason for it to work so great is the proper updates and upgrade that I did at the first time I installed it in the system. You know the moment I attached this SSD into my PC the first thing I did was updating the firmware version with the latest update and then I did all other related necessary things that’s it. Till now my system has been doing well with this SSD with no BSOD or other error message. If you have never done a firmware update then I would suggest you to go for it and get the latest update from internet, you can probably get it from there itself and need not have to go anywhere else.

Anyone present over here that is facing problem with their laptop or notebook not detecting their OCZ SSD after their system wake up from seep can simply try out my solution; surely it will help you out. You have to get a freespacecleaner with the FF option; this thing seems to be the best option with regards to the same issue. Once you get that thing you can now Hibernate or Shutdown or restart your laptop without worrying about the SSD dropping down or getting disconnected with the machine. No matter what you do with your laptop data will always remain secure. Just remember one thing you need not have to do any firmware update or something once if you have that FF option. This is the 2nd week and everything is working great with my machine. You know I even ran a Cleaner keeping this drive plugged into the machine, nothing happened. Anyways the only problem I was having is the time wrap but however this workaround has kept me going until and unless the experts come up with a proper fix for this issue. another suggestion I would like to give you is that if you are having a windows 7 machine, under it you need to go through each and every power option and then disable wherever you find a sleep setting, make sure that you set it to do nothing or shutdown. This will prevent your system from anyone else you will try to turn the laptop off by choosing the sleep option. Once you choose that option no one can make your system go to sleep and harm your drive including you.

Came up with some conclusion after had problem with my Ubuntu Linux system. I bought a new Vertex 2 - 80 GB and installed it into my Dell Vostro V13. As mentioned before I have Ubuntu Linux 10.10 64 bit running into my machine. After I installed both the OS and the SSD I found that Linux was successfully able to detect the SSD but along with that I noticed that my laptop was unable to boot. Every time the case was not the same, there were times when my machine used to boot up properly and sometimes they won’t. Fist I thought that GRUB is corrupted and therefore I reinstalled it but that didn’t make any difference. Anyways there are certain unusual things that I have noticed in my computer. One of them is that my SSD is now being detected by my BIOS but sometimes as SAND FORCE S1 and sometimes as OCZ VERTEX 2. I always believe that the system successfully booted when my BIOS detect the SSD as OCZ VERTEX 2. However now I have decided to return my SSD and go for something else as this SSD is not being used in my Dell laptop. But I must say once if this OCZ SSD is detected by the system its real experience.