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Beware of OWC SSDs!

besweeet2

besweeet2

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 14, 2012
78
0
San Antonio, TX
Back in September, I received a 240GB SSD for my 2012 MacBook Air. It arrived dead and unusable. I sent them that drive back, and they said that it was very unusual what happened. The replacement that they sent me worked without a problem, up until about 30 minutes ago.

I was browsing Twitter via Tweetbot and watching a video via VLC. First, the video froze. Next, I wasn't able to interact with anything on the screen. Lastly, the cursor wouldn't move. All of this happened within a few seconds of each other.

Upon reboot, I received the flashing folder with the question mark. Holding ALT while powering up results in no drives/partitions detected. When I booted from my Mac OS X installation USB drive, it didn't detect any sign of a SATA drive from within Disk Utility or anywhere else.

I popped in my original/stock 120GB Apple SSD, the one that came with the Air, and it booted up without a problem. Unfortunately, it hasn't been used since September, and I [stupidly] haven't made a backup since then, so I have quite a bit of work to do to get things back to the way I just had them. Fortunately, a lot of my data is scattered around various clouds, so I mainly just need to install the various software updates that have occurred over the past 3 months.

So, based on my experience, I would advise everyone to stay away from OWC. While people may have their own success stories, I definitely have none, and I've heard about more failures from OWC drives than many of their competitors.
 
GoCubsGo

GoCubsGo

macrumors Nehalem
Feb 19, 2005
35,741
153
I think all drives have a failure rate but my question is whether you googled your specific drive to see if there's a high reported failure rate? You owe yourself that much at least.
 
besweeet2

besweeet2

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 14, 2012
78
0
San Antonio, TX
jessica. said:
I think all drives have a failure rate but my question is whether you googled your specific drive to see if there's a high reported failure rate? You owe yourself that much at least.
Click to expand...

I haven't found anything in regards to their MacBook Air-specific drives' success or failure rate.
 
GoCubsGo

GoCubsGo

macrumors Nehalem
Feb 19, 2005
35,741
153
From reviews from respected sites, I would certainly believe this was a great performer. Can you check into perhaps getting another through warranty? Just over a year seems a bit soon for a drive to fail.
 
besweeet2

besweeet2

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 14, 2012
78
0
San Antonio, TX
jessica. said:
From reviews from respected sites, I would certainly believe this was a great performer. Can you check into perhaps getting another through warranty? Just over a year seems a bit soon for a drive to fail.
Click to expand...

It was a review unit, so I'm not concerned about getting another (third) one. Two bad drives within 3 months can't be a good sign in terms of reliability.
 
D

devinci99

macrumors regular
Mar 2, 2008
244
29
Same thing happened to me.

I'm on my 4th 100GB drive: OWC Mercury Extreme RE -- was in my 13" MBP.

First time... no big deal... it happens. Actually happened maybe 3 months after I got it.

Second time, about 9 months after that... got it replaced because it was within warranty...

3rd time... it lasted over a year this time... but died again; about maybe 4 months, around the summer. I've since taken it out of the MBP, replace it with a Samsung 830, and its inside a USB 2.0 enclosure to store 'temp' things.

I don't trust putting anything critical on it anymore, in case it dies again. I think I'm in the last year of its warranty.

Good: OWC replace them via warranty RMA pretty quick
Bad: Dies about every year.

I had high hopes for it too because of its marketing that its read/write speed doesn't deteriote like other SSD, and it doesnt need TRIM which Mac does not support with 3rd party SSD.

** sigh ***

I bought a non-pro SSD from them too... that one has also died once. I'm on my second one now. Still within warranty...

I do have the 60GB from them too... surprisingly... have not died.

I also bought the Accelsior 480G from them too... Was running for 1 year, then I sold my mac pro on craigslist, and bought the nMP instead... That hasn't died before I sold it.

So not sure what is going on with the SSD line. Everything else i got from them is pretty good, except for some stupid customer service very recently (my first sour experience)
 
Last edited:
R

robmohio

macrumors newbie
Oct 10, 2014
1
0
Cincinnati, Ohio
OWC SSD Drives --- Lacks Quality & Reliability

If you were considering buying an SSD drive to speed up your computer, then I would not recommend using an SSD from OWC. Nine months ago I purchased an OWC 240MB SSD, which I installed in my new iMac. The drive completely failed. In order to maintain my computer’s warranty (a good idea), I always recommend having your SSD professionally installed.

I contacted OWC since I had to pay for their drive to be reinstalled a 2nd time. I requested that OWC reimburse me for the expenses of the 2nd installation. This seemed like a fair since their drive was the proximate cause of the 2nd installation. OWC flatly refused even though the cost was less than $100.

Much to my surprise, OWC's corporate position on their SSD Drives is (per Ben, a member of management):

· Of course not 100% of our products are free of quality defects (even though other customers have complained too about OWC’s poor SSD quality)

· We do not reimburse our customers for reinstallation of our products or any inconvenience our customers experience (even when these costs are due to OWC's defective products)


Basically OWC does not stand behind their products. Please send them a message by not buying their products.
I strongly recommend buying instead the Samsung 840 SSD. Samsung produces quality drives and they are focused on serving the customer!
 
McGiord

McGiord

macrumors 601
Oct 5, 2003
4,558
290
Dark Castle
I have had no issues at all with their drives.
I have 8 of them.
Only had a defective RAM once about 10 years ago and they replaced it without any inconvenience.
What brand did you buy?
 
C

ColdCase

macrumors 68040
Feb 10, 2008
3,360
276
NH
OWC seems to have drank the Sandforce koolaid and used their controllers in their 2.5 SSDs. They suffer from the same issues other brands that use sandforce controllers do. They can be troublesome.
 
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