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OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD Problem

AndrewLupin said:
thanks...

so...can we expect a price drop due to this step from 34 to 25???

or maybe thinking about the new sataIII ssd???may be sataII's prices will be cheaper...
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25nm is cheaper than 34nm, so that is the idea. How much of that is passed along to the consumer remains to be seen. A good gauge of this will be the new Intel 320 when it comes out. It will be their "consumer" level SSD with a 25nm NAND and it will replace the Intel X25-M with 34nm NAND. I guess we will see.
 
Weaselboy said:
25nm is cheaper than 34nm, so that is the idea. How much of that is passed along to the consumer remains to be seen. A good gauge of this will be the new Intel 320 when it comes out. It will be their "consumer" level SSD with a 25nm NAND and it will replace the Intel X25-M with 34nm NAND. I guess we will see.
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And all of this wants me to have a 34nm drive. i don't like the cheaper shorter lifespan thinking. Obviously I could be dead wrong too.
 
i think that sata 2 drives are still blazing fast

do we really need sataIII speed??

i just tried a kingston v100...and it worked like a charm...fast fast fast (vs 5400 rpm )
 
I apologize for my previous statement. OWC does not advertise their switch from 34nm to 25nm, that's correct. They do list it on their site but you have to look closely at the specification.

There's two things I do want to point out (not an OWC fanboy or anything):

1. They do list their transition in their specs. Not a big fanfare announcement but they are selling the product they are advertising.

2. My previous statement was mis-worded, I apologize. However, what I had in mind when I made that statement was that OWC is advertising their 120GB capacity as 115GB rather than 120GB. I guess this is in accordance to their switch, but I should've made that part more specific.

Sorry for the confusion I've caused.

@Weaselboy: Until all this mess gets sorted, I'm starting to look more and more favorably on Intel's drives.

Back on topic though: Are the issues fixed with the NEW firmware released by OWC?
 
KJmoon117 said:
I apologize for my previous statement. OWC does not advertise their switch from 34nm to 25nm, that's correct. They do list it on their site but you have to look closely at the specification.

There's two things I do want to point out (not an OWC fanboy or anything):

1. They do list their transition in their specs. Not a big fanfare announcement but they are selling the product they are advertising.

2. My previous statement was mis-worded, I apologize. However, what I had in mind when I made that statement was that OWC is advertising their 120GB capacity as 115GB rather than 120GB. I guess this is in accordance to their switch, but I should've made that part more specific.

Sorry for the confusion I've caused.

@Weaselboy: Until all this mess gets sorted, I'm starting to look more and more favorably on Intel's drives.

Back on topic though: Are the issues fixed with the NEW firmware released by OWC?
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I would update mine but the closet PC i have around here is nowhere. Long abandoned and honestly well forgotten too. :D

Mine will wind up being a storage drive anyway so won't matter to me.
 
KJmoon117 said:
I apologize for my previous statement. OWC does not advertise their switch from 34nm to 25nm, that's correct. They do list it on their site but you have to look closely at the specification.
Click to expand...

Can you point to a link, because I looked all over and can't seem to find it. The specs I saw do not specify 25 or 34nm either way.

I guess my point is everybody got all wound up, and rightfully so, when OCZ changed spec without changing the model number. So if I went to the OWC site two weeks ago and bought a 120GB "Mercury Extreme Pro SSD" I was getting a 34nm NAND SSD (yes?). If I go there today and buy a 115GB "Mercury Extreme Pro SSD" (here) I get a 25nm NAND correct? I see nothing at the page I linked showing 25 or 34nm NAND.

OWC did show the reduced GB capacity as a result of this, unlike OCZ, but beyond that it looks like they changed spec in a meaningful way without telling the potential buyer or disclosing what they did, and kept the same model designation. I guess I am now thinking OWC did much the same thing OCZ did.

I appreciate the dialogue with you and don't mean to be challenging you personally in any way. :) Do you think I am off base in viewing the OWC change this way?
 
SO I see that FW360 is out.

Do we know that this fixes the sleep issue? and if so what other fixes are in it? WHy would a person with 310 update?
 
Yup received my OWC SSD with FW360. No problems CCC'ing my hard drive. Set the power saver to 1 minute for both battery and power adaptor and did both. Pressed the space bar after 3 minutes (to make sure computer went to sleep) and computer awoke in the same state as I left it prior.

I also tried the sleep command (manually) in the upper left apple logo. Same result. My computer woke with no stalls or beachballs.

Now I'm going to hibernate my computer and see what happens.
 
Weaselboy said:
Can you point to a link, because I looked all over and can't seem to find it. The specs I saw do not specify 25 or 34nm either way.

I guess my point is everybody got all wound up, and rightfully so, when OCZ changed spec without changing the model number. So if I went to the OWC site two weeks ago and bought a 120GB "Mercury Extreme Pro SSD" I was getting a 34nm NAND SSD (yes?). If I go there today and buy a 115GB "Mercury Extreme Pro SSD" (here) I get a 25nm NAND correct? I see nothing at the page I linked showing 25 or 34nm NAND.

OWC did show the reduced GB capacity as a result of this, unlike OCZ, but beyond that it looks like they changed spec in a meaningful way without telling the potential buyer or disclosing what they did, and kept the same model designation. I guess I am now thinking OWC did much the same thing OCZ did.

I appreciate the dialogue with you and don't mean to be challenging you personally in any way. :) Do you think I am off base in viewing the OWC change this way?
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Hmm I could've sworn to you that in their spec sheet I saw 25nm somewhere, but nonetheless, now, it appears that I'm mistaken again. Damn haha

The fact that OWC doesn't reveal their change in size is like OCZ. Normal consumers may not notice, but people like us do and OWC should report this change AT LEAST on their blog.

However, I don't think what OWC did is as bad as OCZ. The problem wasn't the switch to 25nm, the problem was that OCZ did not disclose any changes to their drives because of this switch (loss of the capacity, loss of performance (due to their botched implementation), lower lifespan (although I'm not too sure on this because maybe the controller corrects for this?), etc.). Although OWC doesn't clearly advertise this (which is bad on their part but then again which company would advertise this), but they do state the changes by updating their spec sheet: increased over-provision, lower capacity and performance should be same because they use the same number of channels (my guess). There is no comparison chart of course.

Also, they don't use the same model number/part number. Same line of SSDs as always but notice how the older model ends in "120." But then again, outside OWC, who actually uses these model numbers?
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/SSDMX115/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other+World+Computing/SSDMX120/

It would be a real problem if I bought a 120GB drive last week and decide to do a RAID setup, buy a 120GB tomorrow, and realize that the drives aren't the same thing. I'm not sure if OCZ initially took returns because of that, but OWC would gladly take that 120GB back and replace it with a 115GB drive. But they avoided this debacle altogether by listing the specs on their website (not the size change though).
 
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A question to those of you out there for 3.60 firmware. I am stilling have problems during auto sleep so I planned to do a fresh install to completely rule out a software installation issue. My plan was to make a disk image backup booting from an external disk as an extra safety precaution to my Time Machine backups. So I booted off the drive that came with my MBP (now in an external USB enclosure) and somewhere during the disk image process I came back to see that Disk Utility now showed an error message and the OWC drive was not found in the list of drives anymore. System profiler didn't show it connected to the bus anymore.

So figured I would boot off install disc (10.6.6 that came with this 2011 MBP) and do the disk image. After the install disc gets to the point of language selection the install appears hung. Very strange.

Reboot and the machine comes up fine with OWC drive.

I am attempting to re-image right now but I had done both of these operations over the past two weeks when the drive had 3.43 without issue. The only thing that has changed is 3.60 firmware and 10.6.7.

Anyone out there with 3.60 firmware can you confirm you can boot from the install disk past the language selection. I am beginning to think something might be somewhat out of whack with this drive.
 
Wake from sleep still there with 360 on a fresh install of SL

Sir Atilla said:
A question to those of you out there for 3.60 firmware. I am stilling have problems during auto sleep so I planned to do a fresh install to completely rule out a software installation issue. My plan was to make a disk image backup booting from an external disk as an extra safety precaution to my Time Machine backups. So I booted off the drive that came with my MBP (now in an external USB enclosure) and somewhere during the disk image process I came back to see that Disk Utility now showed an error message and the OWC drive was not found in the list of drives anymore. System profiler didn't show it connected to the bus anymore.

So figured I would boot off install disc (10.6.6 that came with this 2011 MBP) and do the disk image. After the install disc gets to the point of language selection the install appears hung. Very strange.

Reboot and the machine comes up fine with OWC drive.

I am attempting to re-image right now but I had done both of these operations over the past two weeks when the drive had 3.43 without issue. The only thing that has changed is 3.60 firmware and 10.6.7.

Anyone out there with 3.60 firmware can you confirm you can boot from the install disk past the language selection. I am beginning to think something might be somewhat out of whack with this drive.
Click to expand...

Hi,

I did a fresh install on my OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 240 (360 firmware), and had no trouble installing Snow Leopard to it on my Mac Pro.
But, what I can confirm, is the fresh install didn't solved the wake from auto sleep stall / beachball I had :-(
-> never sleep in Energy Settings + putting my Mac to sleep manually.
 
Did it fix the sleep problem?

michaellam said:
Hi all,

I've emailed technical support of OWC and they've identified the problem that I'd need to return the SSD for some power adjustment for my sleep problem. So they've promptly issued me an RMA to get it fixed. So the idle sleep issue seems like hardware related (which, I suppose, would be rectified now). On the other hand, the hibernation issue is firmware related and they're already testing a new firmware. Overall their support is professional and I'd still highly recommend.
Click to expand...

Did the RMA fix the sleep problem with the drive?

Thanks.
 
oyarzun said:
Did the RMA fix the sleep problem with the drive?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I got a new Mercury Extreme Pro 120GB yesterday with firmware 360 already installed from OWC and it's working excellent, no issues at all. Hibernation is working: No freeze, no beach balls. Just like my MBA, "but faster"!!!!:cool:
 
I just removed my SSD (Mercury Extreme pro 120GB with firmware 343) from my MBP and upgraded the new firmware (360) connecting it to a PC yesterday.
I also reenabled hibernation 3, but have not had time to fully test the hibernation bug, so I'll post back if I find problems, but fingers crossed for now...
 
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Just so I get it right....

Going to use a WinXP Box to flash firmware on Mercury Pro 240g and 120g.

1. Both drives are GUID formatted.
The 240g is the System disk formatted HFS+extended (journaled).
The 120g has 3 partitions all HFS+extended (journaled).

Do I need to create a small MBR partition on both drives with iPartition before trying to flash?

Thanks in advance.
 
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Thanks for the answer. I was on a chat with someone from OWC and he couldn't answer me. I was ready to buy the 480 mercury pro, but was a bit put off that he couldn't answer any of my questions. I guess its best to wait for next week, when the new drives will probably be announced.
 
After 2 days with my new SSD (no hibernation problems), the drive fail. I could not pass the boot screen, so I switch back the Apple HDD and call OWC. Excellent tech support, I'm got a full refund for the 120GB and will get a new 115GB, because the don't sell the 120GB anymore. Hope it was just bad luck!!!!:(

The only reason I'm giving OWC a second chance, its because of the excellent tech support. Hope the new 115GB don't have a hibernation problem.
 
New firmware 360 works now!

Hi all,
I just wanted to share with you all that I finally, after installing 360 and doing a PRAM RESET, I stop having the sleep issues (rolling color beach ball spinning after coming out of an auto sleep via timer).

So, after installing 360, do a PRAM Reset by:

Resetting PRAM and NVRAM
1- Shut down the computer.
2- Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
3- Turn on the computer.
4-Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
5- Release the keys.

After doing this PRAM reset, the sleeping issue disappears..

I also want to mention that this 360 firmware is actually supposed to fix the hibernation issue only, that is rather complex to test, since we need to dry the batteries out, and let the laptop automatically save all the RAM to the SSD Disk (this is actually the hibernation). The sleep issue was supposed to be fixed on earlier firmwares... so probably was a matter of doing this PRAM reset before 360 too!

It's been 2 days since I did the update to 360 and the PRAM along, as instructed by the chat support from OWC...

This is the message on the firmware page, that triggered my solution:

http://blog.macsales.com/9474-owc-ssd-firmware-updated#comments

comment from OWC Michael:
There seems to be a bit of confusion here on sleep vs. hibernation regarding the SSD drives.
This firmware update corrects the hibernation issue.
If you are experiencing sleep issues with your SSD, please contact our Technical Support department at 1(800) 275-4576 for troubleshooting and research into your particular drive as it may have had an incorrect setting. No drives shipped since January 2011 have exhibited any sleep issues.

Hope this helps those having sleep issues!!
Regards
Lucho
 
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