How it is very easy to cause severe issues with a brand new SandForce based ssd drive

    Here is what you should do when you buy a new SSD


    1 Install the drive

    2 make note of what Firmware is on the drive, either in bios on the board or booting with the drive as a spare and opening crystaldiskinfo or AS-SSD (BUT NOT RUNNING ANY BENCHMARK)

    3 Come to the forum, read what is the newest FW available and possibly asking if you should flash the drive.

    4 Install windows to it...load all drivers, reboot 3 times

    5 run oczwinsat or winsatdisk from a cmd window in windows, make sure its close to recorded results here on the forum.

    6 Post and chat about the ssd, ask a few questions, learn a little, BUT most of all do not intentionally cause yourself a problem with your drive.

    Here is what you should NOT do with a brand new sandforce based SSD drive

    1 Buy a new drive...install it, do NOT note what Firmware is on the drive.

    2 Immediately flash the drive to a new FW...you do this even though you have no idea what was already on the drive.

    3 Now...run ATTO, followed by CDM (twice) and 2 runs of AS-SSD...so now you have induced a lifetime write throttle which has slowed down the drive anyway as you just wrote over 70GB worth of data in under 5 minutes. This will last for 5 maybe 7 days....it all depends on how much panicking you do over that 5 day period and how many more benchmarks you run.

    4 Post on the forum that your drive is slow and it has an issue.

    Please people, the level of paranoia I see from new members who feel they have to do something with their new purchase which actually does them harm is quite disturbing, its very easy to ensure you have the info and data to hand to ensure you will have a good experience with an ssd drive. Benchmarks such as AS-SSD and Crystaldiskmark will eat into erase cycles on the drive very quickly, in 10 minutes you can fill a 64Gb drive over 100% by running each benchmark just 2 times...this is regardless of whether you have a 16GB windows install or not on the SSD.

    This post is here as a short sharp shock, we have studied peoples habits with new SSD drives and on the whole within 5 minutes of it being installed most have already started killing their SSD needlessly...it really is that easy.

    I have edited the layout of this post and added to it...it will stay here until we see a change of attitude towards ssd dives here. I call on all respected members here to help with the challenge of educating newcomers to SSD drives, do not fight me, help me.

    Lastly..Firmware flashing will be covered by toolbox and Linux updater going forward, no other method will be offered (although that could change)
    We can not and will not offer a windows live cd updater, all live cd's for windows are classed as illegal. If however Microsoft are feeling generous thats another matter
    All FW releases going forward will be controlled by ocz.com via toolbox and linux updater, we will report new release here on the forum but we will not be hosting any files. We will educate best we can with Linux and Toolbox and show easy methods for firmware update for all out ssd based products.

    Thank you

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