Toshiba to buy OCZ...

[Kobaltrock]

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderd...g/?mod=BOLBlog

Shares of solid-state drive technology vendor OCZ Technology Group (OCZ) remain frozen since 9 am, Eastern this morning, and the reason came across the transom just a short while ago: The company has received an offer from Toshiba (6502JP) to purchase all the company?s assets in a bankruptcy proceeding.

OCZ said it believes all the ?material terms have been agreed to,? though there are a number of conditions that have to be satisfied, such as retention of employees. OCZ would file for bankruptcy right after agreeing to a deal, but it would also file even if it doesn?t reach agreement with Toshiba, it said.

As part of the discussions, creditor Hercules Technology Growth Capital has taken control of OCZ?s assets on deposit at Silicon Valley Bank and Wells Fargo, OCZ said.

OCZ shares are set to resume trading at 2:30 pm, Eastern time. The stock was at 63 cents before the halt. Shares are down 67% so far this year.

[i found nemo]

wonder if they will try to outsell samsung in memory :p. but no, good for toshiba.

[KiSUAN]

wonder if they will try to outsell samsung in memory :p. but no, good for toshiba.

You talking about Nand flash I suppose... anyway OCZ doesn't fabricate Nand, and most of the market share comes from SD and pendrive devices, sector in which OCZ is inexistent. Also the gap between Sammy and Tosh is of 10%, this could help Tosh in the SSD market thanks to the IPs of OCZ, sector in wich Tosh is pretty weak, also this correlates to the introduction of Toshi to consumer SSD market, but not much more I think.

[Zaxx]

Glad to see Ocz go to Tosh where they'll use the IP (primarily the Barefoot 3 controller) instead of some other company snatching it up to sell it off piece by piece. Tosh can actually benefit from acquiring Ocz's enterprise IP and use it to establish a strong foothold in that market. Heh...I was hoping Ocz could launch a full line of Indinx Barefoot 3 based, w/19nm toggle nand, Revo pci-e drives before going tits up. I'm sure the BF3 will find it's way to pci-e goodness eventually...esp since Intel decided to yank sata express from the upcoming P97 chipset. Unless there's some way Intel can avoid the P87 and 97 being identical as far as storage goes, there's gonna be a gap in the 'evolution' of sata based SSDs...which will prolly be filled by pci-e x4 drives sporting SandForce 3700 flame throwers.

[Kai Robinson]

Maybe Toshiba can stop OCZ SSD's from sucking so badly. Or fix their broken customer support.

[Zaxx]

Maybe Toshiba can stop OCZ SSD's from sucking so badly.

I own several Ocz drives and have never had a single issue. Was lookin' at your sig....do you even own an ssd?

[Kai Robinson]

Yep - two 64gb Vertex drives. One was dead inside a week, the replacement lasted 4 days.

Yes i'm aware the rig in my sig is old...but i do build systems for other people. Would never, ever trust OCZ again. Had enough problems with their crappy memory in the past, so i have no idea what posessed me to buy OCZ SSD's in the first place. They weren't even the cheapest.

[Kobaltrock]

Maybe Toshiba can stop OCZ SSD's from sucking so badly. Or fix their broken customer support.

OCZ's customer support was one of the best I have dealt with.
They provided red label shipping for 2 faulty (panic locked) SSDs, can't ask for more than that, and that was direct from Taiwan!

[MaddMuppet]

I have had 2 OCZ SSd's die on me with no warning what so ever. One minute they were working, next boot nothing. I RMA'ed them for 2 Intel drives and have never looked back. On a personal note, I would never buy an OCZ SSD again.

[Darakian]

I miss OCZ from the days when they made ram. They had some epic customer support back then. For what it's worth, I've come across two dead SSDs at work and both are OCZ.

[LightSpeed]

Ive experienced great customer support from them, had a ram stick die and they sent me a faster replacement sporting an IC I requested within a week. Toshiba is great though, heres hoping they can combine the barefoot's speed with their legendary reliability.

[To(V)bo Co(V)bo]

FWIW I have had 2 OCZ SSD's, vertex and vertex4. Not one problem ever.

[MaddMuppet]

FWIW I have had 2 OCZ SSD's, vertex and vertex4. Not one problem ever.

Mine where both Vertex 2's. I think they were the ones with by far the biggest RMA's.

[zanzabar]

i had a coreV2 and 4 agilities all die in 2.5 years.

[Don_Dan]

I'm really sorry to hear OCZ is going down, they had some good people like Tony and Ryder, who were always helpful.

[C-N]

I miss OCZ from the days when they made ram. They had some epic customer support back then. For what it's worth, I've come across two dead SSDs at work and both are OCZ.

I'm really sorry to hear OCZ is going down, they had some good people like Tony and Ryder, who were always helpful.

^^^ same here

I will be sad to see OCZ go down I had a lot of fun with DFI & OCZ & Tony (Bigtoe) was/is a top bloke always helping & giving valuable information.

[Tony]

Gents...first thing im upset some of you have had support issues, i actually think the product was incompatible for the odd customer and the support was fine but hey ho we can not win them all.

Here is what I can tell you:

With the recent news OCZ wants to reassure all our valued customers that the Company is honoring all product warranties. If any customers require support they are encouraged to contact our customer support and forum support teams who will be more than happy to assist.

The forum is still open and helping, in house customer support is still in place also...i cant answer any questions outside this info while we transition over however BUT I just wanted to reassure you that right now we are still here and are helping customers with issues.

Thanks

Tony

[Dumo]

Still have a few OCZ stuff here.

Thanks for the clarification Tony

[himaro]

It just goes to show that support, no matter the manufacturer, it a roll of the dice.
Sometimes it's second to non, other times it's rock bottom.

But it's a real shame for OCZ, they were arguably contenders for market leaders in terms of performance a few years ago.
I hope Toshiba buys them and turns the brand around.
I don't know what Toshiba is like as a company, i've not heard anything bad about them for years, so i'm quietly optimistic.

[Zaxx]

I've always liked Ocz, I became a loyal customer back when they were just making memory. I've hung out on their forms for a few years now and learned sooo much about SSDs, esp during the 1st and 2nd gen. My heart kinda goes out to the support staff....some truly dedicated pros that absorbed truck loads of flack when things went wrong with new products.

As far as Tosh goes, one word comes to mind...big. Atm Plextor's new m.2 drives use a Marvell controller with Tosh toggle and it's not too impressive imo...I'd sure like to see what they can do with the Barefoot 3 paired with their 19nm toggle.

[Don_Dan]

Thanks for the post, Tony! I wish you guys all the best!

The original statement from OCZ's website:

OCZ Filing for Bankruptcy, Announces Offer From Toshiba to Purchase Assets

SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/27/13 -- OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that on November 25, 2013, it received notices that Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Inc. ("Hercules") took exclusive control of the Company's depository accounts at Silicon Valley Bank and Wells Fargo Bank, National Association. As set forth in the Company's recent SEC filings, Hercules and the Company are parties to a loan and security agreement. As previously reported, the Company is not in compliance with certain of the operating ratios and covenants in the loan agreement. As a result of such action and pursuant to Hercules' written instruction, the depository institutions disbursed the cash in the Company's respective accounts to accounts under the control of Hercules.

The Company has received an offer from Toshiba Corporation to acquire substantially all of the Company's assets in a bankruptcy proceeding. The parties have substantially completed negotiations on an asset purchase agreement and OCZ believes that all the material terms have been agreed to. The agreement is subject to various conditions: the preservation of the value of the business, including the retention of employees, the negotiation and execution of definitive documentation, the filing of bankruptcy petitions by the Company and certain of its subsidiaries, Toshiba's offer being accepted by the bankruptcy court as the highest and best offer under the circumstances after an auction process conducted under the relevant provisions of the United States Bankruptcy Code, and other customary closing conditions. The Company expects to file a petition for bankruptcy shortly after completing final documentation with Toshiba and Hercules, and to conduct the court-supervised auction process to attempt to maximize the value of the Company's assets and operations in an orderly process. More details will become available when the Company files its petition for bankruptcy.

If the Company is not able to agree to final documentation with Toshiba, the Company expects to imminently file a petition for bankruptcy and liquidate.

Some more articles from the web...
... in English @ HWBot and @ arstechnica.
... in German @ PCGHX forum and @ PCGH main site.

[lutjens]

I still have my Vertex 3 MAX IOPS SSDs and they've been mostly good drives. However, about 6 months ago, one drive began falling out of RAID on an intermittent basis, which was surprising considering they had been trouble-free for nearly 2 years on my LSI RAID card. Changing the backplane had no effect, still had the dropout. I had never updated the firmware on any of the drives (since I hadn't had any issues previously), so I updated quite a few versions at once. The update was quite tedious (the normal utility refused to work with the MAX IOPS drives), so I had to use the workaround via a bootable Linux stick. While it was a pain, the support forums provided all the information necessary to make it work, and I updated each SSD in the array one at a time in my Beater system (when it still used Corsair boot SSDs), rebuilding the array each time as I went (about 15 mins for each rebuild). Took about 2.5 hours to fully update all the SSDs. Fortunately, I've had no problems since and they continue to provide a good boot platform for my server.

The Revodrive 3 X2, on the other hand, I'm still working on getting working...it really doesn't like the NF200 bridge chip at all...

[M.Beier]

Glad that the OCZ staff will remain, very nice people!

[kuroikenshi]

^^ where's u avatar? the one you designed that it

[Starscream]

Ofc there wil be people that have had no issues with OCZ SSDs but fact remains that they were (dunno if they stil are) far less reliable then the SSD offerings from other companys.

I do wonder however what does happen to the other NON-SSD parts of OCZ if Toshiba buys them.
Is Toshiba only interested in the SSD part and will they kill off the other parts like the PSU part? Or will they continue selling PSU's?
Also will they keep slapping the OCZ name on the SSDs or will they replace that name with Toshiba or something else?
Cause it might be better if they stopped using the OCZ name, not everyone wil like it but when it comes to SSD's they dont have the best reputation.