Death of an SSD - Symptoms

[PotNoodleTech]

That's what you get for buying OCZ SSDs. Drives from reputable manufacturers do not have these issues.

 

Ouch!!! Agreed - their all sitting on a shelf now replaced with Sandisks.

[zag]

I still don't get why anyone would buy anything other an Intel SSD

 

They build them completely differently to other manufactures with reliability a priority.

 

We still have not had a single failure using either the X-25M, 330 or 520 series drives.

[LosOjos]

I still don't get why anyone would buy anything other an Intel SSD

 

They build them completely differently to other manufactures with reliability a priority.

 

We still have not had a single failure using either the X-25M, 330 or 520 series drives.

 

Where are you getting your information? Intel were one of the worst SSD makers not so long back! I'm not saying they're not great now, but their early drives problems really damaged their reputation.

 

Who's who in SSD? - Intel

 

As for them making theirs differently, how? They don't make their own controllers, for a start...

[Dos_Box]

@Dos_Box, have you tried updating the firmware ? It seemed to improve the stability of the Kingston SSDs we use here.

 

Try SSD life - tool for solid state drives health and endurance monitoring It shows SSD wear.

 

My original Intel X-25 lasted a day before it was hit with a strange bug where it showed its storage as 8Mb

 

There was never a firmware update for this drive. Very peculiar, but there you go

 

products

[zag]

Where are you getting your information? Intel were one of the worst SSD makers not so long back! I'm not saying they're not great now, but their early drives problems really damaged their reputation.

 

Who's who in SSD? - Intel

 

As for them making theirs differently, how? They don't make their own controllers, for a start...

 

We run intel exclusively here in all clients and servers so I know a little about these things

 

This is the drive we currently use Review: Intel 520 Series SSD (240GB) - Storage - HEXUS.net - Page 8

 

The 5 year warranty tells you something, not that I have ever had to use it for any machine... ever

 

Specifically Intel Over Provision the amount of memory chips inside the SSD so that if a complete chip fails you wont loose anything. Thats why they have lower capacities than other manufacturers and higher prices.

 

They also have a feature that, in the event of a power failure keeps holds enough charge in the resistors to complete the write operation

 

Lastly they build their own PCB with proper components unlike most other manufacturers who rebrand stuff and use cheaper bits (*Cough* OCZ).

 

Be acreful assuming they are bad drives becuse the speed doesnt set the world on fire. I personally have no interest in speed, its a completely pointless metric when it comes to using SSD drives in a work environment. Its all about reliability for me and for that Intel is king.

Edited November 14, 2013 by zag

[LosOjos]

We run intel exclusively here in all clients and servers so I know a little about these things

 

This is the drive we currently use Review: Intel 520 Series SSD (240GB) - Storage - HEXUS.net - Page 8

 

The 5 year warranty tells you something, not that I have ever had to use it for any machine... ever

 

Specifically Intel Over Provision the amount of memory chips inside the SSD so that if a complete chip fails you wont loose anything. Thats why they have lower capacities than other manufacturers and higher prices.

 

They also have a feature that, in the event of a power failure keeps holds enough charge in the resistors to complete the write operation

 

 

 

Be acreful assuming they are bad drives becuse the speed doesnt set the world on fire. I personally have no interest in speed, its a completely pointless metric when it comes to using SSD drives in a work environment. Its all about reliability for me and for that Intel is king.

 

Interesting, I didn't know about the over provisioned chips or resistor charge. Like I said, I'm not knocking Intel but to answer you're question about why anybody uses anyone else, well, Intel did some serious damage to their rep for early uptakers of SSDs. Just like OCZ now (who from purely anecdotal evidence seem to have become much better in the past 12 months), it's likely to make people wary of them for some time

[SYNACK]

Interesting, I didn't know about the over provisioned chips or resistor charge. Like I said, I'm not knocking Intel but to answer you're question about why anybody uses anyone else, well, Intel did some serious damage to their rep for early uptakers of SSDs. Just like OCZ now (who from purely anecdotal evidence seem to have become much better in the past 12 months), it's likely to make people wary of them for some time

 

Capacitor charge, but anyway I to have not ventured outside the Intel lines as they do have a rep for much better reliability than the others.

[LosOjos]

Capacitor charge, but anyway I to have not ventured outside the Intel lines as they do have a rep for much better reliability than the others.

 

Whoops! Yes, those resistors aren't know for their ability to hold a charge are they

 

I'm not arguing that Intel aren't reliable now, was just saying that a couple of years back they were awful, which damaged their reputation. As we all know, OCZ are the dogs of the market now, even though I have heard their latest gen are much improved, it's going to take them some time to lose that reputation.

 

Personally, I have a Crucial SSD because it was fast, cheap and Crucial hardware has always been reliable IME

[Arthur]

I'm just wondering whether it would be practical to develop a 'whole drive' sensor and monitoring package rather than just the read/write and uptime based stats.

It's a nice idea, but I doubt consumer SSDs would ever get a feature like this since it would increase the cost of the drives. People generally do not like paying more for computer parts, even if there are obvious benefits.

 

Btw, Fusion I/O makes a product called ioSphere that enables enterprises to centrally monitor the health of all of thier (Fusion I/O) PCIe SSDs. Very cool, but also extremely expensive.

 

http://i.imgur.com/OwOIVn2.jpg

 

There was never a firmware update for this drive. Very peculiar, but there you go

Your Kingston SNV425-S2 had a JMicron 618 controller. You should avoid any SSD that contains a controller made by this company like the plague since they are infamous for making poor controllers.

 

Their JMF602 controllers from 4-5 years ago being the best example. This controller had random write latencies so high (0.5 to 2 seconds) that it would make the entire OS freeze/stutter because it was originally designed for USB flash drives, not SSDs!

 

Some companies like OCZ recommended that owners of SSDs with these controllers (Core, Solid etc.) move their page file and temporary internet files folder off the SSD to reduce the number of writes to the drive and thus the stuttering, rather than do an expensive recall of the (clearly faulty) drives. IMO, they shouldn't have been sold in the first place!

 

Specifically Intel over provision the amount of memory chips inside the SSD so that if a complete chip fails you won't loose anything. That's why they have lower capacities than other manufacturers and higher prices.

Almost all SSDs include a certain amount of spare NAND to protect against flash memory defects and/or increase endurance. Some examples...

 

http://i.imgur.com/S10Wbme.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/4KvhJtc.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/Qde36K0.png

 

They also have a feature that, in the event of a power failure keeps holds enough charge in the resistors to complete the write operation.

Your 520 Series SSDs do not have power-loss protection (unlike the 320 Series). These days supercapacitors are almost always reserved for enterprise-class SSDs.

 

http://i.imgur.com/0AUa4Me.png

 

Lastly they build their own PCB with proper components

Samsung and Micron (Crucial) do too.

Edited November 16, 2013 by Arthur