Intel SSD Sandforce reliabilty

[hhhd1]

Intel's 520 series have been released for quite sometime, and Intel 330 have just been released, and 330's prices already dropped to be very affordable.

Some people still post some bad reviews on sites like newegg, but I wonder if those are isolated cases, like it is with crucial, or is it a wide spread thing like the rest of sandforce based ssds ...

Any statistics about return rates ? failure rate ?

Any good/bad stories about them ?

I am mainly asking because Intel 330 is available in the local market, unlike Samsung 830 and Crucial M4,
So, .. can I consider Intel 330 to be good enough, or go with the extra fees and hassle needed for international shipping ?

Thanks.

 

[bryanW1995]

Most of the bad reviews I have seen on 520/330 are anti sand force and are not based upon personal experience. I'm inclined to trust intel when they say that they expect returns to be in line with their previous ssd's. AT has good write ups for the 520 and 330 series as well.

 

[BogdanH]

Hi,

... I'm inclined to trust intel when they say...

Me too. And this has nothing to do with being "fanboy" or whatever (I'm too old to join such "clubs" anyway). However...
From not that long ago, we all know the fiasco of SandForce driven SSD's. And yes, I had Vertex-2 and it worked only (exactly) one year! And no, don't tell me what I need to know (and how smart one must be) to be able to use SSD. I didn't bought SandForce SSD because of "impressive" performance, but because price was ok. Having bad experience with SandForce, which wasn't isolated case, there's no way I would get another SandForce driven SSD again.
Now I wonder... how come Intel decided to use SandForce after all those complains from users? I mean, Intel did take a look into i.e. OCZ forum before deciding... I hope.
So, I can only speculate: Intel has more tight contact with SandForce than "other" brands. Meaning, Intel can participate in SandForce firmware (and similar) developement more actively than "other buyers". I hope that's the case... we'll know in a year or so .
I'm not benchmark geek and in real usage, performance differences between SSD's -of similar generation- are academic. Anyway, I got Samsung 830 and I can sleep well now.

Just my 2c,
Bogdan

 

[blackened23]

Been using an intel 520 since release and it is awesome.

No problems at all.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

I recently built a new system with the Intel® SSD 520 120GB and I had no problems what so ever with it. The drive has worked fast and without any issues.

 

[kbp]

I recently built a new system with the Intel® SSD 520 120GB and I had no problems what so ever with it. The drive has worked fast and without any issues.

By chance....did you get any "in house" discount???

 

[Coup27]

I recently built a new system with the Intel® SSD 520 120GB and I had no problems what so ever with it. The drive has worked fast and without any issues.

Not being funny mate but even if you did have an issue you are not going to post about it in a public forum given that you work for Intel.

 

[guskline]

I recently built a new system with the Intel® SSD 520 120GB and I had no problems what so ever with it. The drive has worked fast and without any issues.

I don't work for Intel and recently upgraded 2 rigs with Intel 520 120GB ssds. Both machines work well. Disk bench readings are incredible. Very fast, very reponsive and a 5 yr warranty. BTW, I had an Intel 80 G G2 fail recently and Intel was steller. Got a replacement drive within a week. Can't speak for others, only myself, but Intel honors their warranty.

 

[hhhd1]

Intel have risked allot of its reputation by using sandforce, and the few bad reviews posted by random users on different places are enough to make the situation worse due to the history of sandforce.

at the moment,128gb/120gb:
samsung 830 is $130,
crucial m4 is $125,
intel 330 is $141.

 

[npaladin-2000]

Intel have risked allot of its reputation by using sandforce, and the few bad reviews posted by random users on different places are enough to make the situation worse due to the history of sandforce.

at the moment,128gb/120gb:
samsung 830 is $130,
crucial m4 is $125,
intel 330 is $141.

With that kind of pricing, Intel isn't in a good position. On the one had you have Intel's track record, but on the other you have SandForce's track record. Intel needs to get the pricing down on their non-Intel-controller drives. Intel's magic and reliability were in large part due to their controllers and firmware, but with SandForce, SandForce controls the controller and a large portion of the firmware (the compression and deduplication code).

 

[blackened23]

To my knowledge all sandforce issues were fixed a long time ago with firmware updates. I've put my 520s through hell and back and they are awesome, I love them.

I don't think you'll have any issues.

 

[bryanW1995]

Your knowledge is not complete. However, intel appears to have solved enough of the old sf issues that they expect quality to be similar to their other ssd's.

 

[blackened23]

Your knowledge is not complete. However, intel appears to have solved enough of the old sf issues that they expect quality to be similar to their other ssd's.

If you say so. I know tons of people running vertex 3's with NO issue who had problems prior to the firmwares that were released 5-6 months ago. I'm pretty sure all problems are solved although i'm sure there are whiny idiots complaining on OCZs forum who have no idea what they're doing.

Anyway, the 520s have been completely solid for me.

 

[JAG87]

I specifically bought the older 320 drive instead of the newer 330 drive despite lower performance (not really perceivable anyway), simply because when it comes to reliability, older is better. The Intel controller has proved and improved across 3 generations. SF2281 is too new for me to put trust in it.

And there's no difference in perceivable performance, unless you're sitting there reading and writing gigabytes of data to it. Then by all means, buy the fastest drives and raid them, but as an OS drive, there's no difference.

 

[bryanW1995]

If you say so. I know tons of people running vertex 3's with NO issue who had problems prior to the firmwares that were released 5-6 months ago. I'm pretty sure all problems are solved although i'm sure there are whiny idiots complaining on OCZs forum who have no idea what they're doing.

Anyway, the 520s have been completely solid for me.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5508/intel-ssd-520-review-cherryville-brings-reliability-to-sandforce

here's a quote from page one of that article:

Intel's strenuous validation will eventually make SandForce's drives better for everyone, but for now the Cherryville firmware remains exclusive. Intel wouldn't go on record with details of its arrangement with SandForce, but from what I've managed to piece together the Intel Cherryville firmware is exclusive for a limited period of time. That exclusivity agreement likely expires sometime after the SF-2281 is replaced by a 3rd generation controller. There are some loopholes that allow SandForce to port bug fixes to general partner firmware but the specific terms aren't public information. The important takeaway is anything fixed in Intel's firmware isn't necessarily going to be fixed in other SF-2281 based drives in the near term. This is an important distinction because although Cherryville performs very similarly to other SF-2281 drives, it should be more reliable.

The biggest problem with OCZ isn't that their drives don't eventually become more stable, it's that you are truly a beta, or often alpha, tester when you buy one of their new releases.

Intel and Samsung are a lot better with their validation testing, so it is easier to buy one of their new offerings with confidence. Crucial did well with the m4, but I would still wait and see how their next gen marvell drives hold up before buying one of those. And all of the others I would certainly be cautious with.

I specifically bought the older 320 drive instead of the newer 330 drive despite lower performance (not really perceivable anyway), simply because when it comes to reliability, older is better. The Intel controller has proved and improved across 3 generations. SF2281 is too new for me to put trust in it.

And there's no difference in perceivable performance, unless you're sitting there reading and writing gigabytes of data to it. Then by all means, buy the fastest drives and raid them, but as an OS drive, there's no difference.

I find no reason to fault your logic in choosing the 320 over the 330, though I would disagree with the perceptible performance delta between the 2. Based upon my experience in going from an 80gb x25m g2 to a couple of 256gb m4, even when I wasn't in RAID 0 mode it was clear that the m4 was quite a bit faster. Now, if you were going from an hdd to an ssd then you probably wouldn't see much difference, but going from an ssd to a new/faster ssd you would immediately detect a difference.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Now, if you were going from an hdd to an ssd then you probably wouldn't see much difference, but going from an ssd to a new/faster ssd you would immediately detect a difference.

I honestly didn't see much of a perceptible speed increase, in going from a fast HDD, to an OCZ 30GB Agility, to a 240GB Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe.

Part of that, was that I was running software FDE, which encrypts the entire drive, and therefore makes it incompressable, so I was seeing worst-case Sandforce performance. In truth, after software FDE, my 4K-64thrd random read speeds were around the same, 20MB/sec, between the OCZ 30GB and the Mushkin 240GB.

Sure, the SSD rigs booted faster, but web browsing was largely unaffected.

 

[JAG87]

I find no reason to fault your logic in choosing the 320 over the 330, though I would disagree with the perceptible performance delta between the 2. Based upon my experience in going from an 80gb x25m g2 to a couple of 256gb m4, even when I wasn't in RAID 0 mode it was clear that the m4 was quite a bit faster. Now, if you were going from an hdd to an ssd then you probably wouldn't see much difference, but going from an ssd to a new/faster ssd you would immediately detect a difference.

I'm not sure what you're referring to, but putting 3 computers side by side, one with HDD, one with a slower SSD and one with a faster SSD, you would notice a world of a difference between HDD and SSD, but almost zero difference between the two SSDs.

Loading time under heavy IO would be like:

HDD PC - 10 seconds
slower SSD PC - 1 second
faster SSD PC - 0.8 seconds

Sure, the SSD rigs booted faster, but web browsing was largely unaffected.

.... you dont say?

 

[bryanW1995]

I noticed the difference in my own switch a few weeks ago, as I just stated.

 

[TemjinGold]

I'm not sure what you're referring to, but putting 3 computers side by side, one with HDD, one with a slower SSD and one with a faster SSD, you would notice a world of a difference between HDD and SSD, but almost zero difference between the two SSDs.

What he means is, if you went from an HDD to SSD 1 versus an HDD to SSD2, you wouldn't notice the difference between the SSDs. But if you went from SSD1 straight to SSD2, you would.