From the threads on Intel's forums, it sounds like the most likely culprit is that Intel's TRIM implementation breaks when your partition is not 4KB aligned. If that is the case, those who partitioned & formatted their drives with the Win7 installer should be ok, but if you are upgrading from Vista or XP without erasing the drive first you will likely run into trouble. Also, if you used partition magic or ghost your alignment is likely to be incorrect and you could run into trouble.
Note: If you are using Intel Matrix Storage drivers, you aren't getting TRIM commands passed down to the drive, as those drivers don't support the command yet and just eat it. Only if you are using Microsoft AHCI drivers is the Win7 TRIM command getting forwarded to your drive.
Also, I don't think the drives are really getting bricked, but are getting screwed up partition maps that the installer doesn't know what to do with, HDDERASE wipes the partition map so you can start fresh.
* I am not an Intel employee. The above is my best guesses as to what is going on, and may be incorrect. YMMV.
Note: If you are using Intel Matrix Storage drivers, you aren't getting TRIM commands passed down to the drive, as those drivers don't support the command yet and just eat it. Only if you are using Microsoft AHCI drivers is the Win7 TRIM command getting forwarded to your drive.
Also, I don't think the drives are really getting bricked, but are getting screwed up partition maps that the installer doesn't know what to do with, HDDERASE wipes the partition map so you can start fresh.
* I am not an Intel employee. The above is my best guesses as to what is going on, and may be incorrect. YMMV.