DON'T Buy Intel 320 SSDs

I thought it was still short OCZ month. Are we supposed to short intel now and why didn't I get the memo.

Srsly...get a grip. ALL SSDs will have problems. They are new tech - each new generation is significantly different from the previous one and some of the specifications needed for them to work haven't been fixed yet. Despite the problems, those few rma staistics that have been released seem to show that the least reliable ssds are less likely to fail than the most reliable 7200rpm hard drives. A drive failure is no different than any other component failure; there is no rational justification for the "I need a super-reliable hard drive to go with my leaky tubing 4.5Ghz overclock and non-ecc memory" complex.
 
there's a huge difference between having a drive that doesn't fail and your ram screwing up a zero one time every 20 years.
 
gjs278 said:
there's a huge difference between having a drive that doesn't fail and your ram screwing up a zero one time every 20 years.
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Or screw up a bit every day? If not more often (with high capacities). Anyone doing more than 8GB non-ECC is crazy IMO.
 
color me crazy then. bit flips are only really an issue above 5000 ft (above sea level), and if you're running non-ECC. Of course, then there's always capacitor whine, and plasma TVs that become an issue as well, but some people don't listen.
 
sabregen said:
color me crazy then. bit flips are only really an issue above 5000 ft (above sea level), and if you're running non-ECC. Of course, then there's always capacitor whine, and plasma TVs that become an issue as well, but some people don't listen.
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Got a URL that goes into detail more about this :confused:
 
I live at 6,200ft. The plasma thing was a big deal back in the early days (early 2000's/late 90's). Problems really started around 7,500ft. Now, plasmas are all rated for problem-free performance up to 10,000ft. Capcaitor whine and memory on the other hand, I'd have to see proof there's issues tied to altitude...
 
well ive never heard of that, craziness! (the altitude issues)

gut as to the intel issue, that is overblown. a rare corner case that is probably 1 in a million.
 
Computurd said:
gut as to the intel issue, that is overblown. a rare corner case that is probably 1 in a million.
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Judging from the posts to Intel's forum, I'd guess it is a lot more than that. This post in particular:

out of a current total of approximatly 600 drives in business so far, we have had 7 drives dieing by this error. (all within 3 months of time)
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That comes to an annual failure rate of 4.7%.

As much as I hate to say it, I think Intel has dropped the ball here. Intel needs to make an announcement about the problem.

For now, I will not be buying any more Intel 320 SSDs. For anyone who wants a reliable SSD, I think the Intel X25-M model is still a good choice (less than 1% AFR), but very hard to find new.
 
600 drives with 7 failures in 1 business. Now what if another business had 10000 and only 1 failed? Now your failure rate would be different. You can't take one case and then determine a failure rate for the entire series.
Also if you care about your data that much, you back it up on a regular HDD or get an SLC SSD.
 
The higher in altitude you get the more likely you are to get hit by a cosmic ray/particle.
 
Intel SSDs are by far the most reliable ones on the market. If you are worried about reliability and don't want to buy Intel then good luck with any of the other brands.
 
john4200 said:
Judging from the posts to Intel's forum, I'd guess it is a lot more than that. This post in particular:



That comes to an annual failure rate of 4.7%.

As much as I hate to say it, I think Intel has dropped the ball here. Intel needs to make an announcement about the problem.

For now, I will not be buying any more Intel 320 SSDs. For anyone who wants a reliable SSD, I think the Intel X25-M model is still a good choice (less than 1% AFR), but very hard to find new.
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Well the people who have problems are always louder than the ones who have nothing to say at all. I've had three Intel SSD's. Not the 320 series, but rather two X-25M G1 drives and 1 G2 drive. I've had one G1 drive die on me. Intel sent me the G2 as a replacement. Other than that, I've had zero issues with them. I've also used their SSD 311 series which worked perfectly and I abused the shit out of that one while on the test bench. I have no practical experience with the SSD 320, but I'd be confident in buying one. If it died, I know Intel would make it right.
 
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xIronCrossx said:
600 drives with 7 failures in 1 business. Now what if another business had 10000 and only 1 failed? Now your failure rate would be different. You can't take one case and then determine a failure rate for the entire series.
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Actually, you can. It is called sampling and statistical estimation.

But I did not claim that the AFR for all Intel 320 SSDs was 4.7%. I merely gave the example to show that it is very unlikely that it is a 1 in a million problem, as a previous post claimed.

Judging from the other posts I have seen, and the example I referenced, I suspect it is much higher than 1 in a million. In fact, the best estimate I have is 4.7% AFR, but the uncertainty on that is large, so I would not be surprised if a study with a much larger sample came up with 2% or 6% or 8%.
 
Dan_D said:
I've had three Intel SSD's. Not the 320 series, but rather two X-25M G1 drives and 1 G2 drive. I've had one G1 drive die on me. Intel sent me the G2 as a replacement. Other than that, I've had zero issues with them. I've also used their SSD 311 series which worked perfectly and I abused the shit out of that one while on the test bench.
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Which is exactly why I said the X25-M series is still a good choice (but hard to find), while the 320 series is suspect. Time and large data samples have proven the X25-M to be reliable.

The 320 series, on the other hand, has not been proven. Indeed, it looks like it may have some problems. Since Intel is not commenting on it, we will just have to wait and see how many problems the 320 series may have. But one thing is certain -- Intel is handling it badly by not making any comments or announcements on the issue.
 
john4200 said:
Which is exactly why I said the X25-M series is still a good choice (but hard to find), while the 320 series is suspect. Time and large data samples have proven the X25-M to be reliable.

The 320 series, on the other hand, has not been proven. Indeed, it looks like it may have some problems. Since Intel is not commenting on it, we will just have to wait and see how many problems the 320 series may have. But one thing is certain -- Intel is handling it badly by not making any comments or announcements on the issue.
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Again, I'd be pretty confident Intel would make it right if I bought an SSD 320 series and it died on me. That's what my experiences with them have shown me. That is not to say that the Intel SSD 320 series would be my first choice, because it wouldn't be. I'd either go for the 500 series or the Cruicial M4.
 
Dan_D said:
Again, I'd be pretty confident Intel would make it right if I bought an SSD 320 series and it died on me. That's what my experiences with them have shown me.
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Which says very little of import. I am confident that most of the SSD vendors, including the nefarious OCZ, would replace an SSD that failed by suddenly showing only 8MB of space, or something similar.

No, the issue at hand is how likely is a buyer to have problems with an SSD in the first place. Who wants to have a new SSD fail, creating downtime, losing data, causing hassle to replace the SSD and retrieve the data from backups? That is something to be avoided as much as possible.
 
john4200 said:
Which says very little of import. I am confident that most of the SSD vendors, including the nefarious OCZ, would replace an SSD that failed by suddenly showing only 8MB of space, or something similar.

No, the issue at hand is how likely is a buyer to have problems with an SSD in the first place. Who wants to have a new SSD fail, creating downtime, losing data, causing hassle to replace the SSD and retrieve the data from backups? That is something to be avoided as much as possible.
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So far all I've seen is forum whining and speculation. That's not hard evidence that a given product is so bad it deserves a "Don't buy xxx thread." The people that do have problems are typically very vocal about them. That alone isn't proof of anything.
 
Dan_D said:
So far all I've seen is forum whining and speculation. That's not hard evidence that a given product is so bad it deserves a "Don't buy xxx thread." The people that do have problems are typically very vocal about them. That alone isn't proof of anything.
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"Whining"? I am curious how you label all of the problem reports on the referenced Intel forums thread as "whining"? I see several clearly worded, straightforward problem reports about the 8MB bug, including the one I partially quoted in this thread. For you to dismiss them all as "whining" sounds like, well, whining.

And proof? Those who demand absolute certainty tend to live in ivory towers and not get much useful work done. For the rest of us, credible problem reports are useful bits of evidence in making an informed buying decision.
 
aww.. I was planning on picking up an 80GB 320 later tonight. I guess what it really comes down to is this: who do I like more, john or Dan? Decisions, decisions...
 
xDezor said:
aww.. I was planning on picking up an 80GB 320 later tonight. I guess what it really comes down to is this: who do I like more, john or Dan? Decisions, decisions...
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5 years of warranty and lowest return rate...decisions eh?
 
xIronCrossx said:
http://techmento.com/2011/05/21/intel-raises-warranty-320-series-ssd/

They say that intel said that they experience 1/3 of 1% of failure rates among the 320 series. Yeah very bad idea to buy them.

Your title is just stupid, seriously. You could have at least named it differently.
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If UPS delivered 99% of their packages, they'd still be loosing 10,000 boxes a day... That's kinda a lot. Not so say UPS delivers more than Intel 320's, but I just thought I should point that out.
 
xDezor said:
aww.. I was planning on picking up an 80GB 320 later tonight. I guess what it really comes down to is this: who do I like more, john or Dan? Decisions, decisions...
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Please don't make any decisions based on that! Read the problem reports in the referenced thread on the Intel forums. Most of them are quite specific about the "8MB bug". These are not nebulous "my SSD failed" reports, but rather appear to be a diverse group of 320 SSD owners who are all experiencing a very specific problem with the SSDs failing and showing only 8MB. You should decide for yourself which, if any, of the problem reports are credible, and how widespread the problem might be.
 
Alright my brother just got a 120gb one, I'll tell you how it works when I get back home in 2 weeks.
 
xDezor said:
If UPS delivered 99% of their packages, they'd still be loosing 10,000 boxes a day... That's kinda a lot. Not so say UPS delivers more than Intel 320's, but I just thought I should point that out.
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Think about failure rates for SATA hard drives. I mean the annual failure rates are much higher than 1%.
 
john4200 said:
"Whining"? I am curious how you label all of the problem reports on the referenced Intel forums thread as "whining"? I see several clearly worded, straightforward problem reports about the 8MB bug, including the one I partially quoted in this thread. For you to dismiss them all as "whining" sounds like, well, whining.

And proof? Those who demand absolute certainty tend to live in ivory towers and not get much useful work done. For the rest of us, credible problem reports are useful bits of evidence in making an informed buying decision.
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I wasn't talking about the whining in the linked forum threads. A title of "Don't buy Intel 320 SSD's" combined with anecdotal evidence alone is pretty close to whining. Perhaps I chose my words poorly. Kind of like the title of this thread. I'm not saying there is or there isn't a problem with the Intel SSD 320 series drives. A lot of people probably run them without issues just as there are more than a couple problems. Unless you get into each case carefully, it's tough to know which. I see more complaints about ASUS boards than any other brand. They also sell more than any other board maker does. I've never experienced any serious problems with ASUS boards aside from one or two models here and there. It's hard for me to believe that the issues reported here are wide spread. Even if 4.7% of them fail, the industry standard failure rate on electronics is something like 3%. That doesn't make for a massive widespread problem which deserves a "don't buy this product" type of warning.

I'm saying, that the premise of this thread is flawed, and people are jumping to conclusions over a few reports of bad drives. Until I see something more concrete, it's hard for me to conclude that these drives should really be avoided.
 
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Dan_D said:
I wasn't talking about the whining in the linked forum threads.
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Well, you wrote "So far all I've seen is forum whining and speculation." I assumed that you had at least read through the Intel forum thread linked in the OP of this thread when you made that statement. Now, I can only conclude that you either had not read the Intel forum posts linked to from the first post in this thread, or that you had read them and dismissed them all as whining or speculation.

Dan_D said:
Perhaps I chose my words poorly. Kind of like the title of this thread. I'm not saying there is or there isn't a problem with the Intel SSD 320 series drives. A lot of people probably run them without issues just as there are more than a couple problems. Unless you get into each case carefully, it's tough to know which. I see more complaints about ASUS boards than any other brand. They also sell more than any other board maker does. I've never experienced any serious problems with ASUS boards aside from one or two models here and there. It's hard for me to believe that the issues reported here are wide spread. Even if 4.7% of them fail, the industry standard failure rate on electronics is something like 3%. That doesn't make for a massive widespread problem which deserves a "don't buy this product" type of warning.
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Well, the 2011-May-6 behardware.com return rates for SSDs range from 0.3% to 3.5% :

http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-1/components-returns-rates.html

"The returns rates given concern the products sold between April 1st 2010 and October 1st 2010 for returns made before April 2011".

So, not including Intel 320 SSDs. The 0.3% is for Intel SSDs, by the way. Obviously that would be mostly X25-M SSDs.

Also, Intel's data collected from their own IT department, and from some of their very large customers, shows X25-M AFRs well below 1%.

So, many people, myself included, have considered Intel SSDs to be the most reliable. I have bought several Intel 320 SSDs myself, assuming that the AFRs for the 320 series would be similar to the X25-M series.

But evidence is accumulating that the 320 SSDs may not be as reliable as the X25-M series. Certainly the evidence is far from conclusive, and we will have to wait for many months to see what the return rates are on the 320 series. Still, one thing is certain -- Intel is handling it badly by not making any announcements, or even posting a response to the problem reports in their forums. It seems Intel's SSD group is not as good at handling their issues as their motherboard chipset group.
 
john4200 said:
Well, you wrote "So far all I've seen is forum whining and speculation." I assumed that you had at least read through the Intel forum thread linked in the OP of this thread when you made that statement. Now, I can only conclude that you either had not read the Intel forum posts linked to from the first post in this thread, or that you had read them and dismissed them all as whining or speculation.



Well, the 2011-May-6 behardware.com return rates for SSDs range from 0.3% to 3.5% :

http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-1/components-returns-rates.html

"The returns rates given concern the products sold between April 1st 2010 and October 1st 2010 for returns made before April 2011".

So, not including Intel 320 SSDs. The 0.3% is for Intel SSDs, by the way. Obviously that would be mostly X25-M SSDs.

Also, Intel's data collected from their own IT department, and from some of their very large customers, shows X25-M AFRs well below 1%.

So, many people, myself included, have considered Intel SSDs to be the most reliable. I have bought several Intel 320 SSDs myself, assuming that the AFRs for the 320 series would be similar to the X25-M series.

But evidence is accumulating that the 320 SSDs may not be as reliable as the X25-M series. Certainly the evidence is far from conclusive, and we will have to wait for many months to see what the return rates are on the 320 series. Still, one thing is certain -- Intel is handling it badly by not making any announcements, or even posting a response to the problem reports in their forums. It seems Intel's SSD group is not as good at handling their issues as their motherboard chipset group.
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I haven't dismissed anything. That said I haven't gone through all the linked forum posts. Again I just thought the title was sensationalism at it's best. The post I quoted I can agree with and makes sense. We don't have enough information yet and that was my point all along.
 
My new system is currently running an Intel 320 120GB SSD. Built it about 3 weeks ago. So far everything is well. I will see how this pans out. My OS and games are really responsive.
 
Finally a comment from an Intel rep on their forums. Unfortunately, there is no information except that Intel is aware of the problem. I would have expected more information on the issue, since this problem was first reported about two months ago.

http://communities.intel.com/thread/23217?tstart=0

Intel is aware of the customer sightings on Intel SSD 320 Series. If you experience any issue with your Intel SSD, please contact your Intel representative or Intel customer support (via web: www.intel.com or phone: www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/contact/phone) . We will provide an update when we have more information.



Alan

Intel's NVM Solutions Group
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I see... Well, I decided to side with Dan. Tehehe xD

Now that the power's back up (anyone else frustrated with northern VA's POS power companies?) I just finished placing an order on amazon for my 80GB 320 drive. Gotta wait till Thursday to try it out though.. It's a shame, when I was initially placing my order 6 hours ago, they said it would have gotten here on Wednesday.

Thanks for the info john, I'll be sure to watch how this pans out.
 
dude, Intel is the most reliable, bar none. Anyone in here would be hard pressed to name a SSD company more reliable, and with the track record of Intel.

If you arent going to buy an intel SSD because of this, dont buy any. They are BY FAR the gold standard. everyone else is worse.

The only company even close in reliability is Crucial/Micron.

of course we have no hard data, at all. A few forum postings is hardly the stuff of mass recalls.

let me say that again:

There is no hard data that this is not a corner case, or merely a bad batch of ssds that went out.

the guy who mentioned he bought a large amount and that alot of them were bad, points directly to a bad batch. these things happen.

Would anyone care to speculate on the failure rates of HDDs???? anyone??
lets compare them to SSDs.

oh well. of course my "one in a million" statement was a common place comment, not meant to be construed as a actual statistical statement.

Its just this: I have been around SSDs since they weren't called SSDs, i was born with one in my hand, and the intels are by far way better than any other. I lurk on every major storage forum, and im telling ya, there just isnt any manufacturer close to intel.

oh yea, the born with one in my hand statement was once again, yes thats right, a common saying. not meant to be taken literally.
 
There is no hard data that this is not a corner case, or merely a bad batch of ssds that went out.
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Err...you realize that there's no hard data to support any of the arguments in this thread, right? AFAIK Samsung, Micron, Sandforce, Intel, Marvell, Indilinix have all had their own issues at various times but all of them generally work very well.

If you arent going to buy an intel SSD because of this, dont buy any. They are BY FAR the gold standard. everyone else is worse.
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EVERY intel ssd? Including the X25E? 8) If you're going to play the brand loyalty game at least differentiate by model so you have a thin crunchy outer shell of credibility.
If I had to pick a single "most reliable" controller, I guess it would be the SF-1500 because it had the best flash compatibility and seemed to have fewer issues than other commodity 2G enterprise controllers. However, it's now outdated and I would not buy an SF-1500 drive. Of the 3G drives, the only controller I would tend to shy away from is Micron because of their history w/taking forever to acknowledge and fix issues.
 
I guess it would be the SF-1500 because it had the best flash compatibility and seemed to have fewer issues than other commodity 2G enterprise controllers. However, it's now outdated and I would not buy an SF-1500 drive. Of the 3G drives, the only controller I would tend to shy away from is Micron because of their history w/taking forever to acknowledge and fix issues.
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To each their own.
 
If I had to pick a single "most reliable" controller, I guess it would be the SF-1500 because it had the best flash compatibility and seemed to have fewer issues than other commodity 2G enterprise controlle
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this statement is all the proof that we need that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
 
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