Intel 320 Firmware Bug Can Cause Data Loss

Just found the following thread, just in case people are considering the Intel 320s.

Is 320 firmware buggy?

 

This discussion thread on the intel forum alone is enough for me to take the 320 out of my list(if I am in the market for a new SSD), doesn't need any stat from newegg. It unfortunately is now in the same league as SF.

 

The quote in the OP is from this link:

See:
Do SSD drives really fail a lot ?


Not a very 'normal case' scenario (power cycling for 3 hours straight... ).

Although this does seem to be a problem for some, it is still highly favoured over any SF product (imo).

I'm sure Intel will find a solution (and the 'right' one too...) soon enough.

The last post on the link (OP's...) in page 3 shows 7 drives out of 600 or so show this issue - nothing out of the ordinary, I think.

 

If I read it correctly, the power cycle for 3 hours straight just increase the chance of hitting the bug(that is a typical strategy used for repeating transient bug).

The SF is actually facing very similar situation in that it only affects a limited combination(and there are many people using them without any problem since its first release) or else all SF would be pulled from market if the problems were really wide spread.

The only difference I see is that SF has been told for these power related issue(mainly in the form of sleep/hibernate) for over a year and they are still struggling indicating they have no clue how to fix it. Intel hopefully has better engineers in this department.

Though as of now, I would not consider 320 unless I know the machine it is going to be in is 'whitelisted'(just the same approach I use for SF).

 

Fair enough.

But, I'm just going by this:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...tomer-reviews-current-ssds-who-will-help.html


It would take a catastrophe of gigantic proportions to be in the same league as SF drives.

 

The big difference is that Intel will probably solve this soonish.

I don't know when (if ever) Sandforce drives will be as reliable as let's say Intel X25-m or Samsung 470.

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Other article:
Intel 320 Series SSDs Affected by Firmware Bug That Causes Data Loss

 

Nasty bug, although from the thread discussing it, it seems like something that you would have to replicate under certain unrealistic scenarios.
Hopefully Intel will fix it soon.

 

I've seen two people on Macrumors that experienced this bug during normal usage. Here's one:

Correct.

 

Intel acknowledges:

SSD power loss report updates: Intel Communities

 

And here I was thinking I was so smart for purchasing a 320 for sake of reliability. Hell, it is enough to make me go back to a spinner. They can make a darn near flawless CPU, why not a SSD???

 

CPU tech is much more mature. Intel released 4004 series microprocessors in 1971 and they have accumulated 40 years of know-how on that. SSDs are all within the last few years...


--

 

No media is perfect no matter what, i never had had issues with either my x25m (120gb and 160gb), aside from wasnt able to secure erase it from intel toolbox, but im still confident on Intel, and ill continue to use them until i see mass problems.

Backup is you friend, no matter if its an enterprise ssd or hdd, i would always do a hard backup on an external hdd, server, or cloud storage.

 

Oh yeah, how quickly I forgot about those 40 years I'll just backup alot, like I did an hour ago. Backing up is good.