The Intel SSD 330 Review (60GB, 120GB, 180GB)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 1, 2012 12:01 AM ESTFinal Words
Of the available SandForce drives, I've felt most comfortable recommending Intel's own. The pass through Intel's validation labs provides that extra peace of mind that hopefully translates into a better overall experience. In the past Intel has been a reliable option in the market but not necessarily the most affordable. The 330 attempts to correct the latter. While other drives are cheaper, the 330 does give you a unique combination of an Intel validated drive at a competitive price point.
The performance delta between the 330 and the 520 is narrow enough that I don't see a reason to recommend the 520 unless you need a higher capacity drive. The loss of endurance is likely something no typical end user would ever notice. Perhaps the lower p/e cycle is enough to keep the 330 out of write heavy enterprise deployments, but otherwise it's a non-issue.
The biggest problem with Intel's SSD 330 really stems from the limitations of its SandForce controller. Performance with incompressible (or software encrypted) data is hardly competitive. As an unencrypted OS/application drive the 330 is great, but if you're planning on using software encryption or will be primarily storing photos, videos and music you'll want to opt for a drive based on a different controller technology.
In the end it's good to see Intel playing aggressively on price. The 330 is likely one of the best SandForce drives on the market, and not having to pay a premium for it is pretty awesome.
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Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link
"I just wish Anand more honest by telling people the truth about SSD, specially SF based controller, because after trying more than 5 SF based SSD, I can say they're sucks! buy it only if you're planning to reformat your drive every now and then"So far every problem we've encountered with SF-2xxx has been documented, e.g. http://www.anandtech.com/show/5508/intel-ssd-520-r...
Beyond that we haven't encountered any additional SF-2xxx issues in our extended deployment testing. For example the 520 (330's sibling) is currently in one of my systems, having replaced a 120GB Vertex 2 that just recently passed 2 years of service.
amikey - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link
I have a 180GB SSD 330 in my 2009 Macbook Pro 13". It's totally fine, and running better than ever.Haven't enabled trim or updated the firmware since I got it (no pc to use) either.
I don't use disk encryption though, if you were to do that go with something else.
angelsmaster - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
hi, you didn't update it or whatever? is it still up and running? and i think, its not trim supported when i checked it in the S-ATA system report, btw, i am using a macbook pro 15" 2011... thanks..quanstro - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link
how did you get this kind of experience with a just-released drive in a year-old computer?Jumpman23 - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link
In terms of cost and reliability the 330 seems like a good deal. What about in terms of performance and reliability? I've been hearing not so good things about the SF drives in general. The M4's and Samsung's 830 seems to get good reviews. So is there any particular drive that stands out as the best of the best?Per Hansson - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link
OCZ has a really poor track record when you look at RMA's:http://www.behardware.com/articles/862-7/component...
Weather this is due to the BSOD issue or other issue with their Sandforce drives I don't know.
But if you look at future data even OCZ's Petrol & Octane series has really bad RMA rates:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/862-8/component...
This makes me kind of weary of any Sandforce drive, we can see that since Intel has released Sandforce drives their failure rate has gone from 0.6% > 1.73% in the first link above.
This could be because of the "8MB bug" only but I am not convinced.
I would go for the Crucial M4 drive at this point, it has a great track record and only one known very specific problem (BSOD after 50k hours of ontime, caused by a bug in the SMART values & fixed by a firmware update)
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link
The problem with those statistics is that they are extremely limited. Only four manufacturers are listed, and only OCZ's numbers are reported for individual models. The only info on sample size is that there must have been over 500 sales (brand) or 100 sales (model).I'm not defending OCZ or any other brand, just pointing out that a more thorough study would be needed to really know what SSDs are reliable. I do agree that Crucial's m4 is a great buy at the moment, and Samsung 830 and Plextor's SSDs are too.
lyeoh - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link
Only OCZ's numbers are reported for individual models becausequoting the article: "only OCZ has models with rates of above 5%".
You may need a more thorough study, but it's good enough for me to avoid OCZ.
Per Hansson - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link
Yea, it's a limited sample size but it's all we have to go on.We can also look at Newegg reviews, sure it has it's drawbacks aswell but when you see stuff like this it paints a quite clear picture I think:
128GB OCZ Petrol: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
128GB OCZ Octane: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
120GB OCZ RevoDrive 3: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20...
240GB OCZ Vertex 3: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
128GB OCZ Vertex 4: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
128GB Crucial M4: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
antef - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link
I recommend the m4, it's been an amazing drive for me and the reviews on Newegg and Amazon are out of this world, the kind of thing you don't see very often. Don't fret over exact performance and worry that a newer drive might net you something slightly higher, all of these are crazy fast, my Windows machine with the m4 stays on the loading screen for all of 3 seconds, not even enough time to see the four colored orbs form together into the Windows logo.