Intel SSD 520 Review: Cherryville Brings Reliability to SandForce

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• eman17j - Wednesday, February 8, 2012 - link

  Are you trying to say that Amd's cpus are unreliable? I have one and I have no problems at all with it. I dont have crashes or freezes.

• bji - Wednesday, February 8, 2012 - link

  He's a beginner. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

• eman17j - Wednesday, February 8, 2012 - link

  Wrong because the business buys the drive at an higher price then raises the price on their product or service and passes the cost of the drive to the consumer so the consumer ends up paying for the price premium anyways

• gamoniac - Monday, February 6, 2012 - link

  Is playing game part of Brian's job description?

• Brian Klug - Monday, February 6, 2012 - link

  Heheh, I guess you could say that for once, yes, playing BF3 was part of the job! :)
  
  -Brian

• Oberst - Monday, February 6, 2012 - link

  Seems like there is the first customer with the bsod bug in the intel forum. It seems like the reliability is no better than at all the other SF drives and it's just a matter of (bad) luck.
  http://communities.intel.com/message/149389#149389

• Makaveli - Monday, February 6, 2012 - link

  That tool installed his brand new Intel 520 drive in IDE mode?

• NitroWare - Wednesday, February 8, 2012 - link

  You would be surprised how many laptop owners (and even desktop owners) are unaware that they should use AHCI mode. I can guarantee that there are millions of boards out there with modern HDD or SSD in non optimal mode.
  
  Another large tech site interviewed several mobo vendors about Z68 and most sad it was supposed to ship with RAID mode as default due to the SRT feature., the reality is much different.
  
  2010 1st gen core i5 thinkpad has problems with third party SSDs which some users claim IDE mode is the only way they get their 'cheap' SSD working
  
  There is a mentality that if a user knows how to physically install a drive then they do not need to do anything else. Then there is the old drivers issues, yeah whatever the motherboard came with at best.
  
  That is something the chipset vendors need to work on. Some motherboards put up a warning if you try to turn AHCI off with an auto counter to re-enable it.
  
  It is definitely possible that a BIOS can detect a SSD and at least put up a text message saying what the recommend setting is. It is hard to ignore such messages.

• mustardman29 - Monday, February 6, 2012 - link

  I was trying to tell the OCZ support guys ever since their latest firmware that the BSOD is still there. It happens a lot less but it's still there.
  
  They were trying to tell me it was something wrong with my system and that I should re-install windows. That the kind of thing I would expect to hear from a 1-800 number that goes to someone in India reading a script. Not from a drive manufacturer.
  
  I'll never buy another OCZ drive. Not because of the problem but because of the way they are dealing with it. Pretending it's does not exist and telling people to re-install windows.
  
  And yes, Sandforce deserves part of the blame for pretending there was no problem for a long time despite many people saying otherwise.
  
  However, I would not hesitate to buy this intel drive. They obviously found the problem and fixed it with their own firmware. Something the controller manufacturer seems incapable of doing.

• ckryan - Monday, February 6, 2012 - link

  You're not crazy. SF2281s still have stability issues, and the TRIM related BSODs are still happening too. Most people won't ever have problems with a 2281, but many did and still live with the occasional problem. The last round of FW did indeed fix many problems (it solved mine), but others still suffer. I stopped using the drives just because I have quite a few I play with, but you can still get a 2281 to flop on TRIM every once in a while.
  
  I'm sure Intel really put the screws to Cherryville's FW, but I think some of the issues with 2281 and their ilk are still mysteries to the SF partners, and possibly even LSI/SF and Intel (the expect fewer problems?).
  
  Here's hoping the next gen of the SF is bulletproof.