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Intel launches 520 Series SSD drives
CHIPMAKER Intel has released its 520 Series solid-state disk (SSD) drives barely a year after it launched its 510 Series SSDs.
Intel's three unit SSD range has been given a jolt with the firm releasing the 520 Series SATA3 SSD drives. The drives, available in 60GB, 120GB, 180GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities, are the first Intel units to have Sandforce controllers, and while the line doesn't feature headline grabbing jumps in sequential read and write rates over the year-old 510 Series, it does bring a couple of new tricks to the party.
Sandforce, which is now part of long-time storage vendor LSI, has been working with Intel to validate its Sandforce SSD controller in the 520 Series. Many remember the poor reliability that SSD buyers were forced to put up with when the first Sandforce equipped drives hit the shelves in 2010, however the firm clearly impressed Intel, as the chipmaker has slapped a five year warranty on its 520 Series SSDs.
Intel has put its 25nm NAND flash chips in the 520 Series drives and makes the now ubiquitous claims of 550MB/sec and 520MB/sec for sequential read and write transfer rates, respectively, though our testing on Linux showed slightly different results. Intel also quotes up to 80,000 random write IOPS and 50,000 random read IOPS.
Michael Raam, VP and GM of LSI's Flash Components Division said, "Working through Intel's extensive validation process ensures the Intel 520 SSD will raise the bar in delivering top-tier performance and superior quality and reliability over the life of the drive." Intel also claims to have co-defined and validated the firmware that is running on the Sandforce controller.
We have posted our review of Intel's 240GB 520 Series SSD drive to see whether it is worthy for replacing the original must-have SSD, Intel's X25-M. µ
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It didn't take long for BSOD reports to show up on Intel's customer forums. We will see if this SSD is any more reliable than all the other problem consumer grade SSDs.
This is useless without pricing data. I can get high-performing SSDs elsewhere. The only thing that will make this SSD worth replacing an X25-M is if the performance is decent and the GB/$ ratio is higher. So far, years later, that kind of advancement hasn't been rapid.
What do you expect from Linux? Did you manage to get the TRIM support working?
It's no point in trying the latest hardware on Linux. Never really supports it or performs the way you expect. Give it another 10 years.
Intel's great validation process resulted in problems in their consumer class SSDs in the past that they had to correct with a firmware update - even without a SandFarce controller.
Yes SandFarce has sent out a firmware update for some of the BSOD, lost data, drive size loss issues but folks have also had to RMA many drives that would not accept the SF/OCZ/Corsair et al SSD firmware updates.
At the moment I can't recommend ANY consumer grade SSD if data security is important. As AnandTech recently penned... WAIT 6-12 months before buying an SSD to see if the mfgs. eliminate most of the Bugs.
In addition it's been discover that the SandFarce controllers which compress data in benchmarks do not perform any where near as fast in actual PC use so the benches skew the actual performance compared to SSDs using non-SandFarce controllers and not compressing data.