Intel 520 Series SSD

titaniumx3 · 28 May 2012 at 23:50

Do they have any new firmware? Specifically the 240gb version?

Or do they ship with the latest firmware?

I've tried google, but it still seems unclear. If firmware does come out, I'm assuming Intel SSD toolbox will be used for the update process?

Philtor · 28 May 2012 at 23:56

Yes the update is done through the toolbox. You should be able to check for updates from within the toolbox as well.

titaniumx3 · 29 May 2012 at 11:42

philtor said:
Yes the update is done through the toolbox. You should be able to check for updates from within the toolbox as well.

Do you have an 520 series ssd? If so, have you updated the firmware since owning it? Is the firmware update process destructive?

titaniumx3 · 29 May 2012 at 12:00

Also whats the general verdict on these SSDs. They seem to be overpriced, especially for the performance but coming from an X25-M 80gb, I trust the reliability of Intel SSDs.

FreeStream · 29 May 2012 at 12:52

titaniumx3 said:
Also whats the general verdict on these SSDs. They seem to be overpriced, especially for the performance but coming from an X25-M 80gb, I trust the reliability of Intel SSDs.

The reason they are priced as such is because they basically have the best reliability by a country mile.

I've always had Intel SSDs and always will do.

You get what you pay for.

Surveyor · 29 May 2012 at 13:35

Concorde Rules said:
The reason they are priced as such is because they basically have the best reliability by a country mile.

I've always had Intel SSDs and always will do.

You get what you pay for.

Are they more reliable "by a country mile" than the Crucial M4?

FreeStream · 29 May 2012 at 13:40

Surveyor said:
Are they more reliable "by a country mile" than the Crucial M4?

Without access to RMA data I couldn't accurately say.

But given the last three years of me casually browsing and doing my research, Intel failures come up a lot less than others. *cough*OCZ*cough*.

titaniumx3 · 29 May 2012 at 22:26

Oh well, too late now, got the 240gb version installed and currently setting up windows.

Also is a formatted capacity of 223gb normal for these drives?

titaniumx3 · 30 May 2012 at 00:16

Ran the AS SSD benchmark and got this:

Does this seem normal?

tamzzy · 30 May 2012 at 15:57

seems about right...looking at this review
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=850&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=4

johnmreynolds · 31 May 2012 at 13:50

titaniumx3 said:
Oh well, too late now, got the 240gb version installed and currently setting up windows.

Also is a formatted capacity of 223gb normal for these drives?

Storage drives are generally quoted in decimal gigabytes (1000*1000*1000), rather than binary gigabytes (1024*1024*1024 = 1073741824 bytes) which most memory is quoted in.

Thus to convert, just divide by 1.074.

240gb (decimal) is just above 223gb (binary), so that's about right. This should be the case for all SSDs. The only exception was one OCZ drive which simply had a lower capacity than claimed. This is one of the reasons I don't trust OCZ.

The slightly confusing thing about SSDs though is that they generally DO actually have a power-of-two amount of storage internally, e.g. 256gb (binary), but the extra is used as spare flash for wear management.

Mechanical hard drives were simply a marketing rip off.