Intel Confirms, Replicates SSD Firmware Bug

Intel has been slacking recently. Exorbitant prices and things that don't work, disregarding USB 3.0 as unimportant... wow... Intel needs to get slapped in the face right about now.

Oh man that sucks to have that bricked. Unfortunate for an update like that would cause that. I don't have one but hope a fix comes up soon.

I've been commenting since forever that Intel's X25-M is an overpriced piece of dud that for some reason OEM's only use for SSD's. Crucial's M225 series and Corsair's P series are the ones to get.

Too bad every distributor out there is rising their SSD prices for Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving), so that when they go on sale, they get back to the already pricey $350 pricetag. No illusion, check out all the prices, SSD's for 128GB are hitting $450, when just 7 months ago they were at $280.

Since when did "bricked" become a word...?

good to see they don't just try to sweep the problem under the rug by offering a replacement to those who lost their drive functionality and then just letting it trail off into oblivion +1 to solving the problem rather than hiding it

See the word "Meh" for how this happens. ;o)

@ El_Capitan. I'm having a hard time finding a post by you that says, "Intel's X25-M is an overpriced piece of dud that for some reason OEM's only use for SSD's"

I like how I get a thumbs every time I comment on the Intel X250M, but on all my other comments always gets a thumb's up. There's some Intel fanboy's in this thread.

I guess I found one Intel fanboi. I don't post threads like that. I only comment on the news sections. They're probably hidden because the Intel fanboi's like giving my comments the thumbs down.

You'll find me repeatedly telling people that the Prices per Storage and Performance is vastly inferior (besides throughput) to that of the once-cheaper Crucial CT128M225 and Corsair P128. There was even an article a few months back noting the comparisons (but on 256GB versions).

Intel to Ship Value-Based X25-X SSD in Q4
10-16-2009 at 09:25:58 PM
Besides for throughput, Corsair's CT128M225 and Crucial's P128 are much better overall. Plus, I'm starting to get rather annoyed. What's with this new business model over the last few years? I remember when the latest and best model got the high price tag, then dropped in price as a newer and better model came out. Nowadays, the latest model price stays the same (or in SSD's cases, goes up) when a newer but lower performance model comes out.

Intel Pulls X25-M G2 TRIM Firmware Update
10-27-2009 at 11:44:36 PM
For those that put a thumbs down on my last post about the Intel X-35m... haha.

*****

Well, if you fanboi's don't keep giving a thumb's down to my comments, you'd probably have read them.

Oh yeah, another hidden one.

New Intel 34nm X25-M SSD Firmware Brings Impressive Performance Gains
10-26-2009 at 02:02:40 PM
A new firmware for the Intel X25-M G1 is nice and all, but the SSD still fails price per performance per space against Crucial's M225 and Corsair's P128/P256. All you get with the X25-M G1 is great I/O performance. Write speeds are still pretty low compared to going up to 200MB's W/s.

Intel X25-m = 160GB, $659.00, 250 MB/s Read, 70 MB/s Write
Crucial M225 = 256GB, $675.00, 250 MB/s Read, 200 MB/s Write
Corsair P256 = 256GB, $719.00 (free shipping), 220 MB/s Read, 200 MB/s Write

Prices are from Newegg's retail prices. You can get them cheaper other places and OEM.

*****

gg, no re

Well, atleast they're fixing it.

rofl! Thanks, El_Capitan. I guess you're a fan of Corsair's CT128M225 and Crucial's P128's

I'm a fan of the better products, then put pricing into the equation. Intel, AMD, NVidia, ATI, Crucial, Corsair, Kingston, Western Digital, Seagate, etc...

That's what Tom's Hardware was supposed to be about with their articles, but it's becoming less and less that way.

well if they can drag usb 3.0 out longer then they stand to make more money .because they can offer it as a massive upgrade. right now there is no real pressure on them to put out faster cpu's or add usb 3.0 because they are on top of the market. AMD is still at best a year behind them. also i would not be surprised if some thing else was holding them back. usb 3.0 would be awesome to have thing is even the ssd drives barely are able to keep up with the maximum read cycles ..

@El_Capitan: You're only looking at Sequential read/write performance. If that's all you really care about then, yes, the Intel drives are over-priced for what they give you. But take a look at random read/write performance and especially performance scaling when the queue-depth rises on the Intel drives. They blow those cheaper drives completely out of the water on random or heavily concurrent workloads where sequential rates don't matter nearly as much. The Intel drives are more balanced instead of trying to focus too much on sequential transfer rates. The whole wide world of computing isn't made just for average desktop users, there ARE other needs out there.

I dont know what scares me more.. A backpedling internet guy, or a forum stalker that actually has remarks from 20+ days ago, at his finger tips..

hmm... looks like I will keep using my "spinners" for a long time to come. ( $99 dollar 1.5TB 60MB avg bandwidth harddrive failure or a 600+ 160gig 200MB SSD failure ?) yup.. I will take the slow lane for now ( you spin me right round baby right round..)

Yeah, like clicking on Forums and See All threads is a difficult thing to do... I'd go with the backpedaling internet girl.

Of course, but if you look at all the desktops and laptops that can be customized in the market for average desktop users, they go with only the Intel SSD's. Any Enterprise user out there for servers will still go with SCSI drives than the Intel SSD. They won't offer the Intel SSD for servers, and for good reason.

So you're saying that businesses care more about sequential performance?

El_Capitan, I'm not sure why an enterprise user wouldn't want to go with an Intel SSD:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631
http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3532&p=11

This reminds me of the Seagate firmware fiasco, a year ago. Although, that was caused by factory test misapplication.

Let's hope Intel handles this problem better than Seagate did.

Can't argue that. Man, that's a great article.

I would think most businesses require massive random reads/writes and IOPS not seq reads. This drive does that very very well. Now if only trim ran on raid, within an iscsi SAN...

Too early to not have problems, this tech it's just too fresh and too fast it needs to have something wrong.. Moors law right?
Maybe Intel it's being too aggressive selling out the drives without a proper testing. Even if i could afford those drives right now i wouldn't buy one not just now, maybe some other brand with less issues reports ;x

I know the channel price for this item is $432.00 on any given day. The reseller I picked up from gave a fair price of $462.00. Channel prices on the other two you listed are considerably more and not just a high demand markup by Newegg, but the actual common price.

As for Intel drives and OEMs, someone needs to give some citations. Just about every major line I've seen is using SamSung in their current offerings.

Being a Regular at Tom's, I'm surprised you've never seen, "Bricked."

Reading user reviews of the product at various places (Newegg, Amazon, etc.), the users are experiencing: freezes, stuttering, lock-ups, and failure after several months of usage. While the professional reviews of the Intel X25-M regard it highly as the best SSD out there, and now this firmware bug, I think every fan of this SSD got played. I'll stick with my reliable SSD's. No point in shelling out $600 for a broken product. gg Intel, well played.

It's been a technical term in the electronic world for a very long time. Glad you came out from under your rock.

Lol, still someone out there giving me a thumbs down, that's so funny. I love Tom's Hardware.