I think my new Intel 320 pooped the bed...[Update]

[Weaselboy]

That's interesting... I'm not literate with that level of computing. Would I be able to run that program on my apple computer?

Edit: And which drives did you say were able to be firmware updated by the user? Intel and Crucial? I'm just going round and round again on what to do. Get another 320? a 510? A different brand? I'm concerned about TRIM and garbage collection, etc. etc. etc.....

That is a little over my head too. It looks like you could make a boot CD though to run that program he suggests. Might be worth a try if you still have the drive installed. It seems like more than a coincidence you both have that odd 8MB of space showing.

Yes, Intel and Crucial both have boot CRom ISOs to do firmware updates. I have seen a walkthru in the OCZ forums to do a Linux boot CD also, but I am not clear if that is an official method or something a user put together.

I bought the Intel 510 because it was one of the first SATA III drives out around the time the new Macbooks were released. At the time the Intel 320 was not out yet. Honestly, for the type of computing I do if I were doing this today I would probably just get a SATA II like the Intel 320. Nothing wrong with the 510 and it has worked fine for me, but I'm not sure for my type usage I am getting anything extra for the added cost.

 

[bozz2006]

I am sort of leaning toward just grabbing another 320. Do you have the TRIM hack running on your 510? More and more people coming out saying that the TRIM hack isn't playing nicely with their systems. I'd still feel much better if there was a way to TRIM the drive, even if I just do it manually and occasionally.

 

[Weaselboy]

I am sort of leaning toward just grabbing another 320. Do you have the TRIM hack running on your 510? More and more people coming out saying that the TRIM hack isn't playing nicely with their systems. I'd still feel much better if there was a way to TRIM the drive, even if I just do it manually and occasionally.

I ran it for a while, then turned it off as it scared me... even though I had no problems with it. I plan to enable it every six months or so manually and it will do TRIM by doing one safe boot I learned.

I really think everybody (me included) is a little too freaked out about all this TRIM business. Any of the newer drives do this in firmware, and the worst that can happen is your write speeds slip a little. I ran a benchmark as a baseline and will rerun every six months or so to see if write speeds drop. If they do significantly I can TRIM with the hack or the boot Linux CD method user JGO posted.

 

[bozz2006]

Would you be willing to direct me to where JGO posted that?

 

[mape2k]

Where did you read that enabling the hack in Mac OSX will TRIM your whole drive once you boot? My understanding was only that if the hack is enabled, the space that gets free by deleting something will be trimmed, not the whole drive at once.

The thread on the OCZ forum is found here. I don't have the original forum thread from this forum, but you should find it easily via search, its very recent.

 

[Weaselboy]

Would you be willing to direct me to where JGO posted that?

Toward the end of this thread.

Where did you read that enabling the hack in Mac OSX will TRIM your whole drive once you boot? My understanding was only that if the hack is enabled, the space that gets free by deleting something will be trimmed, not the whole drive at once.

See the discussion about fsck command starting at post 377 in the TRIM hack thread. It does need to be a 2011 MBP though for it to work. It works... I tried it on my 2011 MBP.

 

[vant]

Vertex 3.

Done!

 

[bozz2006]

Give me your argument, sir!

 

[bozz2006]

Will the Vertex 3 run fine in my optical bay (SATA2)? I won't put the stock HDD in the optical bay because the optical bay has no sudden motion sensor and the stock HDD doesn't have a SMS built-in. And I don't have the extra money right now to buy a replacement HDD that has built in SMS. But down the road a month or so I'd like to have the option to buy a new HDD and swap the SSD to the HDD bay.

 

[Weaselboy]

Will the Vertex 3 run fine in my optical bay (SATA2)? I won't put the stock HDD in the optical bay because the optical bay has no sudden motion sensor and the stock HDD doesn't have a SMS built-in. And I don't have the extra money right now to buy a replacement HDD that has built in SMS. But down the road a month or so I'd like to have the option to buy a new HDD and swap the SSD to the HDD bay.

SATA III drives are backward compatible, so there is no reason a Vertex 3 or any other SATA III drive would not work in your optical bay at a SATA II connection speed.

 

[bozz2006]

I ended up just ordering another Intel 320. Still wondering about TRIM. If I'm OK without having full-time TRIM going, will it fully TRIM the SSD if I enable the TRIM hack, go into disk utility and do the "erase free space" thing, then turn the hack back off? If I do that will I end up with a fully TRIMed SSD?

 

[Weaselboy]

I ended up just ordering another Intel 320. Still wondering about TRIM. If I'm OK without having full-time TRIM going, will it fully TRIM the SSD if I enable the TRIM hack, go into disk utility and do the "erase free space" thing, then turn the hack back off? If I do that will I end up with a fully TRIMed SSD?

Yes. You can either do what you described or do what I discussed here. The 2011 MBP has a version of fsck that TRIMs the drive when run if you have the hack enabled. So you can enable the hack, reboot, reboot again in safe mode (this will run fsck and TRIM the drive), reboot back to normal mode and remove the hack, then reboot again.

 

[bozz2006]

So.... I lost another one this morning :-/

The replacement failed today in the exact same way as the first one. And it lasted almost exactly as long as the first one. 2 weeks. Really frustrating.

 

[jenzjen]

So.... I lost another one this morning :-/

The replacement failed today in the exact same way as the first one. And it lasted almost exactly as long as the first one. 2 weeks. Really frustrating.

Maybe try the SSD in the normal slot a put the optical drive back, basically try to get your machine back to as stock as possible. 2 drives failing in the same amount of time seems really rare.

 

[bozz2006]

2 drives failing in the same amount of time seems really rare.

I know. I can't believe it.

 

[Weaselboy]

So.... I lost another one this morning :-/

The replacement failed today in the exact same way as the first one. And it lasted almost exactly as long as the first one. 2 weeks. Really frustrating.

Wow. That is odd. I wonder if there is something about your machine that is zapping these things.

 

[bozz2006]

Wow. That is odd. I wonder if there is something about your machine that is zapping these things.

Yeah, that's what I'm wondering now too. Or maybe the SATA board on the optibay? I dunno. And I wouldn't know how to figure it out either.

 

[bozz2006]

After another major fumble by Intel's customer service department, and after roughly 6 hours of my own time on chat support with them, and after waiting for ~3 weeks for them to sort it out...

they finally agreed to give me a full refund for the SSD. After a whole lot of cajoling, they finally admitted that they still don't even have a 320 available in the warranty dept to ship me as a replacement.

So I'm in the market for another SSD for my 2011 MBP. I still feel like Intel was probably the wisest choice as far as compatibility, power consumption, and reputation go. But I just can't bring myself to purchase a 3rd Intel SSD to replace the first two after having seriously soured on their customer support.

So I guess I'm looking for a new brand. I'm leaning toward Vertex 3 but the battery consumption and the Corsair recall of a similar drive have me worried. I just want to get my hands on a great SSD and be done with this headache.

 

[jenzjen]

After another major fumble by Intel's customer service department, and after roughly 6 hours of my own time on chat support with them, and after waiting for ~3 weeks for them to sort it out...

they finally agreed to give me a full refund for the SSD. After a whole lot of cajoling, they finally admitted that they still don't even have a 320 available in the warranty dept to ship me as a replacement.

So I'm in the market for another SSD for my 2011 MBP. I still feel like Intel was probably the wisest choice as far as compatibility, power consumption, and reputation go. But I just can't bring myself to purchase a 3rd Intel SSD to replace the first two after having seriously soured on their customer support.

So I guess I'm looking for a new brand. I'm leaning toward Vertex 3 but the battery consumption and the Corsair recall of a similar drive have me worried. I just want to get my hands on a great SSD and be done with this headache.

If these have died within 2 weeks, aren't you within your return / replacement window assuming its 30 days? If so, why deal with Intel RMA vs returning or exchanging it where you bought it?

 

[bozz2006]

If these have died within 2 weeks, aren't you within your return / replacement window assuming its 30 days? If so, why deal with Intel RMA vs returning or exchanging it where you bought it?

SSD #1 failed on the first day of my vacation trip, and by the time I got home and was able to get the process going, I was 2 days outside the return window with Newegg.

For SSD #2, my wife threw away the packaging and Newegg can't accept a return without the original packaging.

 

[bozz2006]

I went ahead and popped on a 120GB Vertex 3. I'll report back on how it goes. Hopefully it will work great and that's that. Hoping that the small capacity of the drive doesn't have a negative effect on speeds.

 

[Peteman100]

Had a little bit of a frustrating and long run-around with Intel this morning. Long story short; since the 320 is still a new product and it takes a couple of months after a product is released before they have any in stock for the warranty department to ship out (don't understand why not, since the two ladies I spoke with said that they don't refurbish SSDs and that they're all brand new), they wouldn't be able to ship me a replacement for about a month. This wasn't acceptable to me, so with more run around, they're working on just giving me a refund. So I guess I'm back in the market to purchase an SSD. Should I go for the 320 again? Maybe the 510? OWC??? Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Wait what?? That doesnt make any sense. If the problem isn't already solved, I would try talking to another rep. There is no reason why they shouldn't be able to send you another one. I would be pissed...

 

[bozz2006]

Wait what?? That doesnt make any sense. If the problem isn't already solved, I would try talking to another rep. There is no reason why they shouldn't be able to send you another one. I would be pissed...

I am... I conservatively estimate that I've spent between 8 and 9 hours on chat support with a number of different reps so far with these two SSDs. I just want to be done dealing with Intel. There customer service department has been abysmal. With two SSDs that failed in the same way at about the same time in their service life, I think something was screwy in the system somewhere, so I won't say that the product is bad. But their customer service dept, on the other hand... they've been awful. The individual folks I've chatted with have not been bad. They've been pleasant, for the most part, and willing to actually help. But it seems like within the dept, the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing. Organizational free-for-all. Not good.

 

[icanhazapple]

TRIM necessary?

Hey bozz2006 - would you still recommend enabling TRIM?

I just bought a 40GB Intel 320 series, to put OS X/Xcode/Google Chrome on, with a 500GB drive in the Optibay for user data.

I'm more worried about reliability than I am about speed; although the prospect of keeping the drive clean and fast sounds nice, I'm not looking for stability issues (which given the nature of these drives, might be difficult)

(by the way, I have a late 2007 MacBook Pro, '3,1' model)

 

[bozz2006]

For what it's worth, when I still thought I would be receiving a replacement Intel 320 (which would've been the third one) I had already decided not to enable TRIM. I did enable it on both drives, but I don't know if that hack had anything to do with the failures.

My advice would be to not enable TRIM, and only worry about it once (if) you notice your drive slowing down. Who knows; Apple could have native TRIM enabled for all drives soon.