The 320GB HD I'm replacing is 7.5mm but it's got snap on rubber "rails" on each side that increase the thickness to 9.5 mm and fill in about 1/4" of space on each side of the drive to fill the bay and make a snug fit.

Intel 520 is 9.5mm thick (has plastic spacer screwed onto it).

I slide the Intel 520 into the bay.  It goes in but there's 1/4" gap on each side.  It needs to rubber side rails to make it fit.

I remove the rubber side rails from the 320HD I am replacing and try and put them on the Intel 520.  They won't fit because of the plastic spacer on the Intel 520.  No problem.  I remove the plastic spacer on the Intel 520 by removing the 4 screws holding the spacer on.  I then realize that these same 4 screws also hold the lid on the Intel 520 and I screw the 4 screws back on only to find out that the holes are not deep enough for the screws to go back in!  I look in the box.  No extra "short" screws to use when converting the drive to a 7.5mm by removing the spacer.

Then I notice writing on the top of the Intel 520 "removing the screws voids the warranty".

The Intel 520 won't work in a Lenovo T420, one of the more common business laptops.

What would including the shorter screws have cost?  5 cents?

Wow...

Hi Intel.

There are many Mac computers with Nvidia MCP79 chipset (Nvidia MCP79 is present in many models of iMac, Macbook, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air).

Nvidia MCP79 have SATA II controller.

There is well known bug with SSD based on SandForce SF-2281 and any Mac with Nvidia MCP79. SSD negotiated Link Speed is     1.5 Gigabit (SATA I). But it must be 3 Gigabit (SATA II).

OCZ already have fix for this issue (for their SSD):

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?96106-Macbook-users-with-1.5Gb-s-link-instead-of-Gb-s-link

Corsair works on this issue (they have SSD based on SF-2281).

Patriot Memory works on this issue (they have SSD based on SF-2281).

Intel 520 SSD have same issue.

Intel will you fix this? Talk to Apple or release fix by yourself, but you must do something, because Intel 520 SSD with 150 MB/s read/write speed on Mac (with Nvidia MCP79) is indecent.

Hi,

   I tried to migrate data from the internal SSD (125G) drive of a toshiba ultra book (OS: win7) to a new intel 525 (240G)

and Acronis' "Intel Data Migration Software" always failed by restarting in the middle of the process with no error message.

After the error I did several attempt to exclude other problems lead to erroneous behavior:

- Run check disk on the source partition - no issue found

- Partitioned the target SSD (connected by the USB-to-SATA adapter) and tested, run diagnostic - no issue found

- De-fragmented to source disk

- Tried the migration with a recommended USB2 frame (SAT2510BU2E - JMicron chipset) - same error with longer time estimates

How to reproduce:

The wizard recognized both of the disks and let start the migration; then Acronis' system booted and displayed "2 of 5 steps; 8 minutes remaining".

After changing to 7 minutes, suddenly the time rises to 7 hours and restarted; after the restart only the first partition is copied, the rest of the disk was not partitioned.

Problematic configuration:

Toshiba Z830 (USB 3.0 controller: Renesas Electronics)

Delock mSATA to SATA adapter

Chieftec enclosure (GL3310 controller)

msata SSD: Intel 525

I just upgraded to an Intel SSD 520 240 GB and I am experiencing a problem which never occurred with my previous HDD: a BSOD STOP 0xF4 after resuming from sleep

My system specifications are as follows:

• Asus U20A Notebook
• Intel Dual-Core ULV SU7300 1.3 GHz
• Mobile Intel GS45 Express Chipset + ICH9M
• 4 GB DDR2-800 RAM
• Intel GMA X4500MHD Graphics

I have disabled Device Initiated Power Management (DIPM), Host Initiated Link Power Management (HIPM) and Link Power Management (LMP). The problem occurs sometimes with Microsoft's AHCI drivers, and everytime with Intel's Rapid Storage Technology 10.8.0.1003 drivers. No minidumps are created.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

This is a follow-up to my previous post.

I recently experienced a sudden BSOD with the 300 GB version of Intel SSD 320 and the drive ended up defunct with the dreaded 8 MB bug.

Now, what is really concerning is that I had the very latest and greatest FW upgrade installed - the version that Intel claims resolved the 8 MB bug.

Obviously, the latest FW resolved nothing and it seems any SSD 320 out there is still prone to this catastrophic failure, which can happen any time for no specific reason. This is the drive that Intel touts as having "almost" enterprise-class reliability.

The problem has been known since 2011, the SSD 320 failure reports continue showing up on the Internet even now in 2013 - my case is only one of them. I'm just wondering how Intel can continue selling these drives knowing it is a bomb that is bound to detonate with a very high degree of certainty over time for everyone who buys them.

At this point, the SSD 320 drives seem practically unusable from a reliability perspective. IMHO, warranty replacement does not resolve the situation. Unless the root cause of the bug is identified and a truly working fix is published, the only reasonable resolution from Intel would be to pull the devices from the stores, provide a full purchase price reimbursement to everyone who is under warranty and desires so and be done with it.

I would be interested to see Intel's position on this...

Hello!

So I am having the BAD_CTX 8mb brick problem with an SSD in a Lenovo T420 laptop. The kicker is, I'm experiencing it on the most up to date firmware - 4PC1LE04. Short and sweet, here is what is going on.

Specs:

- Lenovo T420 with 160GB SSD. SSD model is: SSDSA2BW160G3L.

- The type is: 4177-CTO.

Problem:

- The laptop will not boot from the SSD no matter what I try, which has been a lot.

- When checking the SSD with the Intel firmware update utility, the serial number reads: BAD_CTX 000001.

- According to the Intel firmware update utility, the firmware on the machine is CURRENT. It reads as version 4PC1LE04.

- I read that the Intel firmware update utility can have issues with  detecting and accurately reporting on Lenovo drives, so I downloaded the  latest firmware update utility straight from Lenovo. It also reports  the firmware as 4PC1LE04 on the drive and will not let me update  it, because it is "current".

- I tried to boot the machine using BartPE to investigate the partition a bit, but this results in BSOD.

- I booted the machine using GParted and it boots fine and detects  the SSD. Sadly, it reports the partition as being 8 megabytes in size!

- This is exactly similar to the firmware bug that existed previously  for these drives. The difference is that I think my firmware is already up to date... That can't be good...

- The T420 was shipped directly from Lenovo a couple months ago and  was shipped with the latest firmware already installed. So, the firmware  has never been changed or upgraded on these machines.

Larger Problem:

I have about 16 of these circulating in my company, many of which  belong to key employees. If the 4PC1LE04 firmware is truly buggy, then  all these users are at risk. There is no firmware upgrade path  available, either. So how do I get this bug into the hands of Intel/Lenovo for  a potential fix?

I am happy to verify every troubleshooting step I've taken and I'm  open to suggestions for further diagnosing this problem. Any advice or  help would be greatly appreciated! To my knowledge I am  running the most up to date firmware, straight from the Lenovo  factory, 4PC1LE04. Obviously I've already lost data for one user... I  do not want to lose data for 15 more. Thanks for your help.

Other Notes:

The user who handed this machine off to me said that sometimes he  does shutdown improperly by holding the power button, and that the  laptop does die by running down the battery on occasion. I am making  note of this because in the older firmware it was hinted that the bug  might be triggered by unexpected power loss. Perhaps that is also the  case on the "current" firmware?

My computer froze solid while I was making an online purchase, and the only way to get out of it was to force a power down. When I turned it on again, I had an invalid partition table, and my computer reported my 160GB Intel 320 series SSD as 8MB with an invalid partition table. After several days of unsuccessfully trying everything I could think of to get the data of it, I stumbled upon an article about the Intel 320 series firmware bug. Ugh.

When I look at the disk with a hex editor, I see almost all zeros, but my mind won't accept that since my last backup was over a month ago. I tell myself I'm only seeing 8MB of the drive - a small corner that happens to be all zeros. Am I in denial?

After much pain, I finally figured out how to make one of my spare SATA hard drives boot externally while plugged into a USB slot via an adapter. That allowed me to keep the damaged SSD in the internal SATA port so I could use the Intel SSD Toolbox. I didn't get me very far, though, because there is a security freeze lock on the drive, and nothing I've tried can turn it off. I've hot unplugged/replugged the SSD (it's a Thinkpad T420), disabled/enabled the SSD driver (from Microsoft), hibernated the computer ("sleep" is disabled because my notebook's native video driver isn't installed) - nothing works. When I boot without the SSD then hot plug it in, the Toolbox doesn't see it. Someone here posted that he got the security freeze lock off using Linux tools, but he didn't give specifics. I have a Ubuntu Live CD, but I have no idea what Linux tools he used or how he did that.

I'm not that keen on doing a secure erase, anyway, because then there's no hope whatsoever of recovering any data from the drive. Is there any other way to get my drive back to its original 160GB short of Secure Erase? Nothing else works unless the drive correctly reports its size. When I tried to use the Firmware Update Tool to update the firmware, it said I already had the most recent firmware (not true). Same with the Toolbox. I can't update the firmware with the drive in its current state.

I've been very dismayed to see all the recent, post-firmware-update reports of new 8MB firmware bug crashes. Clearly the bug hasn't been fixed, despite Intel's claims. Even before I knew that, and before I knew my problem was this firmware bug, I had decideed I would never again use an SSD as the main drive on my work computer. But if the Intel 320 series has an unfixed firmware bug that causes repeated crashes, I don't want to use it at all for anything. If I have to send this SSD into Intel under warranty, I either want a refund (first choice), or a different type of drive.

Also, the error message I'm getting is slightly different from that in the Intel announcement. I have BAD_CTX, but the number is not 0000013, it's 00000159 - though the error did occur when I had to force a power down (due to a frozen computer). That makes me even more unsure that the 8MB bug is fixed by the latest firmware.

All this leads me to three questions:

1. Is there any hope of getting my data off this drive? If so, how?

2. How do I unlock the security freeze lock on the drive?

3. Where are these mysterious Linux tools for bringing drives hit with this bug back to life?

Thanks in advance.

P.S. When I registered for this forum, I requested a username that was not my full first and last name, so how did I end up with my full first and last name in the forum?? Can someone change this for me?

HI,

Long story short:

I have a  Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH120G2K5 2.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive. I have had it for a few years without a problem. I just upgraded to Windows 8 and after I installed the ssd toolbox it said I should update the firmware.

I went to the link and downloadEd the firmware and create a cd and booted to cd to update the firmware. It said the firmware update from 2cv102hd to 2cv102m3 was unsuccessful. My bios does not have an option to set to legacy or sata, only IDE, so that might've been the problem.

When I rebooted Windows said there were errors on the disk so I ran repair. Now when I try to run certain programs I am getting interesting errors, like couldn't load a certain file or the bonjour image is not good. I ran the ssd toolbox scan and it didn't detect any errors.

I realize I most likely need to reinstall windows. But I don't want to do it on this drive if it's no good. So my question ihot here any way to fix this drive or should I just buy a new one?

mHey intel community!

When I do a diagnostic scan in my SSD tool, it tells me that I have data integrity problem at 64% is there any help or tool to fix this?
or is this the end of my SSD? I have problems to get a fresh install of windows 7 to work.. because I get "memory management bluescreens" and wierd errors while completing windows updates. for example: it's not possible to finish the service pack 1 update.

I'm still searching for the source of the error, because I'm not sure if it's my SSD or my RAM.

smart tool details:
functionality - good
remaining life time - about 98%
power-on hours count: 6418

all options there are green and ready
data integrity problem at 64% (in quick and detailed mode)

I'm not sure that all translations are correct, because I'm from germany
but if you can help me in any way.. you're welcome

greetings daen

I have been monitoring Media Wearout Indicator for a while, but I saw something odd in our Munin graphs, so I dumped the output of smartctl every minute and here are the result:

...

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   092   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   092   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   092   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   092   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   092   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

     [120 lines with value:092 removed]

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   092   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   092   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   092   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   092   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   092   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

...

I tought the Media_Wearout_Indicator were going down from 100 as the drive were wearing out and that I could expect failure when it hits 0 - how is it going up again?! The value have been on 091 all the time since I've started monitoring it, but like the above, the value is 092 for a couple of hours before going down to 091 again...

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===

Device Model:     INTEL SSDSA2M120G2GC

Serial Number:    ******************

Firmware Version: 2CV102HD

User Capacity:    120,034,123,776 bytes

Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]

ATA Version is:   7

ATA Standard is:  ATA/ATAPI-7 T13 1532D revision 1

Local Time is:    Tue Jul  2 14:39:14 2013 CEST

SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.

SMART support is: Enabled

/Anders

I got this SSD as it is, already "bricked". I gave ~3$ for it when somebody asked for help but he did not feel like he is able to try and possibly fix it for himself.

I though I am familiar with the "Intel SSD with 8Mb space bug" but it seems I wasn't lucky with this drive.

First I tried to do an ATA Secure Erase with hdparm. I got very suspicios after a few seconds and it was really strange that it took about 30 minutes and nothing changed. The drive remained in high security mode, I had to unlock it manually with hdparm.

As a second attempt, I tried to do a dco-restore but hdparm couldn't do that because this drive has an active HPA (about 40Gb) and thus the command failed. I could not use hdparm to disable the HPA. But I managed to set it disabled with HDAT2. Then I suddenly had 40Gb LBA space but it was unreadable. But now I could issue the dco-restore command with success. I still had unreadable 40Gb space (and theoretically right dco config with re-enabled SMART as well). I issued a secure_erase_enhanced command which took ~30 minutes again with no luck.

SMART is disabled now. But it seems I can read some SMART data after a fresh dco-restre command. It says this drive has zero amount of host writes and absolute max number of bad sectors.

It wasn't easy at all (the official Intel tools didn't recognise this drive as an Intel SSD which is applicable to any firmware updates) but I finally managed to update the drive's firmware from *2HD (the original factory one) to *2M3 (the lates public one). I repeated the HDAT2, hdparm, dco-restore, secure_erase with this new firmware but the result is the same: after a power cycling, the drive has 8Mb LBA space, even if I leave the HPA disabled.

Well...

Any other ideas how to bring this SSD back to life?

Note that this driver has NO_SPACE serial, not BAD_CTX and the new name of the SSD is Intel Postville (the developer codename of this SSD family). So, it seems to be a different problem, not the infamous "8Mb bug" with the BAD_CTX serial.

root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# hdparm -I /dev/sdf

/dev/sdf:

ATA device, with non-removable media

            Model Number:       Intel Postville                        

            Serial Number:      NO_SPACE           

            Firmware Revision:  2CV102M3

            Transport:          Serial, ATA8-AST, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6

Standards:

            Used: ATA/ATAPI-7 T13 1532D revision 1

            Supported: 7 6 5 4

Configuration:

            Logical                       max     current

            cylinders         16383  16

            heads              16        16

            sectors/track    63        63

            --

            CHS current addressable sectors:      16128

            LBA    user addressable sectors:      16384

            LBA48  user addressable sectors:      16384

            Logical  Sector size:                   512 bytes

            Physical Sector size:                   512 bytes

            device size with M = 1024*1024:           8 MBytes

            device size with M = 1000*1000:           8 MBytes

            cache/buffer size  = unknown

            Nominal Media Rotation Rate: Solid State Device

Capabilities:

            LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)

            Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, no device specific minimum

            R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16        Current = 1

            DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6

                 Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns

            PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4

                 Cycle time: no flow control=120ns  IORDY flow control=120ns

Commands/features:

            Enabled          Supported:

                        Security Mode feature set

               *       Power Management feature set

               *       Write cache

               *       Look-ahead

               *       Host Protected Area feature set

               *       WRITE_BUFFER command

               *       READ_BUFFER command

               *       NOP cmd

               *       DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE

                        SET_MAX security extension

               *       48-bit Address feature set

               *       Device Configuration Overlay feature set

               *       Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE

               *       FLUSH_CACHE_EXT

               *       General Purpose Logging feature set

               *       WRITE_{DMA|MULTIPLE}_FUA_EXT

               *       64-bit World wide name

               *       IDLE_IMMEDIATE with UNLOAD

               *       WRITE_UNCORRECTABLE_EXT command

               *       {READ,WRITE}_DMA_EXT_GPL commands

               *       Segmented DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE

               *       Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)

               *       Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)

               *       Phy event counters

               *       Software settings preservation

               *       Data Set Management TRIM supported (limit 8 blocks)

               *       Deterministic read ZEROs after TRIM

Security:

            Master password revision code = 4

                        supported

            not       enabled

            not       locked

            not       frozen

            not       expired: security count

                        supported: enhanced erase

            2min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 2min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.

Logical Unit WWN Device Identifier: 0000000000000000

            NAA               : 0

            IEEE OUI      : 000000

            Unique ID      : 000000000

Checksum: correct

Hi ,

I need to fit the SSD 520 Series to my HP Laptpn - Elitebook 2170p or 8470P .

My Qs :

1.What is the Thickness of this SSD 520 Series attached in the pic? - 9.5 mm or 7mm ?

Attached is the pic( sorry I didnt click it otherwise i too could have measured it)

2.What is the system requirement for interfacing above SSD to any laptop(OS - Win7/8, RAM?).

I am disappointed to see that maximum Size of Hard Drive which Can be interfaced is 256 GB and That too on 8570P.

Please advice

Rgds,

Softy

Our consultants say that the flash cells of MLC SSDs wear out too fast for this application, citing 3000 program-erase cycles. To my knowledge enterprise multi-level cells like in the Intel s3700 should last 10.000 to 30.000 cycles. If you do a simplified calculation for 10 disk writes per day for 5 years then you get 10 x 365 x 5 = 18250 cycles. Ok there is no over provisioning or write amplification included in this simplified calculation.

One of the other statements was that when one disk in the array fails, additional load could easily wear out the remaining disks early. Since the data for the missing disk is just calculated from the parity information I do not see this point.

Has anybody deployed the s3700 in heavy load application for several months?

Best regards
Thomas

Hi,

i bought new SSD 520 60GB and used it with motheboard GIGABYTE Q77M-D2H . After instalation Intel SSD toolbox there was a warning "Drive health is degraded. Contact your reseler or local Intel representative for assistance".

Full diagnostic scan was OK, SMART Details were OK too. I tried a new version Intel SSD toolbox - 3.1.5 and it is the same.

I bought another disk with the same parameters and after reinstalation problem is the same!

For installation i used windows 7 system image copy.

What could be a wrong? Does anybody have the same problem?

Hi, 

I bought new Intel SSD 520 180GB (upgrade my old Intel SSD 320 120GB) and used it with motherboard GIGABYTE 567A-UD5-B3.

After clear setup windows 7 professional 64bit Intel SSD ToolBox there was a warning "Drive health is degraded. Contact your reseller or local Intel representative for assistance" as the following enclosed images.

Please help me what can I do?

Hello,

I have a situation on my hands.  We have 4 machines to build that utilize the Morex 5667 case that came with Intel D2700 boards and Intel 330 SSD's.  Our software requires XP and I've been searching the internet like crazy for a solution to my problem of getting the drivers included into the USB install.  I've tried to slipstream the drivers from the Intel disk provided, but still come up with a 0x07B error.  I've used nLite to slipstream and tried both PNP and all of the drivers with no luck.  Unfortunately, there are so many drivers that I can't pick the particular one and all searches on Intel only gives me the download for all drivers.

The Intel® SSD Toolbox may incorrectly indicate that the drive health of some of the Intel SSD 520 Series. This is an issue with the Intel SSD Toolbox when identifying SSD's with a serial number beginning with EK and does not indicate a problem with the physical drive.

We will post an update to this message when a new version of the Intel SSD Toolbox is available.

You may also click the Receive Email Notifications link on the right side of this screen to be notified when this discussion is updated.  If you do not see the Receive Email Notifications link then you may need to create an account for the Intel communities or log in to an account you already have.

Hi, I have an Intel 335 240GB SATA drive installed behind a PATA bridge (old Thinkpad X41). I'm running Linux 2.6.32 (and 2.6.34 is also an option that works with this hardware -- later kernels don't seem to be able to set up the framebuffer how I want it). It appears that TRIM is not available over the PATA bridge.

Assuming TRIM is not available, is it better to live without TRIM (and leave plenty of unused space on the drive), or attempt to emulate TRIM by zeroing unused blocks. Zeroing might be beneficial if the drive optimises storage of zero blocks. Otherwise it will just add more wear.

Does anyone know if zero block storage is optimised on this drive and will work as a TRIM substitute?

Hello Community,

i got an Intel SSD 525 (240GB) mSATA drive for my notebook (Lenovo Y580) and  installed Windows 8.

Suddenly my notebook turns of and does not detect the SSD on reboot. After some minutes i tried again and the SSD shows up, everything looks fine.

I installed IntelSSD Toolbox wich says, no problem, SSD status 100%. With CrystalDiskInfo, i could see the problem, the SSD has 65-70°C in idle (while the rest of the system is from 47°C (Intel HD Graphic) to 57°C (CPU Intel I7 / nVidia GTX 660M)

If i copy something from HDD to SSD, the SSD temperature goes up to 85°.

I dont think it's a problem with temp. of other components, because in 3DMark Test, GPU and CPU go up to 90°C while SSD stays at ~70° if 3DMark is loaded from HDD and 85° if 3DMark is loaded from SSD

Room temperature is 30°C

The old mSATA (32GB) never had any problem, but i never looked which temperature it has because there was no error.

Actually my solution is, to open the bottom of my notebook an put in in front of big ventilator, which keeps the SSD at 55°, but it's no solution to took my ventilator everywhere i go.

I hope my english is not too bad, i tried my best

Best regards

Mauel Ritter

Hi,

   I have a Intel 320 SSD (300GB).  it was with Win 7 & PGP FDE.. It got corrupted beyond repair.. went to a few data-recovery services.. all said cannot retrieve data from disk.

   I have given up hope in retrieving the data from disk..what I want is to format it and re-use the SSD.  is it possible?

   In windows.. it "see" the drive as not initialized.. any attempt to initialise it --> time-out error. (semaphore timeout period has expired)

   Any tools to do the format?

   I tried HDD LLF tool 4.3.. when it try to format the drive.. I get Format error occurred at offset XXXX: 121 - Device not ready (Timeout)

   Regards.SSD