topic Ordered OEM 320 Series SSD Need Spacer Bracket? in Archive

Ordered OEM 320 Series SSD Need Spacer Bracket?

idata — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:25:25 GMT

According to an article I read I need the spacer. "The enclosure is much slimmer than the normal 2.5" enclosure, allowing it to be fitted into ultra-portable laptops with half height drive bays. A spacer is installed by default so it will still fit snuggly into normal notebooks." http://itshootout.com/r-359/intel-320-series-120gb-ssd-review/ http://itshootout.com/r-359/intel-320-series-120gb-ssd-review/

FWIW, I have a Dell Studio 1558. Will the bare drive match regular 2.5" holes?

Re: Ordered OEM 320 Series SSD Need Spacer Bracket?

idata — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:07:33 GMT

The spacer makes it a regular 9.5mm height drive. If your laptop takes the smaller 7mm drives, you simply undo 4 screws on the spacer and voila!

The holes on 2.5" drives don't change as far as I know. It's all standard, with just the height varying.

You need not worry

Re: Ordered OEM 320 Series SSD Need Spacer Bracket?

idata — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 21:19:15 GMT

Thanks for the reply. I verified it should be okay with no spacer with Intel.

The Intel agent now has me a bit worried about something else. He said the Toolbox may not work since it's an OEM drive. (I think he wanted to sell me the retail kit). One of the reasons I ordered it was to use the new Toolbox. I figured it would. Does anyone have the OEM version working with the Toolbox?

EDIT: think I found my answer on the warranty phttp://www.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/sb/CS-032510.htm age In part it says:

OEM SSD Products (SSD purchased as part of a computer system)The media wear-out indicator is a SMART (E9) attribute used for monitoring the media wear-out level of an Intel SSD over time. This value can be read using the Intel® Solid-State Drive Toolbox

So it look like the Toolbox will work afterall.

Re: Ordered OEM 320 Series SSD Need Spacer Bracket?

idata — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:00:54 GMT

Toolbox will work, don't worry

Re: Ordered OEM 320 Series SSD Need Spacer Bracket?

idata — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 23:50:21 GMT

The drive arrived around noon. Did a clean install of Windows Professional x64 from flash drive. I have a 1TB sSATA drive dock so I just launched other stuff from there. Took less than 15 minutes. Loaded the chipset drivers, management drivers then the Toolbox. Ran through everything on the Toolbox, ran a command prompt to verify Trim is on and that's pretty much it. I ran those first 3 in that order before doing anything else. FWIW, it came with the latest firmware already installed. 4PC10362 The pack date was 11/11/11.