Non-availability of 320 series in 1.8" form factor

[idata]

Its been more than a month since the official release of the 320 series in the 1.8" form factor and yet I have yet to see this on sale at any of the retailers online or otherwise. I have a Gen 2 80 GB drive on my Thinkpad T410s and I'm running out of space rather fast and need to upgrade to either the 160GB or better still the 300Gb Gen3. I have been scouring the web for weeks and have not been able to find this anywhere ! What is the problem ? Is Intel purposely limiting production of these drives to inflate prices artificially ? If I can't find one in a few weeks time, I will consider getting a Corsair or a OCZ.

Help anyone ?

[idata]

The 320-series retail drives (labelled 2.5" form factor) come with a black plastic spacer (bezel) around the edge of the drive which can be removed by 4 screws. In doing so, the drive becomes 1.8" form factor. There are Internet users who are http://www.anandtech.com/show/4318/intel-roadmap-ivy-bridge-panther-point-ssds/3 relying on a review from Anandtech as an authoritative statement that an official 1.8" model would be available in July 2011.

There has been a lot of speculation and concern over whether or not doing this voids the warranty on the drive. There have been statements both ways. You can /thread/22960?tstart=60 read the thread in full yourself. Also worth reading is /message/129550 the previous thread, where an Intel Forum Administrator edited a post stating removing the screws does void the warranty. So like I said, nobody really knows.

My opinion, and this is only an opinion: say you remove the spacer, use the drive, then eventually it goes bad. You simply screw the spacer back on before sending the drive back for RMA. There is no sticker that indicates you would void your warranty by removing the spacer (you know what I'm talking about; a sticker that has to be cut to open a product, usually with the print "WARRANTY VOID IF LABEL IS CUT" on it), and I refuse to believe Intel would start inspecting the screws with a microscrope to see if a screwdriver has removed some of their paint just to reject an RMA. (Likewise, use a plastic or vinyl-tipped screwdriver, or cover the tip of a metallic screwdriver with two layers of saran wrap, and nobody would ever know...)

Intel really does need to come forth with an official statement (PDF, etc.) stating whether or not spacer removal voids warranty (and if it does, Intel is truly out of their gourd).

[UHans]

koitsu wrote:

The 320-series retail drives (labelled 2.5" form factor) come with a black plastic spacer (bezel) around the edge of the drive which can be removed by 4 screws. In doing so, the drive becomes 1.8" form factor.

No, a 2.5 inch drive will not become a 1.8 inch drive by doing that. The number refers to the width, not the height.

For reference:

[idata]

I agree that just peeling off the plastic casing is not going to get you a 1.8" drive. These drives are 5mmm thick as oppossed to 7 or 9.5 mmm for the 2.5" form factor drives. I alos chceked the Intel website for the engineering drawings and those drawing confirm that the 2.5" drives are not just padded with plastic on top of the 1.8" drives to get it to that form factor. So, I don't buy that argument.

[idata]

Thank you for correcting me -- I was under the impression that the form factor was purely height-based, not width and length. You're absolutely right. Please do not heed what I said. 🙂