SSD: dangerous to use with Windows XP?

[idata]

I have been using 3 SSD drives for about 6 weeks now and have a mixed bag of feelings... For previosu stories see http://communities.intel.com/thread/23623 http://communities.intel.com/thread/23623

I have two laptops having 80GB and 160GB drives installed, both running Windows XP, and one desktop 320GB with Vista on it. The drives are about 60 - 70 % full, with lots of daily activity going on. I had the "Toolbox Optimization utility", aka TRIM guy, scheduled to run twice a week. The laptops got very fast, not doubt about it!

Here is what has happened to me:

1. System # 1, 160GB, lots of code installs and data movement, suddendly got slow, XP froze. Multiple boot attempts got through to various stages of the system being loaded. After about 3 of them decided to boot standalone Acronis True Image and was able to pull a backup image off the SDD drive. Then tried to boot the system a few times, ended up with "No system disk found".

Replaced the SDD with a regular drive, restored the backup image, was back in business in about 3 hrs, sweating and swearing a lot. Connected the SSD drive over USB, the system would not even detect it, looked like fried electronically. Checked the restored drive for fragmentation: the picture showed sectors used all the way up to the drives capacity, with lots of holes in between. So... did it run out of free sectors while it was on SSD?

Luckily still within 30-day "no questions asked" return policy from Amazon, got the drive replaced the next day. Repeated the SSD installation procedure, booted off it and never had any problems since then (3 weeks). I am very careful now to run the TRIM utility before and after any task involving large amounts of data. Have it set to run 3 times a week automatically. Reasonably happy.

2. System # 2: 80GB, medium activity. System got slower, reported booting error, repeated boot got me through. Remembering the lesson from system # 1, fired up TRIM utility (set to run twice a week anyway), the moment it started spinning, even before getting to 1% checked, POOF! The system froze and I got the "blue screen of death". "No system disk" on boot attempt. Found the original disk, replaced, booted OK, except data was a month old as I was not keeping up with backups (ever heard of a failing SDD drive?!, nah... right...). Connected the SSD drive via USB: seems to work electronically, data recovery utilities did not find a single file on it, it is totally GONE! Lesson learned: keep current backup! I am about to exercise the 5 years warranty rights from Intel and give it another try... Totally not happy.

3. My system # 3, desktop using a 320GB SSD: running Vista happily for 6 weeks now. I dilligently run the TRIM utility and backups twice a week. Very happy with performance, so-so happy otherwise because I constantly need to watch what I am doing.

Anyway, I wanted to share my experience with you all and ask the big question: should people be using SSD drives with systems which do not have an automatic TRIM capability? I think this is quite dangerous, despite Intel not saying anything about such dangers of the drives going completely kaputt when they run out of free sectors.

Greg

[idata]

I took the plunge and updated the firmware on my 160GB SSD installed in a laptop, worked OK.

My 320GB in the desktop would not upgrade because the SDD is connected via an add-on SATA controller and is not being recognized by the firmware tool. Will have to remove it, put in a laptop and update the firmware that way.

I am not going to bother with the 80GB which is going to be replaced by Intel, I will update the replacement drive if it is not current on firmware.

But the point I was going to make is about something else: are the SSD drives reliable enough that I can trust them working in my systems? I earn my living using my computers, and while I consider myself quite computer-literate, it was a traumatizing experience to go what I went through. Can anybody, Intel or otherwise, guarantee that after I apply this firmware update they will not fail again? I my 20 years of using PC's I had a classic hard drive fail on me once, and that only because of something I did, so my expectations in term of hard drive reliability in my systems are quite high.

Unrealisticly high for SSD? I went with Intel because the competition had bad reviews. If I knew then, and it was only 2 moths ago!, what I know today I doubt I would make the same decision.

Greg

[idata]

I have used desktop PC's from 1987 and laptops from 1995. Never had a HDD crash or total failure. Started with an OCZ 64GB SSD sept-2010.

After 7 month's this ssd completely failed and I swapped it (dealer RMA) with an Intel 320 SSD 80GB because of there praised availalility.

Before the this new ssd arrived the "8MB bug" already emerged. I delayed the installation till the new firmware was available. Flashed the new firmware and immediately after that disconnected the SSD (powerless) for a few minutes.

This last action seems to be important!

I am now using the drive in a W7 notebook for 3 weeks without problems. However there are already 3-4 reports of the "8MB bug" AFTER flashing the new firmware.

So my personal conclusion is that SSD's are in no way yet as reliable as the current 2.5" 5400/7200 rpm hdd's.

I am now thinking of putting the original 7200rpm hdd back into my notebook and use the 80GB SSD as SSD caching device in a z68/ i5 chipset desktop PC.