530 SSD, sometimes bad, sometimes good

[ppara5]

I have a 530 120 GB SSD that exhibits problems when updating Fedora Linux. Messages along the lines of "write FPDMA queued" and "ATA bus error" are displayed. I removed the SSD from the PC and installed Fedora Linux on a WDC hard drive with no errors being seen, so it's not the PC. I ran a full diagnostic scan using SSD Toolbox, but no problems were found. Something seems to be wrong, but I don't want to send it in for warranty if it will just be returned to me as is (according to intel.com, I have almost two more years of warranty remaining). From reading the SATA specification, it appears that the supported life is 36,500 GB, but Total NAND Writes = 4639.00 GB. All SMART fields are green Ready For Use. What SSD Toolbox data would Intel support look at to determine if the SSD is toast?

[ppara5]

I installed the firmware update before, on both 530 SSDs, so that's not an issue. I will use Linux Mint for a while to see what happens.

[idata]

Paramountain,

Thanks for replying back.Please keep us posted if you notice anything else.Regards,Nestor C

[ppara5]

I have now come full circle; It's the 530.

I installed Linux Mint and used it for a few hours. Almost immediately I started to have Ethernet connectivity problems. Then I remembered that I had seen that before on this SSD, though intermittently.

I installed Fedora 25 GNOME on an old Crucial M4 64 GB SSD. On paper, the M4 is significantly slower than the 530. However, the performance of the M4 put the 530 to shame. I could tell just by looking at the update that thing were running much faster than on the 530. I always do a "dnf update" on the console because of an obscure bug Fedora warned users about. On the 530, it would time-out twice, but on the M4, it did not time-out at all, meaning that the M4 was updating at least three times as fast. And there were no errors at all.

I updated ("dnf update") the other 530 which has Fedora 25 Cinnamon on it; no errors and no time-outs, i.e. it is as fast as the M4.

It was always impossible to compare the update speeds of Linux Mint and Fedora on the 530 because those two distributions have very different update procedures, hence why it took me so long to come to the correct conclusion. Since SSD Toolbox does not show any errors, I won't return it on an RMA, but I sure won't use it for anything remotely important.

[idata]

Hi Paramountain,

In case you notice any other situation with the SSD, please feel free to contact our support department, in the case of RMA.Regards,Nestor C