Intel SSD 530 NAND Write Problem

[fZhan14]

Hello, everyone:

I bought an Intel SSD 530 120G for my laptop several days ago. It worked well with the OS Win8.1 Pro x64.

When I paid attention to the NAND writes, something make me confused.

The situation is as follow:

The SSD with the OS is the first(primary) Disk, and the HDD is the second one. I have moved the cache of IE, chrome and Firefox to the Hard Drive using IE setting or mklink command, and verified it correctly. With the explorer working, the written data stream from cache is produced in the HDD partition theoretically, also I have got this conclusion through the System's Resource Monitor and the Diskmon from Microsoft website. When I cached several Movies embedded in any explorer without other operation separately, there are lots of written data traffic produced in the HDD partition, and just little data wrote in system disk(SSD), it's no doubt. Finally, each test(using one kind of explorer) improved less than 200Mb in Total Host Writes which is normal for system operating, but this process also consumed about 3Gb SSD's Total NAND writes in total in the CrystalDiskInfo 6.0.1. Also I have got the same result with the newly Intel SSD Toolbox, AIDA64 3.20 and CrystalDiskInfo 6.0.1. In fact, this written data traffic produced by explorer's cache in HDD is calculated into the SSD's total NAND writes.

Actually I'm not care of the SSD's wear, and I'm sure it couldn't reach the limited lifespan with normal usage until next generation product arrives. This accidental discovery confused me now, and the result above make me suspect the theory, Putting IE/Chrome or System cache into other medium/drive saving your SSD's wear.

Q:Here, I want to know what makes this strange condition happen, the drivers, system's bug, bad support for old mainboard, the system's setting&config or the special system log?

Testing condition:

Thinkpad R400(GM45 motherboard)/P8700/8Gb RAM/Intel 530 SSD+Hitachi 7k500/Intel 5300 AGN/Win 8.1 Pro X64 with the Win 8.1's Default config and drivers, except trunning the service Superfetch off mannually.

I could make sure the location of explorer cache(IE, Chrome, Firefox) in HDD, also the written data traffic in HDD, and the vast imprived NAND writes in SSD simultaneously.

Thanks for your help.

[jbenavides]

Hello,

We have reproduced this issue in our systems and it is being investigated by the proper resources.

We will keep you informed about any further details or recommended actions for this condition.

[MMuir2]

Hi, wondering if there's any updates?

I have dozens of drives that seem to be slowly killing themselves.

Wondering if I should RMA all of them or wait....

[jbenavides]

Hello Nitra,

We are working on this issue and we will provide any new information or resolution as soon as it becomes available.

This condition does not affect the functionality of the drive and should not be a reason to consider replacing it. All Intel® SSD's are covered by the http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/solid-state-drives/000005861.html Limited Warranties for Solid State Drives.

[ygao10]

Hi,jonathan

How about this issue now?

I bought a intel 535 480G SSD a month ago, it also exist this issue. Eevn I did nothing, the SSD is still wirte something on the nand, about 15G+ every hour and about 150G+ every day. someone told me it is caused by the power saving policy, is it?

Now I found a workaround to solve this issue. I installed cygwin on my win10 64bit os and running a script at system startup. The script is very simple, it read 512 byte every 0.5 second, the the nand writing is always 0.

The sricpt used the DD command becuase only this command may access the SSD directly bypass the windows file cache. So I must install the cygwin.

the following is the script.

# !/bin/bash

while true

dosleep 0.5;dd if=/etc/hosts of=/dev/null bs=512 count=1 iflag=directdone

[JKlin4]

It's been over 3 weeks since the last reply. I'm starting to just believe that Intel doesn't care.