Intel also has the resources to test their SSD on every SATA chipset known to man.
I've seen threads on OCZ forum about users' SSD not showing up in their BIOS
Intel Controller Hub + Intel SSD = groovy
I suggest an Intel X25-M or a drive with the newer Sandforce Controller... Or wait it off for Intel to release their new SSD lineup later this year.
I was wondering why OCZ didn't have something like this. I made a post at OCZ forums asking why and obvously never got a response. I'm glad to hear that SSD manufacturers are starting to do stuff like this. Hell a hard drive manufaturer not having a utility to check their drives is unheard of.
My other big problem with OCZ is that much like they do with their ram they release drives with different flash all of the time. That bothers me for two reasons. One it's hard to really trust benchmarks but that isn't a big deal to me. The second and most important problem that this brings up is that they don't thoroughly test each revision of drive before releasing a firmware update which has caused problems in the past. Hell I had to RMA my Vertex because of this. I also asked why they don't release a firmware as a public beta before a final release. Why not MSI and Gigabyte do it all of the time with their motherboard bios. I was told by a volunteer mod to fill in my system specs. They never used to have these volunteer mods.
Most of these SSD manufacturers NEED to start thinking like the HDD manufacturers. OCZ has had way more problems with firmware that Seagate has ever had and for some reason they don't catch half of the flack that Seagate has. I can't store my data on something like that. You have to remember that first and foremost it is a storage device. Reliability is far more important to me than a little speed.
I'm a little put off by these SSDs and tbh after going from the Vertex to a 500GB F3 spinpoint with no tweaks to my windows install I really don't notice much of a difference. No where near as much as a lot of people claim. I'm glad to hear about the steps that Intel is making and maybe one day I'll look into an Intel drive if I'm ever in the market for an SSD again.
Well, i Just did my first test on my new Agility 2 and this is the results i got from HD tune:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4101/4800723770_63b787d44e_b.jpg
Beware though, since its a 60gb drive space can be a bit tight, W7 alone took 25gb away, but its not much of a big deal if you install the main programs on the SSD, and the rest somewhere else.
Looks like you are on FW 1.5? Thats what my HDTune benchs looked like when the data corruption started. You may want to image you drive or at least backup data. Then run
"Tony Trim" since as free space cleaner will corrupt you drive immediately instead of over time and out of the blue if you do happen to have the issue that has plagued many Vertex owners including myself. My benchs looked just like Ross' with 1.41FW when all was well.
Also it's really easy to get a windows 7 install under 10GB by just moving the page file and removing hibernation and system restore. In an elevated command prompt (run as administrator) just type in "powercfg -h off" that clears up quite a bit of wasted space. I for one have never used hibernation.
