To think only few years ago Intel was the benchmark for SSD's. For some reason they felt they should let others do the Controller thing. Now they are far behind the others.
It really didn't make sense for Intel to keep investing in in-house client SSD controllers given how Samsung was dominating and Intel didn't have NAND that could keep up even if they could provide a controller as good or better than Samsung's. Now that they're back on a level playing field with 64L 3D NAND, it would be nice if Intel could produce another top-notch in-house consumer SSD, but that's a big investment with relatively little payoff compared to their enterprise drives and 3D XPoint stuff.
Who makes more money (Profit), Intel on the enterprise or Samsung on the PC's market?
I bet Samsung and they should have been where Samsung is and it would have made them more money. A better choice than dropping the controller would have been switching to Samsung NAND for a limited period.
They made the wrong strategic choice (Again, as they do a lot lately). Even 3D XPoint doesn't look as shiny as they thought it would be.
It really is sad how the king has fallen. An 8 year old X25-M is still a relevant, reliably SSD for many PC's (especially those that lack SATA3) as a cheap upgrade from an HDD.
Even though Intel has released almost nothing noteworthy since (I have a soft spot for the Intel 730 - based on the Enterprise S3700 - as I've had the 480GB model for four years in my workstation and it's been a great drive) they set out to accomplish one task by even releasing the X25-M and further mainstream SSD's, and you can pinpoint the exact moment when they gave up: when they went to Sandforce controllers.
Those drives (330, 530, etc) weren't necessarily bad, and it is undebatable they were the most reliable Sandforce drives ever produced. But they weren't the best drives produced at the time, like the X25-M series that just killed everything from the late 00's.
Eventually Samsung's 830's, Crucial's C300's, and a flood of budget drives from Kingston, Sandisk and Toshiba (OEM) hit the market and Intel was able to just give up.
So what did they accomplish? They surged an industry that barely existed, and needed to exist, in order to stop bottlenecking their CPU's. Without SSD's, the user experience on any PC is bad, no matter how fast the CPU. Intel had tried working with Microsoft through Vista with ReadyBoost and various SSD caching, but it was obvious in order to push powerful CPU's to the lucrative HEPC market they would need reliable, high performance solid state storage and nobody was really pushing it because nobody had as much at stake as Intel.
If they hadn't pushed SSD's as early as they did, there would be more iPad's and Chromebooks than there already are, and the PC industry would be in even worse shape.
Large old corporations in the US are mainly owned by mutual funds which are owned by pension fund holding money from everybody. Literally, publicly owned = owned by public. Basically, they are like ministries in a socialist country. No real owners. And just as inefficient and stupid, and infestation with incompetent managers (MBAs) makes them hopeless.
The good news is that Windows 10's flexible update policy allows end users a very high degree of individual choice when it comes to changes from Microsoft so issues like this aren't forced on a system once they become known. I'm grateful to these developers for recognizing that updates can sometimes cause unforeseen problems and then graciously offering such easy configuration adjustments so we can wait out issues until Intel or Microsoft can deploy a proper fix.
"The good news is that Windows 10's flexible update policy allows end users a very high degree of individual choice when it comes to changes from Microsoft so issues like this aren't forced on a system once they become known. "
You win the internet sir! Made my coffee go down the wrong way from laughing. Oh the burn!
I have notice that Windows 10 has issues with older device, but this SSD not that old and it is storage drive
Well my experience in with 10+ Year old Xeon 5160 and not the CPU but the sound driver - I work around the issue by removing the driver in safe mode.
Windows need logic if driver crashes on boot - have a way to disable it - that would work great in my situation but if SSD is primary drive then that would be an issue.
I actually upgraded from Windows 7 and went to Windows 10 - because I have it on all systems. Even though I spent about $8000 on this system - it primary good storage area now - until Intel came out with the i7 - it was the fastest computer around - a 11 years dual Xeon 5160 is faster than my i5 Surface Pro. It has Dell 30 in monitor which is also outdated.
I might consider reformatted it with Windows 7 - not sure how much I am going to used it now.
My Z370, i7-8700K, Intel 600p system has been working just fine on Windows 1803 for several weeks. I upgraded from 1709 as soon as the rumor hit that 17133 was going to be the finial build. So this problem does not affect all drives. Perhaps the mobo chipset has something to do with the differences.
It's likely dependent on the firmware on the drive when it was installed, I have two of these in my system and I know there was an issue with an earlier firmware that caused all sorts of issues. Newer ones are much more stable and I have had fewer issues since updating them, and none so far with 1803.
I doubt the chipset is involved, the firmware definitely (especially with respect to power modes.)
My experience has been the same. Installed 17133 right away and have had no issues with that build or the eventual final 17134 build on my Intel 600p. (i7-4790K, Z97)
Sounds like the firmware exposed functionality in the controller that was broken, but no one was using yet. 1803 started using it and started causing bad behavior. That's an unfortunate reversal from when Intel Sandforce-based SSDs had fewer issues than the rest of the bunch: https://www.anandtech.com/show/5508/intel-ssd-520-...
An Intel Sandforce-based SSD came to the rescue for me way back when I was trying to put an SSD in a friend's Macbook with an Nvidia chipset. There was some firmware glitch that caused most Sandforce drives to only be able to negotiate a 1.5Gbps SATA connection with Nvidia SATA controllers. I think most motherboard vendors were able to fix the issue on their side, but not Apple -- the issue only occurred when you performed a 3rd party upgrade using non-certified hardware so why would they.
Anyhow, I tried swapping in a spare Vertex 3 I had at the time and ran into the issue. After scouring the internet and reading the Cherryville review I made a gamble and ordered an Intel 330. It negotiated a 3Gbps link and worked like a charm!
Windows 10 was making my Asus G73jh-A1 crash after 15 seconds. Basically, my wired ethernet controller was incompatible with Windows 10... Guess what, to this day it is still incompatible. The only way to make it work is to disable to hardware.
This is BULL!!! I have an AMD 6Core, home built, with 3 ide drives. A Dell 1500 Series with 1 SATA drive. Four days ago, I received my tricked out XPS 15, with it's new pcie (card) drive. ALL....ALLL 3 of my Systems failed after these updates. Both Dells had to go through reformating to Factory. No prob for XPS. No biggie for 1500, though the USB drives would not recognize any restore points. I was able to save the AMD, by forcing it to Start in Safe Mode, to clean and revert stuff. So, it's not just one drive affected. The net is actually inundated with mentions of this problem on many systems.
This is unrelated to this article, but I tried over 10 times to install the Windows 1803 update on my computer at work to no avail - it hung every single time. I finally disabled VT-d through the BIOS, and then Windows 1803 installed without any issues. I enabled VT-d after installing the update, and my computer is still working fine.
Reporting here... Windows 10 1803 (build 17134.1) working ok with an Intel X25-M (ssdsa2m160g2gc), however... May 2018 Cumulative update to bring build 17134.48 (via KB4103721, either by Windows update or manually) breaks the system. You have to revert to 17134.1 by safe mode. Could be something else, but initial testing shows Intel SSD could be incompatible with said update.
Update: Not an Intel X25-M problem after all. Just disabled some non-Microsoft Services and the updated installed ok. Re-enabled them afterwards. Some services may even need to be uninstalled, not just disabled.
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Drazick - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
To think only few years ago Intel was the benchmark for SSD's.For some reason they felt they should let others do the Controller thing.
Now they are far behind the others.
Who makes the decisions there?
FwFred - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
Intel still makes controllers for the enterprise market, where they make most of their revenue.Billy Tallis - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
It really didn't make sense for Intel to keep investing in in-house client SSD controllers given how Samsung was dominating and Intel didn't have NAND that could keep up even if they could provide a controller as good or better than Samsung's. Now that they're back on a level playing field with 64L 3D NAND, it would be nice if Intel could produce another top-notch in-house consumer SSD, but that's a big investment with relatively little payoff compared to their enterprise drives and 3D XPoint stuff.Drazick - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
Who makes more money (Profit), Intel on the enterprise or Samsung on the PC's market?I bet Samsung and they should have been where Samsung is and it would have made them more money.
A better choice than dropping the controller would have been switching to Samsung NAND for a limited period.
They made the wrong strategic choice (Again, as they do a lot lately).
Even 3D XPoint doesn't look as shiny as they thought it would be.
watchmania - Saturday, May 19, 2018 - link
Enterprise always makes the money. Consumer, nah.Samus - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
It really is sad how the king has fallen. An 8 year old X25-M is still a relevant, reliably SSD for many PC's (especially those that lack SATA3) as a cheap upgrade from an HDD.Even though Intel has released almost nothing noteworthy since (I have a soft spot for the Intel 730 - based on the Enterprise S3700 - as I've had the 480GB model for four years in my workstation and it's been a great drive) they set out to accomplish one task by even releasing the X25-M and further mainstream SSD's, and you can pinpoint the exact moment when they gave up: when they went to Sandforce controllers.
Those drives (330, 530, etc) weren't necessarily bad, and it is undebatable they were the most reliable Sandforce drives ever produced. But they weren't the best drives produced at the time, like the X25-M series that just killed everything from the late 00's.
Eventually Samsung's 830's, Crucial's C300's, and a flood of budget drives from Kingston, Sandisk and Toshiba (OEM) hit the market and Intel was able to just give up.
So what did they accomplish? They surged an industry that barely existed, and needed to exist, in order to stop bottlenecking their CPU's. Without SSD's, the user experience on any PC is bad, no matter how fast the CPU. Intel had tried working with Microsoft through Vista with ReadyBoost and various SSD caching, but it was obvious in order to push powerful CPU's to the lucrative HEPC market they would need reliable, high performance solid state storage and nobody was really pushing it because nobody had as much at stake as Intel.
If they hadn't pushed SSD's as early as they did, there would be more iPad's and Chromebooks than there already are, and the PC industry would be in even worse shape.
FunBunny2 - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
"So what did they accomplish? They surged an industry that barely existed"more than 60 years ago, RCA pioneered color TeeVee, then lost. USofA capitalists do this sort of thing as a matter of course.
peevee - Tuesday, May 15, 2018 - link
Large old corporations in the US are mainly owned by mutual funds which are owned by pension fund holding money from everybody. Literally, publicly owned = owned by public. Basically, they are like ministries in a socialist country. No real owners. And just as inefficient and stupid, and infestation with incompetent managers (MBAs) makes them hopeless.PeachNCream - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
The good news is that Windows 10's flexible update policy allows end users a very high degree of individual choice when it comes to changes from Microsoft so issues like this aren't forced on a system once they become known. I'm grateful to these developers for recognizing that updates can sometimes cause unforeseen problems and then graciously offering such easy configuration adjustments so we can wait out issues until Intel or Microsoft can deploy a proper fix.p1esk - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
I bet half the people here didn't realize this is sarcasm.StevoLincolnite - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
In Microsoft we trust, Amen.Samus - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
LMFAO I wish we still had ratings so this could get a 6Azurael - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
Of course! I forgot it's Microsoft and the Linux kernel developers' job to work around buggy hardware!WinterCharm - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
Steve Jobs is dying laughing in his grave right now.Jhlot - Tuesday, May 15, 2018 - link
"The good news is that Windows 10's flexible update policy allows end users a very high degree of individual choice when it comes to changes from Microsoft so issues like this aren't forced on a system once they become known. "You win the internet sir! Made my coffee go down the wrong way from laughing. Oh the burn!
HStewart - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
I have notice that Windows 10 has issues with older device, but this SSD not that old and it is storage driveWell my experience in with 10+ Year old Xeon 5160 and not the CPU but the sound driver - I work around the issue by removing the driver in safe mode.
Windows need logic if driver crashes on boot - have a way to disable it - that would work great in my situation but if SSD is primary drive then that would be an issue.
ಬುಲ್ವಿಂಕಲ್ ಜೆ ಮೂಸ್ - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
Driver support that has been discontinued for older systems for Windows 10 and even Windows 8.1 can still be fixed in many casesAfter a clean install of Windows 10, just install the Windows 7 drivers
ಬುಲ್ವಿಂಕಲ್ ಜೆ ಮೂಸ್ - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
For HStewartHStewart - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
I actually upgraded from Windows 7 and went to Windows 10 - because I have it on all systems. Even though I spent about $8000 on this system - it primary good storage area now - until Intel came out with the i7 - it was the fastest computer around - a 11 years dual Xeon 5160 is faster than my i5 Surface Pro. It has Dell 30 in monitor which is also outdated.I might consider reformatted it with Windows 7 - not sure how much I am going to used it now.
Nbarsotti - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
My Z370, i7-8700K, Intel 600p system has been working just fine on Windows 1803 for several weeks. I upgraded from 1709 as soon as the rumor hit that 17133 was going to be the finial build. So this problem does not affect all drives. Perhaps the mobo chipset has something to do with the differences.microlithx - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
It's likely dependent on the firmware on the drive when it was installed, I have two of these in my system and I know there was an issue with an earlier firmware that caused all sorts of issues. Newer ones are much more stable and I have had fewer issues since updating them, and none so far with 1803.I doubt the chipset is involved, the firmware definitely (especially with respect to power modes.)
Kwarkon - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
Do uou use any special driver for the ssd?Nogib - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
My experience has been the same. Installed 17133 right away and have had no issues with that build or the eventual final 17134 build on my Intel 600p. (i7-4790K, Z97)MrCommunistGen - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
Sounds like the firmware exposed functionality in the controller that was broken, but no one was using yet. 1803 started using it and started causing bad behavior. That's an unfortunate reversal from when Intel Sandforce-based SSDs had fewer issues than the rest of the bunch: https://www.anandtech.com/show/5508/intel-ssd-520-...An Intel Sandforce-based SSD came to the rescue for me way back when I was trying to put an SSD in a friend's Macbook with an Nvidia chipset. There was some firmware glitch that caused most Sandforce drives to only be able to negotiate a 1.5Gbps SATA connection with Nvidia SATA controllers. I think most motherboard vendors were able to fix the issue on their side, but not Apple -- the issue only occurred when you performed a 3rd party upgrade using non-certified hardware so why would they.
Anyhow, I tried swapping in a spare Vertex 3 I had at the time and ran into the issue. After scouring the internet and reading the Cherryville review I made a gamble and ordered an Intel 330. It negotiated a 3Gbps link and worked like a charm!
eva02langley - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
Windows 10 was making my Asus G73jh-A1 crash after 15 seconds. Basically, my wired ethernet controller was incompatible with Windows 10... Guess what, to this day it is still incompatible. The only way to make it work is to disable to hardware.mother_65 - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
This is BULL!!! I have an AMD 6Core, home built, with 3 ide drives. A Dell 1500 Series with 1 SATA drive. Four days ago, I received my tricked out XPS 15, with it's new pcie (card) drive. ALL....ALLL 3 of my Systems failed after these updates. Both Dells had to go through reformating to Factory. No prob for XPS. No biggie for 1500, though the USB drives would not recognize any restore points. I was able to save the AMD, by forcing it to Start in Safe Mode, to clean and revert stuff. So, it's not just one drive affected. The net is actually inundated with mentions of this problem on many systems.Ktracho - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
This is unrelated to this article, but I tried over 10 times to install the Windows 1803 update on my computer at work to no avail - it hung every single time. I finally disabled VT-d through the BIOS, and then Windows 1803 installed without any issues. I enabled VT-d after installing the update, and my computer is still working fine.Arden144 - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
So if this is the case, why did my system with a 600p 512gb do the update fine overnight without me even realizing until now?thecon - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
Reporting here... Windows 10 1803 (build 17134.1) working ok with an Intel X25-M (ssdsa2m160g2gc), however... May 2018 Cumulative update to bring build 17134.48 (via KB4103721, either by Windows update or manually) breaks the system. You have to revert to 17134.1 by safe mode. Could be something else, but initial testing shows Intel SSD could be incompatible with said update.thecon - Monday, May 14, 2018 - link
Update: Not an Intel X25-M problem after all. Just disabled some non-Microsoft Services and the updated installed ok. Re-enabled them afterwards. Some services may even need to be uninstalled, not just disabled.FXi - Wednesday, May 16, 2018 - link
I wonder why the 760p wasn't impacted as well since it also uses a similar (though newer gen) controller.