Vertex 3 BSOD

[vardirox]

Oh and don't forget that for every user that actually knows why their Windows is BSOD'ing and the V3 is dropping offline and finds your particular support forum, there are at-least ten others out there with similar issues that don't know what to do.

There is an informative review from a buyer on Amazon and he compares the hardware and the just as important software and technical support. After reading this and because I have several AMD systems, I would rather buy a OCZ Vertex than an Intel 510/320.

http://www.amazon.com/review/RHAU08S...#RHAU08SR6YQ7G

This Intel SSD will surely disappoint many users. There are severe limitations, specifically in using the Intel SSD Toolbox. I strongly suggest to go to the Intel website, download the 41 page Toolbox users guide, and read it before buying.

The toolbox will not do the following:

1. It will not allow to optimize (TRIM) if this drive is installed in a non-Intel computer. If your PC is AMD or other than Intel, this funtion will not work.

2. It will not allow to optimize (TRIM) if you're drive has encryption or is going to be encrypted. So for corporations, or end-users using encryption, forget it.

3. It will not allow to optimize (TRIM) if you have a dual boot, or multiboot system. If the tool finds other bootable partitions, it won't allow you to perform this function. So if you have Win7 and WinXP in dual boot, forget using this function.

4. It will not allow to optimize (TRIM) if you have a RAID configuration.

More problems:

This is a terrible disfunction on the part of Intel. Many users will want to clone their laptop hard drive to improve performace and battery life. All laptops these days do not come with the OS installation CD's, so a fresh install is out of the question to install without AHCI or RAID enabled in non-Intel and Intel based systems. The HD images provided by the laptop manufacturer do not allow for such alterations at the time of install. If done after install, expect BSOD's at boot.

For non-laptop situations, there is another problem. If you are already in RAID or AHCI, you'll need to perform a fresh install and install without if possible. If you need F6 to install a non standard SATA driver, you're probably already going to have problems. So cloning your old HD is out of the question in many home pc configurations.

One could attempt to hack into the registry and disable RAID of AHCI in order to try and let Windows use a generic SATA driver, but who wants to do that just get a feature to work in the Intel SSD toolbox?

The Intel SSD Toolbox is touted as an added value, especially for XP users since XP does not itself support TRIM. It allows for scheduled TRIM, which is nice if it likes your configuration and allows you to.

More bad news:

You cannot flash the Intel SSD from the toolbox. There is no such function. Why have a toolbox that cannot flash the drive? OCZ does. The tool also doesn't provide the flash version on the SSD. If you look in Windows device manager, it also won't display the flash version either. So, you have to download an iso from Intel, burn a bootable CD, have it search for the SSD at boot time, to tell you that you don't need to flash it????. A waste of time and a wasted CD.

From bad to worse:

Performance wise, worse than the competitors. Although sequential read and writes are a little faster, other performace tests are close to or slower than other SSD manufactures. On a Win7 Ultimate system with 6GB ram, intel motherboard, and performing the Intel toolbox optimizations, boot and shutdown were a few seconds slower than an OCZ Vertex2. I assure everyone that the SSD was aligned correctly (4k) and verified.

So, in conclusion:

The toolbox will only work as advertised in an Intel based PC, without multi-boot partitions, without RAID configuartion, and without encryption. Most HD clonings will reveal that the tool won't work well.

Two thumbs up for Amazon, two thumbs down for Intel. This SSD is an old dog. That's the scoop.