Dell Intel S3500 300GB SSD connecting at 3G speeds not 6?

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tp1

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Feb 5, 2016
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I got some Dell branded Intel S3500 300GB SSD drives. When I connect to a Sata ports supporting 6G speed they still connect at 3G. On reading further I found that some Dell branded Intel SSD's were crippled by firmware to connect at 3G speeds. I did find a dell firmware upgrade file which seems to have it connect at 6G however the update utility does not run (possibly because I am not running on Dell servers?)

Any suggestions or thoughts? I would like to run it at 6G speeds. The drives in question are the SSDSCSC2BB300G4T drives.

Thanks for any help or pointers.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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IIRC to update you need to run it on a dell system w/dell controller

I think @whitey may have done it Linux or ???? He hopefully will help you.
 

coolrunnings82

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If running on a Dell server is an issue let me know as that is what I run in my shop and I would be glad to update the firmware for you.
 

tp1

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An update: I realized I had a Dell Perc 6/i Raid Controller so I was able to run the update. The firmware from Dell was the same as the firmware on the drive. I forced the update on one of the drives just to be sure. The update went fine but it still connects at 3g. It says link speed 6g but active connection only at 3g. Have tried both linux and windows and same problem.
I remember reading that Dell might have crippled the firmware due to compatibility issues with some of their backplanes hence the limitation of 3g but not able to confirm that. I was attempting to use Intel SSD Toolbox to see if I could update it with Intel firmware but unable to do that.

Right now I am definitely getting only 3g speeds.
 

Terry Kennedy

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Any suggestions or thoughts? I would like to run it at 6G speeds. The drives in question are the SSDSCSC2BB300G4T drives.

Thanks for any help or pointers.
Sometimes if an older model drive is no longer available and Dell still has customers with purchase commitments for the unavailable drive, Dell will have the manufacturer do things like report only half capacity (Seagate 3.5" 146GB 15K RPM drives of the model Dell was using went out of production, so they ordered the next-generation drives which had a minimum capacity of 300GB. The old drives were 3Gbps, the newer replacements were 6Gbps. Dell had Seagate change the reported model number of the new drives to end in "HH2" and to set the capacity to 146GB and the speed to 3Gbps.

If the drives you have aren't that sort of thing, then a firmware update may get them working at full speed. You'll want the Dell Nautilus utility (A.49 is the latest non-UEFI one, and I don't remember the version for UEFI - might be something like A.12). It should upgrade any Dell drive that is out-of-rev, as long as it is connected to a Dell controller in a Dell system. If that doesn't describe your situation, download the specific drive update utility (not the catch-all Nautilus) for Linux. If you aren't running Linux, you can boot from a LiveCD image or the obsolete Dell CDU 2.2 disk (press F3 to get a console prompt). Then do something like this:

On another computer, put the contents of the specific updater onto a MS-DOS formatted USB stick. Take that stick and plug it in an open USB port on the computer where the drive needs to be updated. Say something like mount -t msdos /dev/sdb1 /mnt. Then do a ls /mnt to make sure it is there. Now, instead of just running the update utility with no arguments, run it as /mnt/utilityname --extract /foo. In the foo directory, you'll now find all of the components to the update unpacked and ready for you. You'll have a bunch of shell scripts in /foo, the actual firmware will normally be in /foo/payload, and any other files like libraries will be in some place like /foo/lib. The shell scripts do a lot of sanity checking, but you can override some of the checks with command line arguments like --force (the particular arguments and their effects are only documented in the shell script). Sometimes you need to comment out a test and change something like "return $status" to "return $success" to bypass checking thinks like the system model. If you're technical and a decent shell hacker, you'll probably go "OK, easy!". If you aren't, you'll probably go "WTF was all that?".
 

tp1

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Feb 5, 2016
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Sometimes if an older model drive is no longer available and Dell still has customers with purchase commitments for the unavailable drive, Dell will have the manufacturer do things like report only half capacity (Seagate 3.5" 146GB 15K RPM drives of the model Dell was using went out of production, so they ordered the next-generation drives which had a minimum capacity of 300GB. The old drives were 3Gbps, the newer replacements were 6Gbps. Dell had Seagate change the reported model number of the new drives to end in "HH2" and to set the capacity to 146GB and the speed to 3Gbps.

If the drives you have aren't that sort of thing, then a firmware update may get them working at full speed. You'll want the Dell Nautilus utility (A.49 is the latest non-UEFI one, and I don't remember the version for UEFI - might be something like A.12). It should upgrade any Dell drive that is out-of-rev, as long as it is connected to a Dell controller in a Dell system. If that doesn't describe your situation, download the specific drive update utility (not the catch-all Nautilus) for Linux. If you aren't running Linux, you can boot from a LiveCD image or the obsolete Dell CDU 2.2 disk (press F3 to get a console prompt). Then do something like this:

On another computer, put the contents of the specific updater onto a MS-DOS formatted USB stick. Take that stick and plug it in an open USB port on the computer where the drive needs to be updated. Say something like mount -t msdos /dev/sdb1 /mnt. Then do a ls /mnt to make sure it is there. Now, instead of just running the update utility with no arguments, run it as /mnt/utilityname --extract /foo. In the foo directory, you'll now find all of the components to the update unpacked and ready for you. You'll have a bunch of shell scripts in /foo, the actual firmware will normally be in /foo/payload, and any other files like libraries will be in some place like /foo/lib. The shell scripts do a lot of sanity checking, but you can override some of the checks with command line arguments like --force (the particular arguments and their effects are only documented in the shell script). Sometimes you need to comment out a test and change something like "return $status" to "return $success" to bypass checking thinks like the system model. If you're technical and a decent shell hacker, you'll probably go "OK, easy!". If you aren't, you'll probably go "WTF was all that?".
@Terry: Thanks for the detailed writeup. Unfortunately, I have already gone through the steps (not using Nautilis since this drive is not supported by that utility but a separate standalone utility provided by Dell worked for the update process)
Even with the latest firmware it still connects at 3g.
 

tp1

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Feb 5, 2016
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Some more information and a question:

ran smartctl -x on the drive in question and the output says:
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: INTEL SSDSC2BB300G4T
Serial Number: xxxx (EDITED)
LU WWN Device Id: 5 5cd2e4 04b67728b
Add. Product Id: DELL(tm)
Firmware Version: D201DL13
User Capacity: 300,069,052,416 bytes [300 GB]
Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate: Solid State Device
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: ACS-2 T13/2015-D revision 3
SATA Version is: SATA 2.6, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s)

=====================
Question: The line above where it says SATA Version...
Does that mean Drive supports 6gb/s but has negotiated 3.0Gb/s? Does SATA 2.6 support 6.0Gb/s speeds?

Thanks
 

whitey

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Last edited:

tp1

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Feb 5, 2016
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@whitey: thanks. This definitely helped. Not getting the speeds that I thought I would get but there is definitely an improvement.