Has anyone had problems with Dell branded Intel S3700?

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darkconz

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Jun 6, 2013
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I have an opportunity to purchase 2 Dell branded Intel S3700's. On the drive, there is no Dell logo but there is a DP/N: XXXXXX on it which from googling it is a Dell's S3700.

I've read on here that people had problem reading SMART data from the HP version of the drive. Has anyone experience the same on Dell version?

Would Dell's firmware prevent reading such data? Also, can you extract the read/write (GB/TB) data from SMART if these were OEM drives?

Thanks.
 

coolrunnings82

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Mar 26, 2012
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Was wondering the same thing. I just purchased 4x 800gb drives on eBay and on closer inspection of the photos, they appear to be Dell branded. Mine are for sure the SATA 6G versions but we'll see when they arrive.
 

T_Minus

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Never had any problems. Smart data isn't available without a DELL CARD, at-least that' what I've found.

Some are 3Gb/s not 6Gb/s, although this matters mostly on the larger sizes.
 

MiniKnight

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Never had any problems. Smart data isn't available without a DELL CARD, at-least that' what I've found.

Some are 3Gb/s not 6Gb/s, although this matters mostly on the larger sizes.
Have you tested with a Dell card? Which one(s)?

Why does 3Gb/s matter mostly on a larger size and not smaller ones?
 

T_Minus

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I traded and sold my remaining dell SSD with the Dell Card. I never ended up using it to read the SMART data before I sold/traded it.

It matters IIRC on >100gb because of the performance hit the smaller drives have so it's not too much of an issue.
 

MiniKnight

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I traded and sold my remaining dell SSD with the Dell Card. I never ended up using it to read the SMART data before I sold/traded it.

It matters IIRC on >100gb because of the performance hit the smaller drives have so it's not too much of an issue.
Ok so no confirmation on which one might work for SMART data then?

Also - while that may be true (3Gb/s) on other drives, not the S3700 100GB. Even STH covered this: http://www.servethehome.com/intel-dc-s3700-710-100gb-ssd-compared-reliable-boot-options/

Any S3700 gets hamstrung by 3Gb/s. There is a thread with the DP/N's for the 3Gb/s parts.
 

coolrunnings82

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Anyone successfully flash Intel firmware over the top to get SMART data back? I'm a bit leery of doing so because I've got this nagging fear of bricking an expensive drive.
 

MiniKnight

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Anyone successfully flash Intel firmware over the top to get SMART data back? I'm a bit leery of doing so because I've got this nagging fear of bricking an expensive drive.
Not that I've heard and I wasn't able to do it by just running the utility.

But tbqh - the S3700's are really solid drives and I'd imagine few if anyone on here is going to wear out the drives in under 5 yrs.
 

T_Minus

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That is why I said it matters more with higher capacity drives. At 100gb it's slower, but not significantly slower like the 400gb or 800gb drives.

I wouldn't not run a 3Gb/s S3700 Dell if I had one, and I wasn't running it in an array *unless other dell drives matching*.

I think I may have 1 or 2 100gb Dells left, but no RAID card to test with, sorry. I'll probably use them in a linux box, as others have said with the HET I'm not too worried :)