Is Intel 320 300gb SSD still worth $69 today?

[Marsh]

There is a ebay listing with 9 x Intel 320 300gb SSD with BO for $69, I talked to the seller, If I buy all 9, he would give me free shipping because he said it is priced really low already.

Today, I am Ebay VIP with 5X Ebay bucks, the math is
$69 - 10% = $62.1 each 300gb = 20.7cent per gb.

I don't know how to value older SSD. But would be fun make a 9 x 300gb RAID0

 

[T_Minus]

I'd pay that for those, I paid $20 for the smaller version and have 8 in service.
If you NEED that space/reserve then go for it, if not save even more and get smaller drives

 

[Patrick]

On one hand, old slow drives. On the other hand, great (reliable) boot drives for E5 v1/ v2, E3 v1/ v2/ v3 and Atom C2xxx boards with 3gbps ports.

 

[T_Minus]

Like @Patrick I use them in RAID1 for boot drive / all in one drive on my low-end / cheap E3 "worker" machines, better than spinners and cheaper likely too.

 

[coolrunnings82]

Anecdotal I know but my Intel drives, both X25-M and 320 series have been the only SSD drives to ever cause me grief. I've had 5x 320s die with the 8mb bug even though they had the latest firmware and most recently a couple X25-M drives that have about 33tb of writes on 120gb models that consistently cause stability issues. My Samsung drives (all 200x 840 Pro and 850 series) have been bulletproof. Well... wait I did have a bad run in with a couple Crucial M4's as well...

 

[T_Minus]

I know my sample size is tiny, but all my Intel G2 80gb are still in use to this day... I think that's > 4 years on ~5 systems on 12 -> 24/hr day. And the 320s (~20) no problems so far on my end.

Did you find anything in common with your failures?

Do you have info somewhere on what / how you're utilizing the 200x Samsung drives? Curious what I can learn from your setup (filesystem/server/etc).

 

[Patriot]

If you do... make sure you update the firmware...
320s are the self bricking drives.

 

[Marsh]

Scary stuff.
I have around 12 older Intel 320 and X25-M drives in the house floating around. Knock on wood and backup often.
I have not experience problem yet.

My purpose of the hardware is just for fun and learning, have no meaningful purpose. But I do a full backup all my VM at least once a week. Most of the VMs are deploy from template and easily recreate.

 

[T_Minus]

I update and wipe all my new/used drives.

URL to 320 self bricking info with more details?

 

[Marsh]

The seller is one of the type that have Best offer of $69.99 , but set auto-decline even at $67.

 

[Marsh]

URL to 320 self bricking info with more details?

Google 320s die with the 8mb bug

 

[neo]

URL to 320 self bricking info with more details?

Firmware update now available - Addresses Bad C... | Intel Communities

TL;DR: The drive suddenly appears as 8mb in capacity.


Edit: Marsh beat me to it.

 

[Patriot]

Google 320s die with the 8mb bug

Often caused by unannounced power losses.
OS lockup? Hard reboot, bricked drive.
Secure erase to fix.... if the drive is not locked.
If the drive is locked... the fix is a hotpull and add... which could cause the problem in the first place.

If it sounds like I spent 3hrs unbricking a 320... I would suggest you start with partition magic over intel's tools... will save you a lot of time.

 

[coolrunnings82]

@T_Minus Most of the Samsung drives are in client systems that I administer at this time. Just workstation duty in desktops and lots of Thinkpad T410/T420/T430 systems. There are a few servers with them as well. I have about a couple dozen Intel drives that haven't had issues too but those bricked drives were all nightmare scenerios that left a bad taste in my mouth. The part that disturbs me is that all of them had firmware that was supposed to have fixed the 8mb bug but it didn't. Intel was great in the RMA though.