A few years ago my employer worked with Intel on a joint IC project (not Flash). My overall impression was that Intel engineers were meticulous and smart. This internal culture probably applies to many different Intel divisions. So I'm not surprised that Intel SSDs are reliable.
I had an old Intel G1 SSD die during a power outage that went a little too long for my cheap UPS. Of course one event in uncontrolled conditions isn't meaningful. I still bought another Intel SSD because every Intel device I've owned was top notch.
Yesterday my Intel SSD 320 failed horrible and kills all data on my RAID system. I still do not understand how it happened. I was sure my storage system is very safe.
My system was configured as a mirror RAID with two 1TB HDDs. The RAID was created with Intel Rapid Storage technology (my motherboard is Asus p8z77v-pro). The failed SSD was used as a RAID cache configured with Intel Smart Response technology.
I was wary to use SSD directly as a main system drive, because I heard of "BAD_CTX 13F" error which happened with Intel 320 drives. My hope was that if SSD is used as just a cache, then in the case of SSD failure the data still be safe. Since this error reportedly occurs during power outage only, I set up an UPS. But all these precautions have not helped.
Yesterday I surfed web with Google Chrome, and my computer suddenly become unresponsive. At first only Chrome was unusually slow, and other open programs work normally, but in a few minutes the computer was totally freeze. I was forced to press reset, and upon restart Windows automatically entered into non-interruptible "recovery mode". After more then 24 hours the OS reported that "further recovery is impossible" and the RAID become unbootable. The SSD serial number was changed to "BAD_CTX 0000013F", the sign of famous "8mb bug". It is interesting that in my case this bug was not caused by any power outage except when I pressed "reset" button, but I don't think this is count as a power loss.
I take an HDD out of the RAID to connect it to other computer and save critical data, but without any success. At first sight all file system looks correct, and I even manage to copy all recent data files, but when I looked into those files it was total mess. Each file consist of some arbitrary chunks of unrelated files, mixed in random order - a bit of some executable file, several lines of my project source code, followed by chunk of some unknown xml configuration file, followed by random bytes, etc. A total mess.
I still don't understand the reason of such spectacular data corruption. I have three hypotheses:
1. SSD cache sent incorrect data to RAID on write (two month ago I switched SSD cache from "enhanced" to "maximized" mode, in which writes initially goes to SSD and only then to the RAID disks).
2. Intel RAID controller goes crazy due to a program error.
3. Windows corrupt data during non-interruptible "recovery" phase.
The moral is, even Intel SSD with UPS is not safe, and mirror RAID cannot not protect data from such errors.
A few years ago my employer worked with Intel on a joint IC project (not Flash). My overall impression was that Intel engineers were meticulous and smart. This internal culture probably applies to many different Intel divisions. So I'm not surprised that Intel SSDs are reliable.