Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2011/05/23/intel_ssd320_5_year_warranty/
Intel drives up flash drive warranty
SSD 320 gets longer life assurance – increased to five years
Posted in Channel, 23rd May 2011 11:08 GMT
Intel has put another brick in the wall of its enterprise SSD supply house and boosted the SSD 320's warranty from three to five years.
The SSD 320 was only introduced in March, so Intel's experience with shipped 320s must have been good enough to justify the warranty extension. Existing SSD owners as well as new buyers of the flash device get the warranty boost. The warranty is limited, and specifically states:
If the Product is properly used and installed, it will be free from defects in material and workmanship, and will substantially conform to Intel's publicly available specifications for a period of five (5) years beginning on the date the Product was purchased in its original sealed packaging in the case of an Original Purchaser or the date of original purchase of a computer system containing the Product in the case of an Original System Customer.
This looks good. Here's part of Intel's SSD 320 specification (28-page PDF/360KB):
Bandwidth Performance ((Iometer* Queue Depth 32)
- Sustained sequential read: Up to 270 MB/sec
- Sustained sequential write: Up to 220 MB/sec
Read and Write IOPS ((Iometer Queue Depth 32)
- Random 4 KB2 reads: Up to 39,500 IOPS
- Random 4 KB2 writes: Up to 23,000 IOPS
Taken at face value, the warranty says Intel's SSD 320 will "substantially conform" to these performance numbers. If it doesn't then it gets replaced, repaired, or your money is refunded. Sounds good to us.
This five-year warranty term only applies to the SSD 320. All other Intel SSDs have a three-year warranty. We might expect that a five-year term will become standard for Intel SSDs supplied to enterprises. ®