Can we talk about the Intel 320 SSD? ...or "How to buy a 600GB brick."

Question

So my refund from Amazon came in, for an Intel 320 SSD drive, which suffered from the "8MB glitch." Essentially, after the cloning process failed, the SSD became convinced it's really an 8MB thumb drive.
It bricks itself.
In a way, I was lucky. I didn't lose any data. I've read that the glitch can happen at any time, like after the drive has been in use for a long time. That means a user can have all their data on a big 600GB SSD and then, poof, it vanishes, OS and all.
Now I've heard that SSDs have shorter longevity than spinning hard drives, but my understanding is that an SSD would lose its write ability first, allowing the data to be harvested before it dies completely.
But an SSD bricking itself? No warning? Just like that? Jeez, that's scary.
For the record, I'm not that much of a techie. I just like to read, mildly compare processor stats, that sort of thing. I couldn't even begin to explain SSD benchmarks and that sort of thing. I just wanted an upgrade, and the X220 makes it so easy to replace the hard drive--it's just one screw! Having an expensive SSD brick itself on me like this was kind of my worst fear.
Thing is, I'd still like to get an SSD. What are my options? I don't want to case-mod a Crucial M4 or something, and the only other 7mm SSD I know of is the Samsung 830. I've read the 830 is a power hog, bad for battery life.
What are my options? Should I settle for the Samsung 830, or is it just better to get an mSATA SSD like the Nocti 120GB, and get a backup Momentus Thin spinning disk for data?

Answer 1

joncordova wrote:
I'll make sure to check the firmware if I get the Samsung 830.
The Samsung 830 is a different story. It's based on Samsung controller and their own nand flash. Of course the firmware version would be in a different system from the Intel ones. The early batch of the Samsung 830 Series is shipped with CXM01B1Q firmware, and the latest version is CXM02B1Q. The early version is not known to have any serious bug, but just worse write amplification and possible performance loss under continuous heavy load. It is recommended to update it to the latest firmware if it isn't yet.