Dell Brand SSD / Controller?

Question

Greetings Dell Forum Members,

I noticed that Dell started carrying Dell branded Solid State Drives (SSD) relatively recently under the Electronics section. I had a simple question of asking to know who the controller is made by? Especially with SSDs, I've read enough about them to know that performance and overall stability is greatly affected by the controller that is used inside them to issue the R/W commands. If anyone would be able to comment as to who makes the controllers (whether Intel, Samsung, Indilinx, or JMicron), that would be appreciated.

I've had for the most part, very good experiences with Dell and so was contemplating purchasing one through them as opposed to another vendor. My system is a Dell XPS 410 desktop so I figure mounting one wouldn't be any trouble.

Tried calling Dell sales directly but the support representatives had no idea.

DVSman · Answer

The drives are OEM Samsung. I have two in a RAID 0 setup currently and if you use any disk info utility it will say Samsung. Unfortunately, though the drive firmware IDs itself as 19 - it seems to be a different version that regular samsungs - where the latest firmware is18. The important distinction here is that the regular samsung at v.18 supports TRIM whereas the OEM that Dell sells (well sold to me at least a few weeks ago), despite having a higher version number (19) does NOT support TRIM.

Of course this branching firmware also makes it very difficult to search online for a possible DYI firmware upgrade. Samsung has told people that have contacted them that they will not offer a user upgradeable firmware. I'm not sure if they have changed their position / decision on this yet since I haven't looked into it lately - my pair are working fine and still very fast.

Hope this helps!

This is what I'm looking for, It's comprehensive, Thanks for your explanation!

jonyah · Answer

I'd avoid these. Samsung won't support them because they have dell specific firmware on them and Dell won't support them because they don't care about their customers. See here for more info:

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/3534.aspx

dj_palindrome · Answer

My 'Dell' Samsung drive has VBM15D1Q firmware, was obsolete even back in the Stone Ages of 2009 when it was shipped to me, and is now about as speedy as a brick.

The firmware update Dell has now finally released [R276513] will not even recognize the existence of an SSD with this version of firmware [SAMSUNG_SSD_PM800_Series_2.5"_256GB_____VBM15D1Q].

Much less actually update it.

I've totally given up on Dell and will NEVER fork over any more of my cash for another OEM SSD from them, nor buy any system so configured, and will encourage others to do likewise. Don't get burned.

Miki.Brickell · Answer

The drives are OEM Samsung. I have two in a RAID 0 setup currently and if you use any disk info utility it will say Samsung. Unfortunately, though the drive firmware IDs itself as 19 - it seems to be a different version that regular samsungs - where the latest firmware is18. The important distinction here is that the regular samsung at v.18 supports TRIM whereas the OEM that Dell sells (well sold to me at least a few weeks ago), despite having a higher version number (19) does NOT support TRIM.

Of course this branching firmware also makes it very difficult to search online for a possible DYI firmware upgrade. Samsung has told people that have contacted them that they will not offer a user upgradeable firmware. I'm not sure if they have changed their position / decision on this yet since I haven't looked into it lately - my pair are working fine and still very fast.

Hope this helps!

This is what I'm looking for, It's comprehensive, Thanks for your explanation!

Storage, Drives & Media

Dell Brand SSD / Controller?

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