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Intel talks up the benefits of SSD, ups warranty of Intel SSD 320 Series to five years (retroactively)

9to5 Staff | May 20 2011 - 4:13 am PT

Chip maker Intel is out with a new mini-campaign to educate people about the benefits of solid state drives compared to their hard drive counterparts. They have also increased warranty of the latest 25-nanometer SSD 320 Series of solid state drives from three to five years reflecting on the “longer life-span than tradition hard drives” promise found at the new web site. The five-year warranty will also apply retroactively the already-sold units, Intel said and is valid under the presumption that users are writing up to 20GB of data per day, which can be checked through the SMART monitoring system.

Apple, of course, was the first computer vendor to ditch hard drive storage in favor of speedier SSDs in the latest MacBook Air line. That has enabled faster boot times and much nimbler overall performance which resembles the iPad’s instant-on functionality. Apple has been offering solid state storage on its other compute as a build-to-order option exclusive to the online Apple store. The company is gradually transitioning all of its computer products to solid state storage. The recently updated iMac family uses Intel’s unreleased Z68 chipset which allows for a cool hybrid mode that uses an SSD as a high-speed cache for an HDD. A recent firmware update has enabled 6Gb/s mode on two internal SATA ports on both 2011 MacBook Pros and iMacs and all we need is an operating system update to enable the hybrid mode functionality.