A guy in my area is selling an "unused" OEM Intel SSD, which I'm thinking of picking up. Thing is, being second hand, is there any way of actually checking if the drive is new? I remember hearing something about usuage stats being displayable in the Intel toolkit.

Yes, it's possible to check the amount of written data. Have a look at the Host Writes attribute in Intel's SSD Toolbox (Check SMART Attributes menu).

There is also a program called http://ssd-life.com/ that does much the same.

Does the Toolbox run as a normal application that you launch after Windows is up and running?

Cheers all!



So in that screenshot, there's actually been 5.37 TB of data written? I was just reading the SSD Toolbox user guide, and it says:


I'd have thought it's be easier just to say that the raw value tells you how much data's been written...

Turns out the drive isn't the 2.5" X25-M, but the 1.8" X18-M. I've been searching for reviews, but haven't found any. Does anyone know if the performance specs are the same for both G2 drives?

And was reminded to check whether my system is compatible with it as well - does it matter if I'm using a ICH9R southbridge in terms of TRIM support? My current understanding is that I just need a drive that supports TRIM, Win7, and the Intel chipset drivers.

Yes.

The X18-M is supposed to have the same performance specs, but uses a non-standard SATA connector type as is the norm for 1.8" drives.

I expect there will be a lot of cheap secondhand X25-Ms on the market starting about now.

Be aware certain SMART attributes on the Intel X25 series, X18 series, 320 series, and 510 series SSDs are clearable via a vendor-specific SMART test command (command 0x40). They reset to value 0x00000000ffff (65535), then after approximately 30-60 seconds, start incrementing again from zero.

You can also accomplish the same by initiating a firmware upgrade or re-flash.

So unless the previous owner knows how to do the above, you can rely on the attributes. Otherwise, don't rely on them at all.

What would that SMART attributes be?
I updated the firmware on my X25-M twice and I didn't see any of the SMART values I was checking (media wearout, host writes, power-on hours) being reset.