You will notice that their Enterprise SSDs do not self-brick.
[EDIT] Read down for clarification regarding "almost-dead"
Last I checked, Intel used their own controllers in their enterprise SSDs. Now I wonder if their older consumer drives like the X25-M (which used in-house controllers) become read-only instead of bricking themselves.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SS...
X25-M G1 dies at ~883TB written (without TRIM, so in reality much more), also by just failing to be detected.
On the first page of that thread you see an X25-V (40GB) with 1.5PB written and apparently it is still alive as of earlier this year...
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SS...
Or, in some OLTP scenarios, every few minutes for a month or so.
Based on what I read from the article it implies that at this point the drive itself MAY be ok but not reliable so the intel software pro-actively commits suicide.
Without the self-bricking you could sell a drive that has reached this point to some unsuspecting person since it ostensibly works but is unreliable, if it fails 2 months later then the seller can just deny responsibility.
Although why it 100% self-bricks instead of going into "read-only brick" mode is a good question.
How do you know? Was there a test that managed to put one of the enterprise drives into Read only mode? Nope.
This brisking of intel wasnt intentional, it sounds like a broken firmware.
> Intel really doesn't want its client SSDs to be used after the flash has exceeded its lifetime spec. The firm's enterprise drives are designed to remain in logical disable mode after the MWI bottoms out, regardless of whether the power is cycled. Those server-focused SSDs will still brick themselves if data integrity can't be verified, though.