80GB SSD Back from the DEAD

[idata]

Like many others, my Intel 80GB SSD was trashed yesterday by the firmware update. I am now back running Win7 64 on my SSD, as I write this post. In the hopes of helping someone else, here's my story:Yesterday, I installed the TRIM update on my SSD. The firmware update seemed to go fine as the Intel updater reported success with the update. On re-boot, my Win7 install booted OK, windows loaded the drivers (Intel AHCI 10 driver) for the updated SSD, and then told me to re-boot. On re-boot, again windows loaded fine and all looked well.I ran the new Intel Toolbox and that is when the trouble began. The first thing I did was run the Diagnostic Scan. I noticed that the read test was greyed out with a red warning to contact my sales rep. I hit the start button and only the Integrity test ran. It passed the test. but I was concerned that the Read test would not even run. Then I ran the SSD Management Tools (TRIM support) and the it ran to completion and reported success. Great!The system ran fine for about 5 minutes, then I got a warning message from Windows that my disk drive was failing and I should make a backup (SMART error). I looked around a bit to try and find the cause and then boom, blue screen.I re-booted the system and the BIOS reported no boot disk available. I booted to DOS and ran the Intel firmware updater again. It reported that the update was already done, but I noticed the drive serial number as BAD_CTX. Not good.I re-installed my old hard disk and put the SSD on another SATA port. After booting into Win7, the SSD showed a size of 8MB and reported errors when I tried to write to it.I booted into DOS and ran HDDErase 3.3 on the SSD. Then re-booted into Win7 off my old drive, and the SSD was back to 75 GB in size. I formatted the drive and ran some write tests and they all passed fine. I ran the Intel Toolbox, and this time the Read test would run and complete with no problem. I noticed the the SMART attributes were all good except the End to End Error Detection Count, which showed 48 raw errors. This number has not changed, so I believe these errors were logged the first time, when the drive went bad.I tried to install Win7 on the SSD, and it wouldn't allow me to install to the SSD because of the old SMART errors. SO, I tried to find a way to clear the SMART errors, with no luck. Finally, I installed a backup drive image I had of my previous SSD Win7 install and it installed and booted fine. I have now been running for several hours with no probs. The only legacy problem I have is the SMART errors, which I can't clear. However, Win7 is not reporting any problems or SMART errors with the drive. I'm not sure why the first install failed. It appears to be a problem which would not allow the Toolbox to run a read test on the drive. If I was doing another firmware update, I would make an image of the windows SSD install, then delete any partitions on the SSD, do the update, put the SSD on another windows system and test it there with the Toolbox, and if all passed, then re-install the image onto the SSD. If necessary, run HDDErase along the way.So ,if I can get rid of the old SMART errors, this drive should be as good as new. INTEL, how do I clear the SMART error cache?<!-- / message --><!-- message, attachments, sig -->

[idata]

We're you in IDE legacy mode? Mine hung also before I switched to this mode.

[idata]

Yes I was. HDDErase was able to ID the drive fine, but both the enhanced secure erase and the regular secure erase just sat there forever. I read that a working drive is erased in under a minute.

[idata]

In your case i would RMA the disk. My intels had also the same behaviour (only smart errors) but i couldnt do anything about it. Also windows didnt install because of the smart error. After a day trying i RMAed both.

My question is were is INTEL to answers to our problems that all began with the trim update.

Will they release a new firmware soon that will be able to fix our problems? I payed 410 euros one month ago for my two X25 and now i must wait a month or so for replacements

[idata]

My BIOS does not have a "turn SMART on-off" switch. With AHCI, it is always on. Even with it off, Win7 would see it directly from the drive. I believe, if I update the drive firmware again, it may clear the SMART errors, but the INTEL package will not allow you to update the same firmware more than once. So, I am stuck until there is a new firmware release.

[idata]

Unless someone can figure out if any command line switches work on the actual firmware update program iSSDFUT.exe that might force an update.... I did play with it a little to see if it would offer any help with switches like -?, -h, -help, /?, /h, etc.... no luck though. I'd venture to guess that there are some command line switches though. If you knew what they were you could just direct boot to a command prompt and manually run it.