Intel® Optane™ Solid State Drives
Support for Issues Related to Solid State Drives based on Intel® Optane™ technology, Intel® MAS and Firmware Update Tool
432 Discussions

FUT won't boot on GA-X99-SLI, SSD Toolbox displays wrong version

JBell7
Beginner
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We currently have 9 systems with 600p drives (SSDPEKKW512G7) and GA-X99-SLI MB with no special hardware. I've tested 3 of them with revision PSF109C, and all have the same issue with updating. The other 6 have revision PSF100C and routinely become corrupt under heavy file copy operations. Also, in dmesg is a notification that drive speed has been limited to 1.5GB/sec. Revision 121C reportedly fixes at least one of these issues.

The MB is configured to run the drives in native mode, not UEFI, and the Centos OS is running in Native mode.

I've tried both USB and DVD boot drives using the Intel Recommended methods. Both will partly boot but hang before reaching the update menu at the same output line: "pci 0000:03:02.0: BAR 8: assigned [mem 0xcf400000-0xcf4ffff]"

I created a bootable USB (in native mode) with Windows 8.1, and installed "Intel SSD Toolbox - v3.4.6" which sees the 600p, but reports the version as just PSF with no number following it. It says the drive version is the same as the update version, and disables the update button (A force update would be nice).

I'm out of ideas. Any help would be much appreciated.

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22 Replies
idata
Employee
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Hello JeffBell,

 

 

We understand you're having issues updating the firmware on your Intel® SSD 600p Series drives. You're currently unable to successfully run FUT and toolbox in Windows* will not allow you to run the update as well.

 

 

1. Using the Windows* installation that you used for toolbox, could you please share with us the "IntelSSDTDK.log" and "IntelSSDTollbox.log" files that can be found at C:\Intel\Logs\?

 

2. Are you using any type of encryption on these drives?

 

3. Do you have another motherboard model capable of supporting one of these drives? If so, please try to run the firmware update via FUT or Toolbox and let us know the results.

 

4. Are you running the latest BIOS on your motherboard?

 

 

We look forward to hearing back from you.

 

 

Best regards,

 

Carlos A.
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JBell7
Beginner
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Hi Carlos,

Thanks for the fast reply. The log files are linked below.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46624304/IntelSSDTDK.log https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46624304/IntelSSDTDK.log

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46624304/IntelSSDToolbox.log https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46624304/IntelSSDToolbox.log

2. The drives are not encrypted.

3. We have no other MBs with NVME support, but our vendor does. I will see if he will update one for us.

4. The MB bios is the latest.

Thanks,

Jeff Bell

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idata
Employee
1,220 Views

Hello Jeff,

 

 

Thank you for the logs. We'll let you know if we need anything else, or once we have some troubleshooting steps for you.

 

 

Keep an eye on this thread in the meantime.

 

 

Best regards,

 

Carlos A.
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idata
Employee
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Hello Jeff,

The new toolbox release is now available in our Download Center. This release contains fixes that should address your issue. If the problem is still unresolved please let us know.

- https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/26837/Intel-Solid-State-Drive-Toolbox?v=t Intel® Solid State Drive Toolbox.

Best regards,

 

Carlos A.

6/19 Edit: Updated to include direct link.

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JBell7
Beginner
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Well, it was a nice gesture. I'm sure they tried to get it out yesterday. I would have been a willing guinea pig. As of this morning the May 31 release is still the latest.

We are taking these machines out of service today, and replacing the drives. The OS' on the drives are all corrupt now anyway; one machine reboots randomly just sitting idle. If the firmware shows up before all the drives are removed, I'll try it on one of them with a fresh OS to see if it fixes the problem. We probably won't return any of them to service, though. No one trusts them.

Jeff Bell

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idata
Employee
1,220 Views

Hello JeffBell,

 

 

Our Toolbox version 3.4.6 is brand new. I'm not sure why it has such an old release date being displayed, but I've made our Download Center team aware and it should be fixed soon.

 

 

While we are sad to hear that you have lost confidence in this drive and no longer plan to use them on your machines, at this time it may be for the best. The corruption issues that you have reported occur only under Linux* OS, for which this consumer drive has not been validated: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/memory-and-storage/000022378.html Frequently Asked Questions for Intel® SSD 600p/Pro 6000p Series.

 

 

For a server grade M.2 NVMe SSD we can suggest the https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/data-center-ssds/dc-p3100-series.html Intel® SSD DC P3100 Series (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/solid-state-drives/ssd-dc-p3100-brief.html Product Brief). This model comes in the same capacities as the 600p (128, 256, 512, and 1024 GB) with similar performance. And since it's a Data Center drive, it has actually been validated on RHEL*.

 

 

Best regards,

 

Carlos A.
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JBell7
Beginner
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Hi Carlos,

I downloaded Toolbox version 3.4.6. on June 6th. I downloaded it again from your link above and compared the two files with FC. The files are identical. It is the same toolkit I mentioned in my very first post on June 8th above as having reported the version incorrectly under Windows 8.1:

"I created a bootable USB (in native mode) with Windows 8.1, and installed "Intel SSD Toolbox - v3.4.6" which sees the 600p, but reports the version as just PSF with no number following it. It says the drive version is the same as the update version, and disables the update button (A force update would be nice)."

Jeff Bell

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idata
Employee
1,220 Views

Hello JeffBell,

 

 

You're 100% correct. I do apologise for the mix up. Please allow me to check back with our additional resources.

 

 

Is it possible for you to share a front and back picture of the label from one of these drives? Let me know if you would like a private message for this.

 

 

Best regards.

 

Carlos A.
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JBell7
Beginner
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Hi Carlos,

Here is an image of one of the drives:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46624304/600p.jpg https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46624304/600p.jpg

Note that I used the package nvme-cli in Linux to get drive info, which looks the same as the label:

nvme0n1 BTPY65220X0G512F INTEL SSDPEKKW512G7 PSF109C

The ones we have in the field have:

nvme0n1 BTPY631305ST512F INTEL SSDPEKKW512G7 PSF100C

The toolbox running under Windows 8.1 does not show this info.

Jeff Bell

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idata
Employee
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Hello JeffBell,

 

 

We have not been able to reproduce your firmware update issues. Is there any chance you could test burning the Firmware Update Tool using Rufus* on the Windows* machine?

 

 

Best regards,

 

Carlos A.
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JBell7
Beginner
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Hi Carlos,

Note that the drive had been formatted under Centos 7 with EXT4 when I tried the FUT on Windows. I have been wondering if that was a factor.

I used WinToUSB to create the Windows system on a USB drive. This allowed me to install the motherboard hardware drivers as well as the FUT. Is there an equivalent method under Rufus to run the FUT? I was under the impression it was only used to make USB installation drives. In effect, the USB drive boots to Windows Setup.

I do have a machine sitting idle ATM, so I will be happy to do some testing.

Jeff Bell

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idata
Employee
1,220 Views

Hello Jeff,

 

 

We have not been able to reproduce your particular issue. If you could try some variations, it might help us isolate the issue.

 

 

Your OS running off a USB drive should be fine. But we would like to see if the issue is being caused by problems while burning the FUT ISO. Please try to burn the ISO from within Windows* using https://rufus.akeo.ie/ Rufus* or the https://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3 Universal USB Installer*, to see if you still receive the same error.

 

 

Best regards,

 

Carlos A.
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JBell7
Beginner
1,220 Views

Hi Carlos,

In my first post here, I mentioned I had created a USB boot drive using Intel Recommended Methods. That was using Rufus to create a USB boot drive with issdfut_2.2.1.iso:

"I've tried both USB and DVD boot drives using the Intel Recommended methods. Both will partly boot but hang before reaching the update menu at the same output line: "pci 0000:03:02.0: BAR 8: assigned [mem 0xcf400000-0xcf4ffff]" "

I went ahead and created a new USB boot drive using fresh downloads of those files and a different thumb drive. The result was the same.

Jeff Bell

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JBell7
Beginner
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I purchased a PCIe adapter for the NVME drives (StarTech PEX4M2E1) thinking it might have something to do with the MB hardware. I installed it in another machine running Windows 10, and ran the Windows FUT 3.4.6. The result was the same as with the other machines, the FW version is reported as just PSF and the update button is disabled.

Here is an image of the tool mis-reporting the FW version..

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46624304/fut.jpg https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46624304/fut.jpg

I will try the FUT Boot drive on this one as well and report back..

Jeff Bell

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JBell7
Beginner
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I had to move the PCIe card to yet another PC, and that one was able to boot the FUT drive and update the firmware. The Windows version of the tool was useless on the third machine as well.

Jeff Bell

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idata
Employee
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Hello JeffBell,

 

 

We're glad to hear that you were finally able to update your firmware.

 

 

Could you update the firmware of your drives via this method and let us know if you're still receiving the 1.5GB/s drive speed issue?

 

 

Best regards,

 

Carlos A.
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FLine
Beginner
1,220 Views

Been having the same issue as Jeff trying to update the firmware on my 600p (1tb version.)

Windows 7 works fine with the drive, it's working in nvme mode etc etc, no issues. But the SSD toolbox has the drive greyed out, exactly like the image Jeff posted earlier. Firmware version PSF, model SSDPEKKW01 1TB, serial number 0000_0000_0000_0000... drive details and SMART button non-functional. This is version 3.4.6 of the toolbox. This is the third update of the toolbox which was supposed to fix this issue.

Tried to go the bootable FUT route, version 2.2.1. Boots ok for a bit, gets to the boot menu, select graphical boot, and then it conks out with garbage on the screen. Try in text mode, same thing. Tested the boot key on a different machine, works fine. Tested in a vm on this machine, works fine, just doesn't boot regularly (non-UEFI mode.) Perhaps it's a motherboard issue? I don't have a pcie-m2 adapter, so I can't go that route. Mobo I have is a Gigabyte z170mx, and have no other issues besides this weird business.

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JBell7
Beginner
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Hi Carlos,

Unfortunately, those machines are now in the field with SATA SSDs, so I won't be able to test them. The drives do all perform normally under Windows using the PCIE card.

Jeff Bell

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idata
Employee
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Hello Jeff Bell,

 

 

If you would like to continue troubleshooting at any point in the future, just let us know.

 

 

Best regards,

 

Carlos A.
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idata
Employee
1,125 Views

Hello flatline,

 

 

It's definitely odd that you both have the issue, the only thing in common being the vendor of your motherboards.

 

 

I'm aware this is a tall order, but do you by any chance have a system with a different board where you could test the both the Firmware Update Tool and the Toolbox with this drive?

 

 

Best regards,

 

Carlos A.
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