cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Is 320 firmware buggy?

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/do-ssd-drives-really-fail-lot-t4035508.html http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/do-ssd-drives-really-fail-lot-t4035508.html

Be wary of the new Intel SSD 320 series. Currently, there's a bug in the

controller that can cause the device to revert to 8MB during a power failure. AFAIK they have not yet publicly announced it, and won't have a firmware fix ready for release until the end of July. We had an SSD 320 600GB 2.5" SATA drive in for evaluation from our Intel rep. I was able to kill it in two or three hours by power cycling it. Apparently (according to the Intel rep) when the power failure is happening, the SSD device tries to reconnect with the SATA port instead of initiating a proper shutdown. Something to do with interrupt priority being higher for reconnection rather than a proper shutdown.

I don't know how much truth is to this post. Has there been any official acknowledgement of this problem?

125 REPLIES 125

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

koitsu wrote:

Relic wrote:

Dosen't the toolbox say to power cycle the SSD in order to secure erase?

It doesn't say to power-cycle the SSD repetitively for 2-3 hours.

Actually, a friend brought his 320 SSD for me to help him secure erase it. We power cycled it at least a dozen times and the toolbox would never SE it. We tried Parted Magic w/ Hd erase several times power cycling each time and still never unlocked it. So, no we didn't do it for 2-3 houts. Probably only one.

And, I thought this forum was to get help answering legitimate questions about issues about SSDs , not to receive smart alec answers.

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

I just had this happen to me. Had the 600G model for a month. Then the drive crashed and now DISKPART shows 8MB for that drive. SMART attributes are gone...

The drive worked great for a month!

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

"

I just had this happen to me. Had the 600G model for a month. Then the drive crashed and now DISKPART shows 8MB for that drive. SMART attributes are gone...

The drive worked great for a month!"

You can recover the drive using HDDerase.

http://www.iishacks.com/2009/06/30/how-to-secure-erase-reset-an-intel-solid-state-drive-ssd/ http://www.iishacks.com/2009/06/30/how-to-secure-erase-reset-an-intel-solid-state-drive-ssd/

Make sure you download the Intel compatible version 3.3

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

Same with 120Gb 320 series SSD, bought 2 days ago. Just got 8Mb problem and googled it. Sweet, newly installed system and software are gone. Any comments on this, Intel?

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

I am reading reports of the 8MB problem after restart from users of the 320 SSD series on various forums / review sites. I just bought one of these drives and am also wondering if there going to be a firmware update or recall of the drives to fix the issue?