Intel SSD 320 Firmware Posted, Addresses Bad Context 13x Error
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 17, 2011 3:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Intel
- Firmware
- Intel SSD 320
How about that for turnaround time? Just two days ago Intel announced that it had found the root cause of the power cycle bug that could leave your SSD 320 in a mostly unusable 8MB state. Today Intel is making the firmware available to the public, presumably after a long period of validation testing.
Intel encourages all SSD 320 owners to update to the latest firmware here, even if you haven't encountered the issue. If you have encountered the problem you can either send your drive in for a replacement or secure erase your drive using Intel's SSD Toolbox and then drop the new firmware on it.
As with all firmware updates, approach with caution. While the update shouldn't be destructive, backups are your friend.
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Beenthere - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
While I have more faith in InHel's testing than some other companies, let's hope they did a proper validation on the firmware fix so they don't create other issues.damianrobertjones - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
Now all we need is an update for the M4 cold boot issue where the owner gets a blank screen due to the SSD not starting in time. The new Probook and Elitebook line suffers from this issue due to the bios flying through it's initial startup.It's a shame that we have to visit support forums for this type of information
SSDelightful - Thursday, August 18, 2011 - link
Just a note that this comment is referencing a problem unrelated to the Intel SSD 320 series. Thought I'd clarify!!-Scott,
Intel Corporation
rs2 - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
At least, I hope "presumably after a long period of validation testing" was intended as sarcasm.lyeoh - Thursday, August 18, 2011 - link
Most SSD customers appear to be paying for the privilege to do "long period validation testing" for the SSD manufacturers ;).iMotive - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
Do you guys think its that important for me to upgrade the firmware for these?I have two of them in raid 0 in my macbook, and I don't seem to have any issues.
They are two 160gb and I have 319.4gb available.
I definitely don't have any issues with only 8mb being available.
It seems like such a chore to have to backup my entire raid, then update each one.
I'm also getting the feeling that updating them in raid isn't very easy. I'll probably have to take them out of raid and redo my raid array. This would be a chore.
Goi - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
You know what's a chore? Recovering from the error if and when it does happen to you...cbass64 - Thursday, August 18, 2011 - link
I had a 6 drive RAID 0 with these and all 6 of them showed up as 8MB on the same day...so yeah I'd suggest flashing the firmware. Luckily mine was just setup for benchmarking...no real data on them.iMotive - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
Not to mention I would have to install them into my windows rig to actually update them....then reinstall them into my mac...Again this just seems unnecessary if this issue isn't happening to me.
Does the firmware have any performance increases?
maharajah - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
Install is an .iso. Non-destructive update on Mac from CDROM.