Intel Communities: Message List - Anyone else had a repeat 8mb brick on 320 ssd AFTER firmware update.

Re: Anyone else had a repeat 8mb brick on 320 ssd AFTER firmware update.

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 07:56:02 GMT

One more failure here, with latest firmware (4PC1LE04) - the whole ordeal and things I tried described at Never an Intel SSD again - Roads Less Taken. In summary, yes its relatively simple to "revive" the disk, no, you can't save any data on your own (but some recovery firms claim they can) and no, I don't use this disk anymore - I got another brand - and I will never buy Intel SSD again.

Re: Anyone else had a repeat 8mb brick on 320 ssd AFTER firmware update.

webadmin@intel.com — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 15:44:43 GMT

One of my 320 Series 600GB SSDs bricked (8MB, CTX_Error) after a secure erase with SSD Toolbox. Out of desperation, I used HDDERASE in DOS and got the SSD restored to normal operation.

YMMV.

Re: Anyone else had a repeat 8mb brick on 320 ssd AFTER firmware update.

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 03:02:19 GMT

I have had the same experience as everyone else, thank god i did not pay full retail for the 600GB... I will NEVER buy another intel drive again. The only intel product I will have is the processors due to lack of options/competition. What a joke how crappy customer service for this product is. A full year and a bit later and no fix, no acknowledgment that the problem even still exists just the "replace the drive" until that one fails and go through this all over again. I bought an OCX Vertex 4 512GB, has worked like a dream for months. I highly recommend them over the **** intel drive as several of my friends use them as well. The Intel SSD just sitting in-front of me as a paper weight...

Re: Anyone else had a repeat 8mb brick on 320 ssd AFTER firmware update.

webadmin@intel.com — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 00:21:36 GMT

Frankly, I'm patting myself on the back tonight for having the discipline and/or paranoia to regularly clone my primary. At least I only had to reset to mid-August. I didn't trust this new fangled hard drive anyway! And.... like the rest of you, I got up for coffee today and returned to find an 8mb turd on my desk. It's been in for 9 months. They were blowing them out at BestB for a dollar a gigabyte, so I bit.Bought the 320 Series 80GB for $79.99. Guess you get what you pay for! The real problem is I also put a 120GB in the MBPro. Now I have to worry about that POS drive taking a dump in the middle of a product photo session. I mean.... I already clone it daily, but that could be a couple dozen GBs in raw files too late by 5pm. So here's my plan:

I'm gonna go back to best buy and purchase another Intel SSD. Then, I'll come home and put the 8MB turd in the packaging and take it back. The idiot at the returns desk won't even notice. Then I'm gonna take the 120 out of the Mac and sell both good Intel SSDs to some poor sucker on eBay:) so I can buy a real SSD for the MBP.

Really..... skroo these guys. I'm not gonna waste a second of my time hoping they are going to make this right.

But, I do have them to thank for the Acronis Suite that made the cloning easy. Just remember this my new friends

"There can be a heavy price for the speed of SSD" They don't warn you like an HDD. No noises, no bad blocks, nuttin. Just gone. PLEASE CLONE YOUR DRIVE and then Laugh when it crashes.

Re: Anyone else had a repeat 8mb brick on 320 ssd AFTER firmware update.

webadmin@intel.com — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 03:51:30 GMT

For fun, here it is barely a month later and the REPLACEMENT brand new Intel 320 SSD has also 8MB bricked. It had the most current firmware and everything else. How is this not a scandal?

It was easy enough to fix the other one so I could use it until the replacement arrives-- just did a secure erase, but why the eff can't I get more than three or four weeks of life out of a drive?

The punchline was when I called HP tonight to tell them of the second drive failing, the guy on the phone began by suggesting I look into a Solid State Drive because they do not fail.

Re: Anyone else had a repeat 8mb brick on 320 ssd AFTER firmware update.

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 21:08:47 GMT

Yes. I ran all manner of disk checks before the crash (which showed no problems with the disk itself) and after, which showed it fine. And now I realize the source of my confusion-- for better or worse, HP (who shipped my laptop with this drive) place their recovery partition on this disk, so there is another sizeable partition on that disk (20GB, I think) that should not be there.

When I get my replacement disk, I will partition it properly, since I have recovery media.

Re: Anyone else had a repeat 8mb brick on 320 ssd AFTER firmware update.

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:16:05 GMT

I recall the partition was originally 129GB but now I can not successfully make a partition larger than 100GB. Your drive might be missing few gigabytes, does it run through bad sector check nicely? Luckily I run Norton Ghost every day automatically so I didn't lose much data but I won't trust the drive to function properly any more so I have the original non-SSD drive in use until the new one arrives: I ordered Samsung 830 series 256GB drive to replace the broken one and I'll have it returned to the store. Kind of funny, Intel has been one of the most trustworthy brands that I know. Well, I'm not buying another Intel branded SSD-disk, enough said.

Re: Anyone else had a repeat 8mb brick on 320 ssd AFTER firmware update.

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 17:46:18 GMT

If it makes you feel any better, my drive is reporting 100% health AFTER such a crash. I am now doing full system backups nightly and babying the system until the replacement drive gets here.

I was able to recover the disk not using Intel's tools (I had no available install of Windows available), but using an Ubuntu live CD and a method I found online. The drive formatted to 100% of capacity (or, you know, the normal amount a drive will format to, minus the overhead)-- or.. well, hmm. My 160 GB drive formatted to 127 GB.

Re: Anyone else had a repeat 8mb brick on 320 ssd AFTER firmware update.

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 07:52:44 GMT

I wish I had read this thread before. My 320 crashed yesterday: Windows explorer stuck while browsing files, the computer didn't freeze at once but all programs were unable to access disk and eventually crashed. When I rebooted (had reset) the computer, MBR was still funtional but the Windows couldn't load. System restore claimed there was no space on the drive left. I hooked up the drive to a USB-frame and tried to format it using Ubuntu. Lots of I/O errors occurred. Eventually I was able to format the drive but only about 70% of the original capacity.

This is the second SSD I had and both of them had SandForce-controller. My next one will be Samsung without SandForce, I'm tired of restoring my system from a disk failure. "Improved speed and reliability" on the boxes for these things isn't justified. Or they are comparing to some really hazardous prototype they had..

Oh. And by the way: the Intel SSD Toolbox claimed the drive health was almost 100% just days before the crash. Nice..

Re: Anyone else had a repeat 8mb brick on 320 ssd AFTER firmware update.

webadmin@intel.com — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 17:40:04 GMT

For those that are interested, my 320 SSD went 8MB yesterday (but not with the "bad context" serial number) following a sudden power-loss. The firmware labeled on the drive itself is newer than what is shown as shipping with the tools: 4PC10365.

This disk shipped with a new HP computer, by the way. They're replacing it, of course, but after reading all of this stuff, I'm a little gobsmacked that such an apparently problematic device issue hasn't been addressed. I've been buying drives for years and years and years, and I've only ever had two disk failures, both of which were in concert with physical injury.