"defective hardware" is the new deus ex machina term used to deflect responsibility in this case. It has everything included into its meaning - the neglection that it could be a firmware error, the neglectionthat it could be a fault in the controller, the neglection that it could be a build error. No - none of that, it must be "defective hardware", and of couse - those effected must be "edge cases" because otherwise "we would have heard somehow".
And yes, the error code is the same, but the prublem must be a totaly different one - and its certainly not intels fault, that they've stated that they have fixed the 13x error, because of course they must have ment this one occurence, the one where they might have fixed the problem - of course this is all very unclear, because the rate of failures reported in this forum hasn't changed much since the firmwareupdate (which would only be applied by less than one percent of buyers - a perfect sample case for a placebo that fixes the reproducability in one malusage case at most).
Oh yes, and the strange decision to only show error codes in the firmwareupdate tool up to two digits less than are required to identify the 130x error is also an occurance of chance, of course - and with this new Windows toolbox whith this shiny new features - the problem must be alsmost solved, of course - but please backup anyway...
Language is such a beatiful playground. Too bad none of that changes the underlying fact that the 13x problem still persists, regardles of firmwareupdate or not, and that Intel PR went into silent mode shortly after news outlets pushed the generalized "all is fixed" stories -
But wait, let me not be unfair to one group of users - the ones who like to switch their laptops on and off, at a rate of several hundred bootcycles per minute - they might have recieved an extensive update to the longevity of their device. Consumers rejoice.
Just, don't buy the 320 drives. Realy. The problem rendering your stored data useless isn't solved.
Fault appears to be a problem in the SMART. We can currently recover these drives using standard NAND flash recovery techniques.
What are standard NAND flash recovery techniques?
The 320 disks are still the only series from Intel with a 5 year warranty, which was surprisingly extended from the initial 3 year warranty quite some time after the 320 series was released.
Not even the new expensive 7xx enterpries series has this kind of warranty.
This oddity does not increase my confidence in the 320 series. On the contrary, I think Intel knows they have a stinker at hand.
If the SSD tool kit has updated the firmware and the device is still crapping out, then get an RMA
this is the third time since using the 320 ssd that i freaked out and it can't be coincidence:
first, i never had a crash on this 320 (300gb) i bought and installed on the 1ste of august this year
but today was the 3rd time i experienced the same 'problem'
the 'problem' is that on booting the system (a dell m6400 precesion laptop) the bios reports that the disk can't be found and that i have to reseat the disk and power off the system in order to be able to boot again... this happened after windows 7 x64 installed updates on shutdown of the system
so these updates must do something that makes the boot from the ssd fail (when this happens the disk 'light' also stays on until power off - in which case my heartbeat doubles)
what i don't understand is that by simply powering down and waiting some minutes and booting again all seems normal...
anyone that can confirm this behaviour?
I just got exactly the same problem.
After running windows update on the last shut down, my system fails to boot with my 320 (600GB) SSD.
It also fails to complete the firmware upgrade. I run a lenovo W520.
It would be good if anyone else experiencing this problem also posts here so we can establish this as a common failure pattern ( If it is ).
Regards
Per
Why don't you open a new thread instead of writing here? I don't think the two problems are the same...
Same problem as harlekin, on a retail drive purchased in late October that apparently came with the new 362 firmware. Imac froze up unexpectedly and I rebooted (not knowing anything about this problem). What kind of "hard drive" loses all your data whenever your computer crashes? That's crazy.
They should just recall these drives.
Just before the hard disk prices went insane I went for a 2TB eco-green disk. ST2000DL003 if you need to know. Was 70.97 now 249.00 plus tax and shipping.
I am looking at a small SSD for a cache but given the range of issues I am thinking I will push that back.
I hate errors like that. Recently I had to do some arcane work to recover a hard disk with dodgy firmware. At least that succeeded.
Today the SSD is comparatively inexpensive.
I suggest everyone with an Intel SSD grab the tollkit 3 package and use it. Check the health of your storage weekly with your weekly backups.
SSDelightful what is the status with the firmware for the 320 series? Your OP says you fixed the issue but there are all these contradicting posts that the issue is not fixed. Can you explain more about what caused the issue and what you did to fix it, and what may be the cause of the issues that others are still reporting in this thread? I bought Intel for reliability (and encryption) but if the former is no good that's gonna be a problem.
The problem seems to be repeatable after installing some (!) Windows 7 updates.I had a crash in November, 2011, did the secure erase, updated the Firmware.Now, 2 months later I got the same problem and it started after today's update.
From time to time, Windows has updates that require to reboot twice: you install updates, shutdown, turn it on, then PC is restarted by Windows and after that - the OS loads with updates. The OS loaded fine, but one of my databases wasn't "accessible". Check Disk shown no errors, but I couldn't copy the files to another drive. The copying hanged and then the drive "disappeared". After reboot, I got the Bad Context Error 136.
Now even after secure erase, the Full Disk Test (thru SDD Toolbox) fails. Returning for an RMA, VERY SORRY for Intel.
I understand that they got a little bit "behind", but this is no excuse to release unstable product.
Thanks. Not all the things there would be applicable for me, but that's OK.
I'm using SSDs on my demo machines that have to have a lot on them and traditional drives don't measure up.
Or you have to use RAID 0, which isn't that reliable too.
I have OCZ that is working fine for more than a year and G2 series Intel that is fine too.
I guess I'll try sticking with OCZ until Intel will get programmers outside India (no offense, just personal observations).
Vegan,
Please. Stop. Promoting. Your. Gamers. Website.
This issue is not about gaming!!
