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  • imaheadcase - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    This is sort of on topic..but did Crucial ever address the way the M4 does garbage collection that you posted about in the review awhile back?

    Did they fix it with a firmware or what? I been thinking of the M4 or intel drive but never saw a followup about it.
  • damianrobertjones - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    Have a quick look on the Crucial support forum and you'll find people having other 'serious' issues with their drives. If the laptop/computer boots too fast the M4 simply isn't ready which leads to a black screen. Soft reset, boots.

    I've experienced the same issue on a Probook 6460b.
  • imaheadcase - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link

    None of the reviews or people i know have such issues.
  • sstouffer - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    I'm hearing about 2nd gen Sandforce SSDs getting firmware to fix their BSOD issues but the 1st gen are still having resume-from-S3 Sleep issues, I hope they still end up fixing that.
  • icrf - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    I had that issue with the 60G Vertex 2 I had in my desktop. The problem went away when I moved the SSD to my laptop (it sleeps just fine). I replaced it with a 120G Vertex 3 in the same desktop, and I had BSOD issues. The beta firmware cleared that up.

    So whatever problems Sandforce has, my desktop hardware is a victim of all of it. It's a five year old Abit AB9Pro with an Intel E6600 in it.

    I have a 160G Intel 320 in my desktop at work (HP Z400). Haven't hit this bug yet, thankfully, but will probably apply the update once it's released.
  • sstouffer - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    I have the issue with my Corsair F40, and I've tried it in my Gigabyte EP35-DS3L/E8400 main system, Gigabyte G31-based HTPC and Dell Vostro 1400 laptop. All experience the same problem. Corsair doesn't seem as firmware-happy compared to OCZ. Still waiting for a fix.
  • czesiu - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    Are there any other known problems with Intel 320 SSDs?
  • Beenthere - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    Neither Intel nor any other SSD supplier is giving away SSDs. They obviously are making a good profit or they would not bother to even sell them. The lack of reliability, compatibility issues, operational problems, etc. suggest a rush-to-market mentality which has been quite profitable for O/S companies, software companies, mobo companies and others.

    Let's hope Intel and all the rest of the SSD companies get their defective products sorted out soon.
  • Coup27 - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    I am sorry if this gets on anybodies goat but I cannot help but feel this is another subtle prod at Intel. OCZ have been dishing out all kinds of shit over the last few years and AT is normally weeks, pushing months behind on reporting the issue. The current SF BSOD bug has been around ages and AT didn't even update their reviews of the OCZ drives with the issue and it was only addressed in the new article this week. Yet here we have an article on the same day of the Intel announcement.

    Due to the volatile nature of SSDs, maybe these are the first of a new 'finger on the pulse' style of reporting, which if it is then I welcome that. We'll see.
  • KITH - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    Personally, I had not heard about this issue with Intel drives until now. I know they did have some isolated problems with their original drives with this type of issue, though.

    This article doesn't seem to be putting the focus on there having been a problem but rather on the fact that they have a solution and that that solution should be available to the public soon.
  • cbass64 - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    Curious about the root cause of this issue because I had a multiple drive RAID 0 with Intel 320 300GB drives and they all showed up as 8MB at the exact same time. They all went back to the proper size after re-flashing the same firmware on it though.
  • Ao1 - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link

    Again you are implying that Intel have somehow cut corners in the validation process to save money.

    No matter how much time and money you spend on validation it can never be 100%. If this issue was widespread, as you insinuate by calling it a "plague" then maybe a deficiency in validation exists and you have a reasonable point, however to prove that point you need to put the problem in perspective and inform readers of the amount of people affected vs the amount of product sold. Did you even bother to ask Intel for that info?

    For whatever reason you seem to hone in on Intel issues, which are completely insignificant to the problems being generated by other SSD vendors, who do not even attempt to validate F/W before releasing it.

    You are on the right track regarding margins, but you are focusing on the wrong company. Why not do an in-depth review on the validation processes that are carried out by SSD vendors? Whilst you are at it undertake an in-depth review of the components that SSD vendors use. I think (know) the outcome of that review would be shocking if you dug deep enough.
  • FunBunny2 - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link

    Irony: the 320 was designed with power caps to stop just this problem.
  • Leaninsider - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link

    After doing some searching and testing I found that the only way to recover your SSD is to do an secure erase.

    First off all the firmware update didn't work like it was supposed to:
    It kept saying these things:

    1)Disable drive password (BIOS)
    2)Enable SMART capability
    3)enable Legacy IDE ( wil work in AHCI to)

    The secure erase option in the ssd toolbox didn't function as well.

    So finnaly I ended up using an Linux Distribution OS named 'Parted Magic'

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/partedmagic/

    Steps to solve:
    1.Burn ISO to disk
    2.Boot from disk
    3.Load the OS to your RAM
    4.Go to System tools
    5.Select Secure Erase
    6.Select the harddrive
    7.It will complain , just click sleep. ( The computer will fall asleep , just hit a keyboard button and it will restart)
    8.repeat steps 4-6
    9.Your ssd should be fixed.

    Hope this helps!

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