OCZ Vertex firmware update woes....

S

samborarocks

Gawd
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Sep 8, 2005
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580
Hey all,

Posting this as a last ditch effort for help....

I have an OCZ Vertex 60GB SSD in my machine. It's on the 1.4 firmware and I wanted to update it to 1.5->1.6->1.7 for the benefits of the update (mainly the 1.5 update as it adds 'garbage collection)....

Originally this was in a machine with an Nvidia based MB, the updater would never find the drive and from all I've read over the last year, the only solution was to put the drive on a different MB in order to update it (didn't have another machine to install it in, so I lived with the 1.4FW.

Now I've moved on to an AMD based Crosshair V. The drive is on the Asmedia controller. AHCI is on normally. I couldn't boot the Linux based ISO due to having a SATA CD drive, so I built a bootable USB flash drive, copied the firmware files over as described here... and set the controller to IDE mode -> http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...ta-and-FreeDOS

I can run the ssdchk.exe file and it builds the updater.bat file with the correct firmware, but once I run updater.bat, I get a message saying 'Not found drive'.....

Has anyone had any experience with this and how did you get the drive updated?

Thanks,

-SR
 
I think you need to set the port to IDE mode to flash. After flashing you can set it back to AHCI.
 
I would recommend the destructive updater for 1.7 if you can use it. You'll lose all the data on the drive obviously, and you have to use a jumper, AND you have to run it from Windows/off a Windows install USB drive, but it's well worth it.

But I've just updated a couple Vertex and Agilities with regular 1.7 updaters. You know, you can run the board in IDE mode and still use your SATA DVD/CD drive. So do that, it's what I do. Then, just run the appropriate ISO disk. I have a separate SSDCHECK disk, but as I acquire older drives I run SSDCHECK to figure out which NAND they have and which updater to use.

As long as you're on a normal port and IDE mode you should be able to update. But if you have a j.micron controlled set of ports, don't use those.

As long as you can detect the drive in the BIOS you should be able to flash it.

Some motherboards have some ports (lets say 0-4) that can be set to AHCI/IDE/RAID while the others (5-6) can be set to AHCI/IDE/RAID. I had an Asus AMD board like that.

To reiterate, you can use a SATA optical drive in IDE.
 
Also make sure your drive is NOT your boot drive. You need to boot to another HDD and have your Vertex SSD plugged in as a seconday (non-boot) drive in order for the utility to "see" it. After you flash it then you can move it back as your boot drive.

*OR*, OCZ has a utility on their web site to where you can boot to a Linux-based LiveCD (or create a USB drive of it) so that you can run their firmware update utility in Linux without booting into Windows and without going through the stuff I mentioned before. That is how I did it, and it worked fine for me.

Again, you can not flash the SSD you boot to within Windows.
 
nvm, you're referring to original Vertex. :D The instructions I gave were from when I upgraded my two Vertex 3 SSDs firmware. I did do f/w upgrades on my previous Vertex 2s and original Vertex drives though. If I remember correctly, they didn't like being in a RAID. I had to break the RAID before the utility would upgrade them (but that probably doesn't help or apply to you).

Another thing I might suggest is change the controller the SSD is on if your motherboard has more than one controller chip. Sometimes these update utilities don't work well with certain chipsets and will work fine on the other (I've never had trouble on different Intel-based controllers). Worth a shot.
 
unab0mb said:
Also make sure your drive is NOT your boot drive. You need to boot to another HDD and have your Vertex SSD plugged in as a seconday (non-boot) drive in order for the utility to "see" it. After you flash it then you can move it back as your boot drive.

*OR*, OCZ has a utility on their web site to where you can boot to a Linux-based LiveCD (or create a USB drive of it) so that you can run their firmware update utility in Linux without booting into Windows and without going through the stuff I mentioned before. That is how I did it, and it worked fine for me.

Again, you can not flash the SSD you boot to within Windows.
Click to expand...


The destructive flashes can be run through Windows in a manner, but the regular flashes must be run from the FreeDos updater.

You do not need another drive in the system (of any kind, except the optical/usb drive ) to do a regular flash.

I did two regular Vertex 1.7 flashes and two destructive flashes yesterday and I explicitly made sure no other drives were connected.

RyderOCZ's instructions are good but sometimes hard to follow and fragmented.



The newer FWs are much better, and if you can swing it, the Dflash is the way to go. It doesn't update the FW, it erases it all and starts over. I rescued a failed drive with them, and generally believe they're the best way to do things. But A) all the user data on the drive is lost in the process and 2) all SMART data is essentially reset. It's just easier than going from 1.3>1.4>1.5>1.6>1.7 anyway.

The Destructive 1.7 updaters are freely available. I use a Win7 or Vista 32 install disk on usb, add the update EXEs to the root and set the SATA ports to IDE. I take a small jumper from an old PATA CD/DVD drive's rear master/slave pins and put it on the SSD. I enter the bios to ensure that the drive shows up as a 128GB Yatapdong (reguardless of actual capacity it will say 128GB). If it shows up, I boot from the Windows install USB, but select REPAIR, then use the command prompt, select C:\ (the USB drive will be C: ) and enter the appropriate filename EX: vertex_ex031102.exe.
 
unab0mb said:
nvm, you're referring to original Vertex. :D The instructions I gave were from when I upgraded my two Vertex 3 SSDs firmware. I did do f/w upgrades on my previous Vertex 2s and original Vertex drives though. If I remember correctly, they didn't like being in a RAID. I had to break the RAID before the utility would upgrade them (but that probably doesn't help or apply to you).

Another thing I might suggest is change the controller the SSD is on if your motherboard has more than one controller chip. Sometimes these update utilities don't work well with certain chipsets and will work fine on the other (I've never had trouble on different Intel-based controllers). Worth a shot.
Click to expand...

Yeah- I just updated my Vertex 3's- I had to do them individually from the mobo SATA ports. But the utility worked very well- and no problems since.
 
Hi all,

Sorry for taking so long to reply, been a crazy week.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I did have the Asmedia controller in IDE mode when I tried to flash the firmware. I'm gonna try disconnecting all my other drives tomorrow and put all the controllers in IDE mode and see if that helps. Then try flashing it connected to one of the AMD SATA ports.


If that don't do it, I may try the 'destructive' flash, but that will need to wait until after the holidays. Heh, almost thinking maybe I should just buy a newer, bigger SSD for all the trouble this one's been giving me with firmware updates.....


Thanks again all, I'll let you know how it turns out, in any case....


-SR
 
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