Intel SSD Dead after firmware update

cyberslag5k

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 29, 2004
Messages
277
Beware the new firmware update. I'm not saying it's what killed my Intel SSD, but my Intell SSD definitely died an hour after I installed it.

I installed the firmware (in IDE mode, not RAID), it ran fine for a while, then windows crashed and I get an error on one of my drives. It may be something else, but you may want to wait a while before installing to make sure this isn't a common issue.

I haven't called Intel yet, I'll post again when I do.
 
Yup! Looks like my SSD has died and won't boot anymore after firmware update. Wonder what happened. Oh well, I guess my computer will be down for a few weeks now and I'll have to reinstall everything again. Thanks Intel for messing up my new computer with the new Windows 7 OS.

I just read in the following thread 'looks like TRIM-enabled firmware for X25-M is out today' on page two that another person has decided to join the party and lost his SSD.
 
Djkilla, did yours run fine for awhile before dying also? I'm starting to get spooked.

IT COULD HAPPEN ANY TIME!
 
It was booting into windows then it was detected and a message said to reboot. After 2-3 reboots with the same results, It now doesn't boot into windows and says 'Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter'.
 
Mine boots to the Intel RAID controller, tells me one of the disks is okay, the other has an error (0), and after that they fail to boot.
 
The same thing happened to me and I found this thread on Intel's forums: http://communities.intel.com/message/71383#71383

The drive was working perfect, I updated the firmware, booted into Windows, it made some updates and told me to reboot, then black screen. I disabled my raid setup in the bios and then I get an error message when trying to boot Windows. I can't even re-install because Windows 7 just hangs when trying to repair or re-install. I booted with a Linux Disc and it can't initialize the drive. So my guess is that its borked and Intel is about to have to issue a few thousand RMAs to everyone who did this.
 
Poor Intel...

And Poor me... I want one of these drives so badly, but not until they reliably hit the <200$ mark. This can't be good for revenues = This can't be good for consumer pricing :(
 
When I flashed mine, strange thing happened. I set SATA to IDE-Compatibility mode, and at the prompt where it asks if you want to update the firmware, after pressing y and enter, it just hung there for 30min with a blinking cursor. Thinking something was wrong, I reset the machine, but windows came back and the matrix storage manager reported that the firmware was updated. So far no crashes, but I'm running Vista atm, not Windows 7.
 
I"m not at home right now, so I can't try this, but has anyone tried installing an older firmware? I have a second drive that isn't dead, and I"d like to keep it that way, but supposedly you can't install the new firmware twice.
 
darn, was about to install my brand-spanking new Win7 Ultimate and this happens... when will Intel learn to test the firmware before releasing it?
 
Crap, crap, spoke too soon, disk i/o error. Getting some bad stuttering, and the diagnostic tool is showing the drive failing the write test. Looks like I'm on the RMA boat now.
 
[LYL]Homer;1034819096 said:
Are the drives bricked, or just all your data/partition(s) hosed?
They are bricked. I would have happily re-installed Windows 7 since my data was on other drives, but the drive was inaccessible. I have my drive boxed up and ready to mail tomorrow morning unless Intel is able to wave a magic wand and tell me how to fix it. I've scared myself off of SSDs for a few years and would probably never touch an Intel SSD again. I'll gladly take a 5% real world performance hit for a drive that doesn't have a history of bricking itself when a firmware update is applied.
 
I individually updated two drives in my Sugo build and the one that went into the classified got hosed on the second boot. It kept trying to boot the 100mb recovery partition which still seems readable. The rest of the disk however appeared as a raw partition and has issues.

ssdrip1.jpg

The write fails on this one because its the 100mb recovery partition.
ssdrip2.jpg


The Sugo's drive has been rebooted a few times and seems ok.
 
Wow, I think this should be a sticky until Intel fixes this.. I have 2 Intel 80GB G2's that I have yet to install as I am waiting upon my i7 stuff to come in.. I am glad I have waited, and glad I found this thread. Let us know of any further issues or updates..
 
fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuu

i just updated the firmware and saw the message prompting me to reboot. then I log on here to say "flash successful" to find this awesome thread. LOL....

feels great knowing my hd will die at any moment or when I reboot. I feel like keanu in speed or some shit.
 
fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuu

i just updated the firmware and saw the message prompting me to reboot. then I log on here to say "flash successful" to find this awesome thread. LOL....

feels great knowing my hd will die at any moment or when I reboot. I feel like keanu in speed or some shit.

It was only 50/50 for me! Are you feeling lucky?
 
I hit my corrupted drive with hdderase and now can run the diagnostic scans on it without it error-ing out immediately. I suspect it'll pass the full scan, but that smart error is still on the drive and the bios detects it.
 
i've rebooted twice now....no problems

for some reason when I went to update the firmware via the intel controller it wouldn't detect the drive so I temporarily switched it over to the gigabyte controller just to update it....maybe that was my dumb luck that saved me heh.
 
There&#8217;s a major problem with TRIM today. The only Windows storage drivers to support it are written by Microsoft. The Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IMSM) driver will not pass the TRIM instruction to your SSD. This means you can't use anything but the drivers that ship with Windows 7.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667&p=3

Could this be the cause? I mean if you are running Intel own AHCI/RAID drivers, it may ruin the drive?
 
my drive died as well, and the bad thing about it is that it only worked for 20 minutes, i've just recieved my HDDs so i restored my WIN 7 Ultimate 64 bit image to the SDD, booted, windows detected it so rebooted, found teh new firmware, rebooted and flash, rebooted installed teh tool box rebooted, then crashed, not a very good experience for a 300$ piece of HW. now i have 8 MB of free space showing, and BAD_CTX in the serial number field.

the same has happened to many people, i don't know if it's the drive or the new firmware but this is seriously bad from INTEL.

no solution yet, i tried a free software to erase the partition but it's not detecting my SSD.

the sad thing is that i can't even use the SSD as a paper weight like the old HDD if i want too.
 
Seriously, if you've got a working drive, you probably want to keep it off until Intel puts out a fix. Only one of my two drives died, and I'm sure not turning it on until I hear from Intel.
 
It sure looks like they spent a lot of time testing this before rushing it out the door.
 
What a shame....I really wanted to praise Intel for the firmware and ssd tool...
 
Update:

I managed to recover the drive using hdderase. See instructions here:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=669&type=expert&pid=6

Also be sure to set SATA mode to IDE/compatible.

I put in a fresh install of Windows 7, then installed the ssd toolbox software. I ran both the fast and full diagnostics, and both passed. Give it a try and see if it helps.

This sort of nonsense is really unacceptable coming from Intel. Almost makes me wish I went with OCZ/Indilinx.
 
My drive also passed the full diagnosis (full write test) after hdderase. SMART still detects it as a failed disk at bootup though due to the errors it flagged.
 
I crosshipped drives for a $25 fee so my new G2 arrives today sometime. I had posted in the other thread but to tamp down any confusion, I followed all procedures to the letter including switching out of AHCI mode for the update and switching back for first win7 boot. After a few error-filled desktop sessions it won't even display the "starting windows" screen. I tried to reinstall windows and if the SSD is plugged in Windows Setup just hangs.

Trying to decide if I'm going to flash my replacement drive prior to WHS restore/W7 reinstall or not :)
 
Hehehe I expect drive availability to drop a lot with the RMA Intel will need to do soon... That's a good news for Newegg they can jack the price again!!!
 
Has anyone who was not running AHCI mode experienced this problem? I ordered an intel g2 80g yesterday afternoon (just my luck) and I was thinking that maybe I should just never put it into AHCI mode in the bios.

Is there anything "wrong" with not choosing to run AHCI mode? I'm not going to hot swap and I don't know how much NCQ really adds.

Thinking that when I get the drive I'll not run AHCI, flash the firmware and then install Win7.

Or is this biting people who weren't running AHCI too?
 
Is it possible to downgrade the firmware anyone have a mirror to the older 080902G98820.iso
file?
 
AHCI mode is required for TRIM to work automatically in Windows 7. You could leave it in IDE mode though and just use the scheduler built into the SSD Toolbox to have it trim the drive nightly.

I'm not really sure if IDE mode impacts real world performance in any way.

Has anyone who was not running AHCI mode experienced this problem? I ordered an intel g2 80g yesterday afternoon (just my luck) and I was thinking that maybe I should just never put it into AHCI mode in the bios.

Is there anything "wrong" with not choosing to run AHCI mode? I'm not going to hot swap and I don't know how much NCQ really adds.

Thinking that when I get the drive I'll not run AHCI, flash the firmware and then install Win7.

Or is this biting people who weren't running AHCI too?


If someone has it you could probably edit the batch files to not run everything automatically. Then let it just boot to a command prompt and start trying switches in the program that starts the firmware update. Probably try /h, /help, etc first to see if it has built in help that might tell you a switch to force flash the drive.
Is it possible to downgrade the firmware anyone have a mirror to the older 080902G98820.iso
file?
 
Ran the update on two 160gb G2 drives on two separate systems. On the Dell D630 Laptop the update ran fine. The other on a Dual Xeon server running Server 2008 R2 corrupted after reboot with the same failure/bad SMART data as described many times in this thread.
 
So if a person is running the system in RAID mode instead of AHCI (because I have two HDDs in Raid1) then I won't get automatic trim support either?
 
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