Intel SSD update leaves some disks dead

Posted on Tuesday, October 27 2009 @ 18:58 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
TweakTown reports several users of the Intel 34nm solid state disks have found their disk dead after installing the firmware upgrade that was released yesterday.
As of this writing no one seems to know what the direct cause is. Personally I have a feeling that the issue is due to the way the current firmware writes information to the drive, the new one is more-than-likely changing the write and read tables. This could be nothing more than people updating without blanking the drive to ensure that the tables match the state of the drive (all zeroes). We will try to contact Intel about this and see if this is the case. Of course if this is the case I have to wonder why the update utility would not write zeroes to the drive during the update to prevent this. Perhaps (again if this is what is happening) Intel needs to rewrite the installer to do this during the update to prevent future drive failures.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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