510 - 120GB: Any firmware updated?

[idata]

I bought an Intel 510 SSD a few months ago, because Intel is a big name although it's more expensive.

However, I noticed that for other SSD manufacturer such as Crucial, they provide update of the firmware so that the speed of SSD is greatly enhanced. (e.g. Crucial m400 which also uses Marvell chipset as Intel 510)

Is there any update from Intel to improve the speed of my SSD?

[idata]

If you just spend some time on this forum you would have found this:

The latest firmware level is v1.9.2 and relates ONLY to a severe reliability issue, see: http://www.intel.com/go/ssdfirmware www.intel.com/go/ssdfirmware

[idata]

Thank for your reply, L10090.

I spent some time to read this and other forums about Intel SSD firmware update before posting. So far what I found was a firmware updated at 1 Sept. 2011 to fix the 8MB error issue to Intel 320/x-25 SSD drive (NOT Intel 510). In fact, it is what you said in your posting.

However, what I would like to know is whether Intel are going to launch a firmware update to Intel 510 SSD drive to enhance its performance, just like Crucial M400 which performs 25% faster than at old firmware while both Crucial M400 and Intel 510 are using the same Marvell controller chipset.

[idata]

Hi,

Indeed, that link doesn't refer to 510 drives so maybe some time spent reading posts properly would help!

I expect there will be an update soon to take any PPG2/PWG2 firmware up to PPG4/PWG4. The reason I believe this is that there appears to be a problem on some systems when there are two 510 SSDs of which one is PPG/PWG2 and the other PPG/PWG4. It causes one or more of the drives to run slower and be reported as 3gb/s not the advertsied 6gb/s on SATA3.

If you are intersted the threads where this problem was first brought up, identified and a solution found are:

/thread/23608?tstart=105 http://communities.intel.com/thread/23608?tstart=105 and /thread/23997?start=0&tstart=0 http://communities.intel.com/thread/23997?start=0&tstart=0

Intel were no help whatsoever and initally showed no interest in investigating this problem. Instead they blamed the manufacturers of the boards even though they had Intel chips on them! Completely without any help from "tech support" it was discovered that having two drives with different firmware caused the problem and replacing the drive with the older firmware with one that had newer firmware made the problem go away.

At tis point I asked for my drive to be replaced with a new firmware version and ever since then (4 weeks now) Intel have been telling me to wait while they "investigate" the issue. Why they didn't want to invettigate when we first asked them is a mystery. My hunch is that they're about to relase a new firmware updater that will bring everything up to PPG/PWG4. The current firmware updater is not capable of updating a 510 drive to PPG/PWG4 which seems pretty stupid.

I could be wrong but I for one will be avoiding Intel's SSDs in future as their after-sales support has proved to be useless and their attitude evasive at best. I can't stand it when manufacturers automatically blame other vendors without even bothering to look at the issue themselves!

Ian