80GB SSD Back from the DEAD

[idata]

Like many others, my Intel 80GB SSD was trashed yesterday by the firmware update. I am now back running Win7 64 on my SSD, as I write this post. In the hopes of helping someone else, here's my story:Yesterday, I installed the TRIM update on my SSD. The firmware update seemed to go fine as the Intel updater reported success with the update. On re-boot, my Win7 install booted OK, windows loaded the drivers (Intel AHCI 10 driver) for the updated SSD, and then told me to re-boot. On re-boot, again windows loaded fine and all looked well.I ran the new Intel Toolbox and that is when the trouble began. The first thing I did was run the Diagnostic Scan. I noticed that the read test was greyed out with a red warning to contact my sales rep. I hit the start button and only the Integrity test ran. It passed the test. but I was concerned that the Read test would not even run. Then I ran the SSD Management Tools (TRIM support) and the it ran to completion and reported success. Great!The system ran fine for about 5 minutes, then I got a warning message from Windows that my disk drive was failing and I should make a backup (SMART error). I looked around a bit to try and find the cause and then boom, blue screen.I re-booted the system and the BIOS reported no boot disk available. I booted to DOS and ran the Intel firmware updater again. It reported that the update was already done, but I noticed the drive serial number as BAD_CTX. Not good.I re-installed my old hard disk and put the SSD on another SATA port. After booting into Win7, the SSD showed a size of 8MB and reported errors when I tried to write to it.I booted into DOS and ran HDDErase 3.3 on the SSD. Then re-booted into Win7 off my old drive, and the SSD was back to 75 GB in size. I formatted the drive and ran some write tests and they all passed fine. I ran the Intel Toolbox, and this time the Read test would run and complete with no problem. I noticed the the SMART attributes were all good except the End to End Error Detection Count, which showed 48 raw errors. This number has not changed, so I believe these errors were logged the first time, when the drive went bad.I tried to install Win7 on the SSD, and it wouldn't allow me to install to the SSD because of the old SMART errors. SO, I tried to find a way to clear the SMART errors, with no luck. Finally, I installed a backup drive image I had of my previous SSD Win7 install and it installed and booted fine. I have now been running for several hours with no probs. The only legacy problem I have is the SMART errors, which I can't clear. However, Win7 is not reporting any problems or SMART errors with the drive. I'm not sure why the first install failed. It appears to be a problem which would not allow the Toolbox to run a read test on the drive. If I was doing another firmware update, I would make an image of the windows SSD install, then delete any partitions on the SSD, do the update, put the SSD on another windows system and test it there with the Toolbox, and if all passed, then re-install the image onto the SSD. If necessary, run HDDErase along the way.So ,if I can get rid of the old SMART errors, this drive should be as good as new. INTEL, how do I clear the SMART error cache?<!-- / message --><!-- message, attachments, sig -->

[idata]

I dumped the strings in the issdfut.exe file, looking for some switches. I came across this string embedded in the exe:

What is your favorite color? Bring out your dead. HOOT.00

Maybe someone is having some fun with us!

[idata]

My SSD x25 E extreme only reconice 8mg of full espace ...is not great news.....have notice some other peaple in the internet with same problem with diferent ssd from intel ....did send it back ..........still wayting ...........

Eduardo Niebla

http://www.eduardoniebla.com www.eduardoniebla.com

[idata]

After the firmware update windows XP (SP3) starts OK en detected my 80GB SSD as new hardware. Next day windows XP hangs on boot and after that windows reported corrupted registry files and even later the system reported a read error (no boot at all). After turning off the smart functionality in the bios I succeeded by installing Windows 7 32 bits on 20 GB partition. Now the system is running for few days. Windows 7 is still reporting smart errors and Intel SSD toolbox is reporting smart error "B8 End to End Detection Count". Intel SSD Toolbox function Fast Diagnostics scan reports no error. Intel SSD Toolbox function Full Diagnostics reported a error on Data Integrity Scan. I partition and formated the remaining 55 GB and Full Diagnostics reported NO ERRORS.