Is 320 firmware buggy?

[idata]

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/do-ssd-drives-really-fail-lot-t4035508.html http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/do-ssd-drives-really-fail-lot-t4035508.html

Be wary of the new Intel SSD 320 series. Currently, there's a bug in the

controller that can cause the device to revert to 8MB during a power failure. AFAIK they have not yet publicly announced it, and won't have a firmware fix ready for release until the end of July. We had an SSD 320 600GB 2.5" SATA drive in for evaluation from our Intel rep. I was able to kill it in two or three hours by power cycling it. Apparently (according to the Intel rep) when the power failure is happening, the SSD device tries to reconnect with the SATA port instead of initiating a proper shutdown. Something to do with interrupt priority being higher for reconnection rather than a proper shutdown.

I don't know how much truth is to this post. Has there been any official acknowledgement of this problem?

[idata]

is it possible to revive the SSD on OS X rather than using DOS?

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I have the 160gb 320ssd installed in an imac for 2 months, and have the 8mb bugs after a power failure.

I am disappointed because I could have bought a much faster SSD with this price but I chose to buy it from intel for the reliability, but sadly intel has let me down.

I hereby request intel to offer a solution for the bug on mac OSX ASAP.

[idata]

if you don't mind, please share us with your batch# /serial#

well seeing that the issue is not widespread (at least to this point), i am guessing that maybe possibility of bad batch, like corsair recently pull back certain corsair force because performance issue

i am not defending intel but you might regret buying intel ssd after got this problem, but that doesn't mean you won't regret or got no problem with other SSD too right ?

if you checking other company SSD, i think you can get image

[idata]

if you will use google and search for

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=281566 http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=281566 for example or

http://www.google.com/search?q=8mb+intel+ssd&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial... http://www.google.com/search?q=8mb+intel+ssd&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=ru&client=firefox-a&hs=dCP&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&q=BAD_CT... http://www.google.com/search?hl=ru&client=firefox-a&hs=dCP&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&q=BAD_CT...

You can even search this community for 8MB or BAD_CTX

Then you 'll find also that it's not 320 series related issue only but it is getting worse with this 3-rd generation.

I have 1st GEN x25-E drive that have similar issue with BAD_CTX and 8MB.

I don't know how it's related to power cycles and is it the EXACTLY same issue as for 320 series, but I was able to restore the capacity after secure erasing.

[idata]

I reached support after 40 mins of waiting on the phone (call to Germany, so not that cheap). Had instructions sent via email to test the drive in another machine (haha, not possible in osx 😕 )

Finally after several emails forth and back got a mail with replacement instructions. But NO address where to send the drive to. This is the worst customer support I ever experienced. Other harddrive manufacturers (e.g. WD) sent me a drive for exchange prior to receiving the broken one. I paid a LOT for the "superior" intel quality and the service is reall really bad, not even to mention that the company never oficially stated anything about the bug yet.

I am very dissapointed, to say the least.