12-21-2009 04:43 PM
My machine suddenly froze up. I did a force power off then back on,
and it wouldn't boot from the SSD. I'm using OS X -- it just
shows a blinking folder with a ?.
I've only had the drive for ~9 months.
I pulled the SSD and installed it in a Linux box, ran smartctl, and
the drive claimed it had no errors in its log. No reallocated
sectors. (What else should I look at?).
I ran "parted" (prints partition tables) and it printed a warning that
the drive has a GPT table but not a "valid fake msdos partition
table" (?).
I use smartctl to run the self tests, and strangely they all quickly
claimed to be "Completed without error" yet list 30% under
"Remaining".
So then I tried to use "dd" to do a raw copy of all bytes on the
disk. This failed at around 97GB, and added 17 errors to the smart
log. I ran this again and it failed at the same spot, adding
another 12 errors in the smart log.
Next I'll try the Intel SSD Toolkit... looks like it just came back.
Has anyone else experienced their Intel SSDs fail...? Any suggestions
what to try/do next?
01-03-2010 07:15 AM
Good news -- Intel sent me a replacement drive. It arrived exactly 1 week after I mailed the broken one to them. And, the replacement is a G2 (but my original was a G1), which is nice....
01-03-2010 07:34 PM
Lucky you. It took me over two weeks.
01-04-2010 08:03 AM
Though, curiously, the firmware was stale (02HA); I updated it to 02HD. Not a big deal, but I'd expect Intel would update the firmware before sending out a replacement drive...
01-08-2010 11:48 AM
I just sent in a 1st-gen 80GB drive for exchange. It worked for 6 months, then failed. The Intel SSD toolkit wasn't terribly helpful (just says to contact support), but at least it was easy to get an RMA. I have my fingers crossed to get a 2nd-gen drive in exchange.