TRIM update hosed my Windows 7 install

[idata]

Just did the firmware update and it hosed my Windows 7 installation. The updater showed a successful firware update. Initially the computer booted just fine, but once I was within Windows it installed some drivers and asked for a reboot. That's when the trouble started. Now the drive won't boot Windows 7 anymore. I don't know if it's a Dell problem or Intel problem. The Dell BIOS claims a SMART error. I have a Dell XPS 8000.

[idata]

My 80GB G2 SSDs also went bad, after a few restarts.

I have 3 of them in a raid 0 on an Adaptec 5805 SAS RAID Controller. After 2-3 restarts i got a "disk read error", and after another restart the controller lost the array completly!

I couldnt even initialise the drives to create another array!

Now i am trying to secure erase the drives to at least create another array!

the most important question being: WILL A FIXED FIRMWARE UPDATE MAKE THE DRIVES WORK AGAIN, OR WILL I HAVE TO SEND THEM IN?

I spent >550€ on them, and i am deeply dissapointed now.

[idata]

I am more than a little freaked out, I installed this firmware update the other day in my MacBook Pro. No issues yet, but some of these posts (especially with the serial number reporting bad) make it seem like it isn't OS-related. I do run Windows 7 inside of a VM, but haven't used it since I updated the firmware, and I doubt this would translate through the VM drivers anyway.

At any rate, I am crossing my fingers. Any other OS X users out there who have, or have not, experienced the problem?

Best of luck to everyone ... thanks!

[idata]

nadroj,

I have a Macbook pro 17 and i had no problems installing the update. After reading the post it looks like there is some issue between the win 7 driver that is installed and the firmware. Lucky for us we don't have to worry about driver issues. Also, your VM does not see your drive as a SSD so there should be no problems. Your VM is emulating a windows drive.

The only bad thing for OSX users is that TRIM is not supported as of yet on OSX.

[idata]

If it is anything OS related, then it has to be something extreme the newly activated Windows driver does to corrupt fundamental settings in the SSD. If people are unable to even see the partitions, recover a usable one, or are presented with strange SMART errors, this would normally point to a firmware update issue rather than an OS one. It is very odd indeed. Huge sympathies to all affected.

5 reboots and still no issue but it does not stop the concern each time I turn off

[idata]

All the posts indicated that they were successful in flashing the drive with the firmware. All the drives were flashed under FREEDOS. Unless somebody has verified outside of the win7 OS that there drive worked before they booted into Windows, then you left with the OS and/or chipset corrupting the drive. What is at issue is that AFTER rebooting and AFTER windows 7 having installed/updated the OS driver, the drive becomes corrupt. This suggest that there is a issue between the win7 driver and/or chipset driver and the firmware.

The fact that your setup works suggest that one, you followed the directions carefully, and two your system setup chipset/driver is compatible with the firmware. I doubt that you will have any problems no matter how many times you reboot. Some of the posters fall in the category of not following directions as stated in the installation even though they will swear up and down that they did and some of the posters have legit issues with the current Intel firmware and their system.

MACs do not have to worry about drivers, etc, setting ahci. I would bet that most if not all mac users will have no problems with the update because of this fact.

For those that think it is STRICTLY a firmware issue, you should hope that this is the case because otherwise Intel could come back and say it is not our problem. SSD technology is still immature and relies on the SSD vendor, chipset/vendor, and Microsoft to make everything it work harmonious in a WIN environment.

I have the 160 GB gen2 and 2 80GB gen 1s and i have had no problems installing in my MAC or on HP computer. And i have had no problems updating the drives with the latest firmwares. The HP computer didn't let me set ahci, ide, etc. It automatically used AHCI.

I hope a solution can be found to fix everyone's problem and that the solution lies with Intel and not a combination of Intel, Microsoft, and/or the motherboard vendors.