Update on "Bad Context 13x Error"

[Alan_F_Intel]

Intel has been investigating the 'Bad Context 13x Error' as seen on select Intel® SSD 320 Series drives. This was previously noted in the Intel community post as "SSD Power Loss". To summarize the error: In certain circumstances, after an unexpected power loss, a small percentage of SSDs may experience this error on the next attempt to boot the system. In this situation, the system's BIOS reports an SSD as an 8MB capacity drive.

Intel has reproduced 'Bad Context 13x Error' utilizing strenuous testing methods. This 'Bad Context 13x Error' can be addressed via a firmware update and Intel is in the process of validating the firmware update. A future update will define the schedule to deliver the firmware fix.

The Intel SSD 320 Series continues to be shipped and is available for purchase. If you experience this error with your Intel SSD, please contact your Intel representative or Intel customer support (via web: http://www.intel.com/ www.intel.com or phone: http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/contact/phone www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/contact/phone) .

For those with Intel SSD 320 series SSDs who are concerned but currently unaffected, Intel advises the following actions:

• As with any storage device, backup your data regularly
• When shutting down your system, follow your system's standard shutdown process
• Minimize unplugging the SSD while your system is powered

Intel takes these issues seriously. Please watch for further updates on this site.

Rgds,

Alan

Intel's NVM Solutions Group

[idata]

This is exactly what everybody was asking for, thank you. I look forward to the schedule being posted.

[idata]

Agreed. Finally Intel has responded with an informative post about the 8MB bug. Better late than never, I suppose.

[idata]

"Better late than never"?

Are you serious? Intel has reproduced a rare issue that affects a minority of users, has debugged it and isolated a problem, generated a fix, and is in the process of testing it. Not too shabby for a few weeks.

My thanks, at least, go to the Intel engineers for handling this efficiently.

[idata]

The first report of the bug was more than 2 months ago, as you can see if you follow the link in the "Is 320 firmware buggy?" thread. And it is easy to reproduce. Just power cycle the drive many times. Which would have been an obvious thing to test internally on a new product that just had power-fail protection capacitors added to it, and has a datasheet that says it is rated for 50,000 power cycles.

Yes, I am serious.