Intel made a promising launch of the X25-M series av Solid State Drives series last week. The new drives that sport tweaked performance but most of all considerably lower prices, thanks to the 34nm technology, has raised the interest for SSDs substantially. The chip giant has run into a speed bump though. Stories report of a firmware problem that can corrupt your data if you set a password for the drive in the BIOS and then change or remove it.
At the Puget Systems blog they have some more info on what bothering Intel’s 34nm SSDs, and luckily they only need a quick firmware update to work.
There is a defect in the units which causes data corruption if – and only if – a password is set on the drive in the system BIOS… and then changed or disabled later. Initially we were told this might require a complete reworking of the drives, and that those we had gotten in were effectively unusable, but Intel was able to work out a firmware fix for the problem. That won’t be available immediately, but should be showing up in about two weeks.
Consumers who have already bought an X25-M G2 SSD has nothing to worry about as long as they don’t get the idea of password protecting the drive from the BIOS. This will limit the supply over the coming weeks since Intel will hold off shipping and wait for the new firmware to be implemented. Not a catastrophe, but hardly optimal. Perhaps there even are those who are thankful for the extra time to gather some more money to buy one.
According to info supplied to Tomshardware the software update may be ready next week already.
“Keep in mind the fix has been identified and validation is undergoing completion this week.”
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