http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/369400/inte ... ix-ssd-bug


Intel has issued a firmware date for its 320 series of solid-state drives that malfunctioned if they lost power unexpectedly.

The initial failure - officially dubbed the Bad Context 13x Error - saw the drives crippled after a power interruption, with the storage devices reporting to the BIOS that capacity was a mere 8MB on a NAND flash memory range that starts at 40GB and runs up to 600GB.

Intel said all 320 series owners should apply the update, even if they haven't experienced the issue in order to prevent it happening in the future.

However, customers who saved information to the drives before the error will be unable to recover data even after the firmware is applied, the company said.

“If you have already experienced a drive failure or encounter this problem before the firmware update was released, please contact your Intel representative or Intel customer support for an SSD replacement,” the company said.

“An alternative option is to use the Intel SSD Toolbox or similar tools to perform a secure erase in order to restore the SSD to an operational state - all data will be erased. After secure erase, update your SSD with the new firmware. The firmware update will not recover user data.”

The update (4PC10362) is available for download from Intel's firmware pages.