SandForce Identifies Firmware Bug Causing BSOD Issue, Fix Available Today

[Ika]

Jury is still out. But for me it is day and night difference. With the old FW I was getting 4 to 5 BSOD daily. I pulled the drive last week it was so bad. When they came out with the new FW 2.15 I reinstalled the Vertex 3 with the new FW. Changed nothing but the FW on the drive. I have now gone 3 + days without a hiccup. It will take a while before I have complete confidence in the drive but the latest FW is a step in the right direction at least.

Newegg has a sale on them today!

What firmware were you on before? I heard FW2.13 helped to reduce the issues as well, but I guess they weren't able to eliminate them until now, if they really have eliminated them. They've shot themselves in the foot PR-wise, though, and it's going to take a while to rebuild their reputation and get the word out.

 

[Zap]

Gues you haven't used an Intel SSD? At least the first 2 gens were like that.

TBH Intel has had firmware updates as well for the X25-M. Don't remember anything show-stopping though.

I still don't trust that they've fully fixed the issues, but Black Friday is a long way off, so hopefully by then the drives will be fixed, stable, and raring to sell.

Heh, they're raring to sell now. OCZ Agility 3 60GB $70 AR FS at Newegg right now, and one of today's Shell Shockers is the Corsair Force GT 120GB for $155 AR FS.

Jury is still out. But for me it is day and night difference. With the old FW I was getting 4 to 5 BSOD daily... Changed nothing but the FW on the drive. I have now gone 3 + days without a hiccup.

:thumbsup:

 

[Voo]

Ever stop to think that maybe some have not implemented the latest sata specs appropriately? Why did Intel push so hard to implement specific APM features into the sata3 specs and then end up disabling some of those very same features on their own drives?

No, I'm sure there are dozens of small problems in lots of implementations. But know what? There's this little thing called "quality control" - you don't see MS saying "Sorry we follow the spec to the point, sure 80% of all MBs don't work now, but that's not our fault!", no they have gigantic labs and try to get their fingers on most of the hardware combinations out there then work around most of the problems.
Other controller manufacturer do a much, MUCH better job at that than SF.

Even more interesting is the timing of these particular fixes when Intel is about to release their SF controlled drives. Who'da thunk that Intel had that kind of power? Major sarcasm intended there.

Intel also has some rather extensive QC, so they probably refused to sell something with their name on it, that didn't work on a big portion of the current market. Who knows? Guessing is a fun game though..

 

[badnewcastle]

What firmware were you on before? I heard FW2.13 helped to reduce the issues as well, but I guess they weren't able to eliminate them until now, if they really have eliminated them. They've shot themselves in the foot PR-wise, though, and it's going to take a while to rebuild their reputation and get the word out.

FW's progressively got worse for me. I'm on 2.15 now and haven't notice anything yet but it's only been 1 day. 2.13 was 2-5 BSOD's/day at least sometimes more. It was unusable.

I'm going into this FW as the notes seem to speak directly to the issues I was seeing.

 

[curlysir]

What firmware were you on before? I heard FW2.13 helped to reduce the issues as well, but I guess they weren't able to eliminate them until now, if they really have eliminated them. They've shot themselves in the foot PR-wise, though, and it's going to take a while to rebuild their reputation and get the word out.

I have been on every FW shortly after they were released. My problems started about a month ago so I may have been on 2.13, not for sure.

 

[Zap]

No, I'm sure there are dozens of small problems in lots of implementations. But know what? There's this little thing called "quality control" - you don't see MS saying "Sorry we follow the spec to the point, sure 80% of all MBs don't work now, but that's not our fault!"

MS may not be that great of an example, but I know what you mean. See ya on next Patch Tuesday! :whiste:

Other controller manufacturer do a much, MUCH better job at that than SF.

No argument here, based on their track record so far.

Damn, I'm really wanting this latest firmware to make the drives worth using, because there's some hot deals going on right now with multiple brands.

 

[Voo]

MS may not be that great of an example, but I know what you mean. See ya on next Patch Tuesday! :whiste:

Well tell me one company with a better track record at backwards compatibility in general and hardware backcomp in special (not exactly sure what patching has to do with that, any complex software out there gets fixed all the time, linux kernel, java distributions, adobe programs about twice a week (-.-),..). Considering the amount of completely broken hardware that's around, it's a wonder so much of it works pretty well and that doesn't come from just hoping it'll work somehow out if they just follow the spec (which seems SF's grand strategy). MS has some of the largest QC labs out there and probably more old hardware lying around than anyone else and it shows. Umn, back to topic here.

Let's hope that with Intel on board we'll see some improvement in that area - I wager for most people reliability and compatibility are more important than some further performance improvement.

 

[Coup27]

Am I the only one who doesn't think Intel will release a SF based drive? To be knowledge it hasn't been officially confirmed yet. I think it will cannibalise their own drives sales which ride a lot on "reliability and compatibility."

If the magic of SF is their firmware over their actual controller, and Intel only licence the controller (like 510) then they will have to do all the firmware from scratch themselves.

If they licence both then SF surely will benefit from that relationship and any improvments gained by both parties working together will appear on non-Intel SF drives. And OCZ and co will deffinately have drives on the same controller for sale for far less than Intel.

 

[Meghan54]

Damn, I'm really wanting this latest firmware to make the drives worth using, because there's some hot deals going on right now with multiple brands.

Given the reputation that the SF controller is gaining, it's not surprising SF-based drives are on sale now. Too many complaints, real or imagined, on the 'net to be ignored and more than a few people I know just won't trust a SF-based SSD today. Guess the retailers are hoping a low price overcomes the hesitation some have in buying such drives. I know SF's rep is what tilted me over to an Intel drive, albeit at a higher price than comparably sized SF-based drives.

 

[Vdubchaos]

I've been thinking about pulling the trigger on one of these

OCZ Vertex 2 120GB OCZSSD2-2VTXE
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227551

$99 bucks after rebate

I'm scared though.....

 

[HendrixFan]

I've been thinking about pulling the trigger on one of these

OCZ Vertex 2 120GB OCZSSD2-2VTXE

$99 bucks after rebate

I'm scared though.....

The VTXE drives are slower than the drives you have seen benchmarks for. At that price it seems like a good deal though. I have been running a couple of those vertex 2 drives in RAID for quite sometime. As groberts has mentioned in this thread and elsewhere, as long as you don't let the drive sleep then you shouldn't have any issues. If it is for a laptop then, stay away.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Thats a problem, I never shut down my PC and always put into sleep mode.

:'(

 

[HendrixFan]

Thats a problem, I never shut down my PC and always put into sleep mode.

:'(

You should learn to shut it down (saves power too!) or go with a different SSD then.

 

[Coup27]

Thats a problem, I never shut down my PC and always put into sleep mode.

:'(

Maybe the reason you do this is because booting a laptop with presumably a 5400rpm HDD is not an exciting experience.

With an SSD behind you, it will slash your boot times right down.

 

[zlejedi]

I long for the day when you can plug in a SSD and say "Hey, it works!" as opposed to tweaking bios settings, sata management settings and wondering what firmware version you have.

I'm not sure what you speaking about - we are in that era since Intel released Gen 1 SSD Just because some people bought into crap product by even more crappy company doesn't mean all SSDs are bad.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Maybe the reason you do this is because booting a laptop with presumably a 5400rpm HDD is not an exciting experience.

With an SSD behind you, it will slash your boot times right down.

I don't have a laptop, my gaming PCs.

I don't really mind longer boot times but I also don't mind my PC waking up in 3 seconds.

I guess I can live with botting it up ever time, no big deal. But that would mean my HDD PC would be in windows quicker hehe

 

[Davegod]

If I'm building a new rig with a Vertex 3 for O/S drive, is it probably best to first install it into this old rig and flash it from within Vista?

 

[groberts101]

If I'm building a new rig with a Vertex 3 for O/S drive, is it probably best to first install it into this old rig and flash it from within Vista?

I would install it on the system that you intend to use it on and run the Linux based tool instead of the Windows based toolbox with it run as secondary.

The linux tool runs from your ram and sees all drives as spares. Just be sure to have it in AHCI or RAID mode before booting to Linux, is all.

 

[Davegod]

cheers

 

[funks]

Anybody know if this will fix the intermittent boot problems too? I installed a Corsair Force 3 180GB (came w/ 1.3.2 fw) on my Lenovo W510 Laptop and Win7 fails to boot up from time to time (doesn't happen with the Seagate HDD). It basically hangs before the 4 dots show up to converge during bootup but when it does get booted up, seems to work just fine.

The Crucial m4-128GB on my desktop on the other hand's been working perfectly without any issues. Seems that these sandforce drives are just plain cranky. Gonna give it a week to see if Corsair will release a firmware with the above fix to see if it does anything. The 180GB drive is the perfect size for me and the 40$ rebate from Frys' definitely sweetens it up (ends up being the same price as the 120GB).

 

[scajjr2]

Got a message from Kingston tech support regarding the occasional freezing, F4 BSODs, etc., my HyperX 120Gb has had saying their new firmware would be released in a few days.

Sam

 

[Burner27]

Can someone ( or anyone) comment on how their drives have performed since the new FW has been installed? Has your system been stable and responsive?

 

[groberts101]

Since you said "anyone".. you'll have to settle for me Burner. lol

I can tell you this without a shred of doubt or bias from reading hundreds of posts every day at the OCZ forums and even other mfgrs forums. The newest firmware has implemented fixes to work around many of the other underlying issues here.

It's now at the point that the majority that would still see an issue would need to really start digging deeper with bios, hardware, software configs. Even memtest will not be the best way to pinpoint issues(not that it ever was really) and there are hundreds of ram and CPU idle issues still present on some systems.

Even the one's who say things like "it's definately the SSD.. because when I run my HDD.. it is perfect".. means very little due to the extra loads and margin/headroom reduction that such a capable drive can add to the mix. Not all is what it seems with some setups and there always has been far too much lumping together of these issues.

So,.. when simply swapping ram out on a system that has had stability issues from day one that a V3(or SF-2281 equivelant) has been installed(not to mention has passed dozens of memtests) makes the system fully stable without anything more than a power down.. ram swap.. and reboot? We know that not all is what it seems with some systems.

For the most part.. any that still have issues can be walked through a refreshening process(SE/cmos reset/OS reinstall).. and come out smelling quite rosy in the end. The rest just need to work that much harder to figure out the other issues.. or move to another controller with less speed and/or compatability issues(primarily power mgmt/ACPI related) relating to the hardware it is connected to.

Just my tarnished penny on the matter.

 

[Coup27]

Whens an official announcement due on the already infamous Intel 520? I heard November but still nothing yet.

 

[=Wendy=]

Whens an official announcement due on the already infamous Intel 520? I heard November but still nothing yet.

The last I heard, the 11th of Nov.