Tom's Hardware reports that online retailers including Newegg have pulled Intel's latest SSD (Solid State Disk) from their websites just days after being made publicly available. This was due to a defect in the disk's firmware that was discovered in the first batch which shipped last week, according to a blog post written by OEM system builder Puget Systems. Consumers who have already purchased the new 34nm "Postville" SSDs may face several issues, including data corruption when adding, deleting, or modifying the drive's password in the BIOS. "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," said Puget's William George. "That won't be available immediately, but should be showing up in about two weeks."
Intel has since halted shipments of the "Postville" SSDs until the problem has been resolved. For those consumers who have already purchased the drive and have no plans to use a BIOS password on the drive, there should be no problems; however Intel is advising that consumers do not alter, delete, or create BIOS passwords until the drive has been flashed with updated firmware to correct the issue.
"It made sense to pause shipments and implement the changes ourselves and via customers versus asking consumers to do so," Intel told Tom's in an email earlier today. "Keep in mind the fix has been identified and validation is undergoing completion this week."
The updated firmware will be available on Intel's website when it is ready.
Thanks to Neowin member master2k27 for the news tip!
yeah, should've bought one before they pulled it!
You mean like the 100,000+ firmware unit tests they perform on the drive before this happens? psh those don't count....
A company can do all the testing they want, but nothing equals to real world testing. It's the fact they've caught it early and doing the right thing to fix it.
So why didn't 100,000+ tests catch something as basic as a BIOS password and its ability to corrupt data? Seems like it should be in at least 1 of those 100,000+ tests.
Regardless, I'm thinking about getting one of these too. Glad I live by the rule to never buy anything that's brand-brand new. Let the kinks get worked out then buy. Now I wonder how many other kinks there are.
Regardless, I'm thinking about getting one of these too. Glad I live by the rule to never buy anything that's brand-brand new. Let the kinks get worked out then buy. Now I wonder how many other kinks there are.
When you have littearly thousands of tests to run, you tend to leave some out sometimes until you "come across" an issue to make a test for...
But isn't software just magic and easy to write?
Engineers get paid well because they are required to account for a ton of things. Sometimes they miss. They are human, after all.
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