Crucial Provides a Firmware Update for M4 to Fix The BSOD Issue
by Kristian Vättö on January 14, 2012 3:22 PM ESTLast week, we wrote about the BSOD issue that Crucial's M4 SSDs were experiencing. After 5184 hours (yes, that's the specific number) of active use, the SSD started to cause blue screens of death (i.e. BSODs) every hour or so. Originally, the fix was scheduled for next week but fortunately Crucial was able to release the firmware update yesterday. The firmware version is 0309 and can be downloaded here. It's recommended for all Crucial M4 SSDs, even if you are not experiencing the BSOD issue as it will prevent it from happening.
The earliest reports indicate that the update does fix the BSOD issue, although it will take at least several days before we can be sure of that. User Vivio at Crucial forums has already run benchmarks and the update appears to be a pure bug fix, as the performance is the same as with the older 0009 firmware (see Anand's review).
Source: Crucial
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Azsen - Saturday, January 14, 2012 - link
Well I spent about half an hour hunting around for simple instructions to copy the firmware ISO file to a bootable USB drive instead of CD (I don't have any spare CD-Rs around).Simplest guide was here:
http://www.storagereview.com/how_upgrade_crucial_s...
DanNeely - Saturday, January 14, 2012 - link
Did they explain why its 5184? That doesn't look like anything special in either minutes, seconds, or days.Meaker10 - Saturday, January 14, 2012 - link
It's to do with a SMART counter apparently.Lord 666 - Monday, January 16, 2012 - link
In the past couple days, my 256gb with 009 on it started acting very similar to this bug. Checked the hours and I'm in the low 2100s. Going to try this update in a few.Azsen - Saturday, January 14, 2012 - link
Have just upgraded my 128GB M4 successfully. I remember in the previous guide (to update the firmware to v0009) it was saying you needed to put the SATA mode as IDE in the BIOS or it wouldn't work. However this instruction is left out of the latest guide. I wasn't sure if that was intentional or a mistake so I tried putting the drive it in IDE mode anyway but the updater program crashed when detecting the drive, so best to leave it in AHCI mode as that worked fine in the end.Apparently in the guide it says it won't work if you're using SATA 6GB ports so I had to go into the case and put the cable onto the number 0-3 SATA 3G ports which was a pain.
Anyway all done now. Hopefully in 7 months time I won't be having blue screens. :) Would be interested to hear if it does actually fix the issue from users who are currently having the problem.
Soulkeeper - Saturday, January 14, 2012 - link
Burnt the .iso, had the thing booted, and flashed in under 5min.I love crucial and plextor's easy iso update method, great for non-windows users or people with multiple systems.
damianrobertjones - Monday, January 16, 2012 - link
... but they shouldn't have to do this at all.... In all my life I've NEVER had to update a hard drive until the SSD marchUltraTech79 - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
Never having to do it in the past somehow means never needing to to you? Many older hard drives have failed in the past due to software issues that could not be updated.Somehow in your mind you've corrupted this feature into a bad thing. A decade about these drives you have failed with this bug, and wholly new revisions of this drive would have been replaced with with all the same info otherwise. Today we can fix this problem without buying a new drive.
This is 1000x better than it was before, please contact reality for more details.
GTVic - Monday, January 16, 2012 - link
The newest Intel SSD tools allow you to update virtually all Intel SSDs while running Windows. Burning an ISO is an inconvenience and a waste of a disc in comparison.DanNeely - Monday, January 16, 2012 - link
Patching firmware while a system is live requires a significantly greater degree of either validation; or the writing the entire system in a functional programming language. While Ericson created its own language (Erlang) to allow patching its telecom systems that way; skills in functional programming are very rare outside of academia.