More thoughts on SSDs
I have just gone through that buttock clenching experience of a firmware upgrade on my SSD drive.
This should be a simple and easy task, I have done it many times on ordinary disks from within a Windows session, indeed firmware upgrades for all things come thick and fast in the land of HP servers, you download the ISO run the update program and all sorts of firmware updates happen it gets on with it and then you reboot and all is well again. BIOS updates for motherboards even happen from within Windows these days, unfortunately it seems that Micron, care of it's Crucial arm, aren't up with the project.
To update a C300 SSD you need to download the ISO, burn it to CD then change your SATA settings in your BIOS to IDE only, AHCI will break it. you then need to make sure your SSD is in channel 0-3 or the update program won’t see it. Then you boot off the CD and run through the program, typing yes at the appropriate moment. Did I mention you need to back up your data first? The time taken to carry out the update depends on the amount of data on the drive, as "the upgrade software takes steps to protect user data" this is alarm bell stuff, even the manufacturer is telling you this process is flakey.
The SSD pixies rained good fortune on me as my update went smoothly, your experience may vary. I don't know what the other manufacturers are like but it shows how immature the sector is when you have to step back in time and boot off CDs to do these crucial firmware updates, the ISO was 3.2MB so wouldn’t have fitted on a floppy disk, something that hasn’t graced my PC for quite a few years now, but I had to use one not that long ago to load up a SCSI driver for a server install of Server 2003 R2, it took a surprising amount of effort to sort it all out, luckily I had a floppy that still worked in my desk draw and the server had a floppy drive in it, I would have had to resort to something like nLite to create a CD with all the drivers that where needed.
Are they necessary you may ask yourself, well I would advise checking the manufactures website and downloading the latest firmware and applying it to your drive before you start to rely on it. Yes they are worth it as features are still being added and things like TRIM need to be fully supported to get the most out of your investment.
However, pretty much all the manufacturers have already been caught out by some of the firmware revisions they have released either causing stability issues or just frying the drives. So I will add the proviso: if the update is not more than 1 month old Google it to see if there are any problems, Anandtech.com have loads of stuff on firmware updates toasting SSDs and finding problems with updates.
The current C300 release is from the 16 November 2010 so I would say it is fairly stable, it worked for me but you must read the update guide and follow all the advice in there, if you already using drive do a backup and have a spare drive to restore to should your SSD become a broke.
This should be a simple and easy task, I have done it many times on ordinary disks from within a Windows session, indeed firmware upgrades for all things come thick and fast in the land of HP servers, you download the ISO run the update program and all sorts of firmware updates happen it gets on with it and then you reboot and all is well again. BIOS updates for motherboards even happen from within Windows these days, unfortunately it seems that Micron, care of it's Crucial arm, aren't up with the project.
To update a C300 SSD you need to download the ISO, burn it to CD then change your SATA settings in your BIOS to IDE only, AHCI will break it. you then need to make sure your SSD is in channel 0-3 or the update program won’t see it. Then you boot off the CD and run through the program, typing yes at the appropriate moment. Did I mention you need to back up your data first? The time taken to carry out the update depends on the amount of data on the drive, as "the upgrade software takes steps to protect user data" this is alarm bell stuff, even the manufacturer is telling you this process is flakey.
The SSD pixies rained good fortune on me as my update went smoothly, your experience may vary. I don't know what the other manufacturers are like but it shows how immature the sector is when you have to step back in time and boot off CDs to do these crucial firmware updates, the ISO was 3.2MB so wouldn’t have fitted on a floppy disk, something that hasn’t graced my PC for quite a few years now, but I had to use one not that long ago to load up a SCSI driver for a server install of Server 2003 R2, it took a surprising amount of effort to sort it all out, luckily I had a floppy that still worked in my desk draw and the server had a floppy drive in it, I would have had to resort to something like nLite to create a CD with all the drivers that where needed.
Are they necessary you may ask yourself, well I would advise checking the manufactures website and downloading the latest firmware and applying it to your drive before you start to rely on it. Yes they are worth it as features are still being added and things like TRIM need to be fully supported to get the most out of your investment.
However, pretty much all the manufacturers have already been caught out by some of the firmware revisions they have released either causing stability issues or just frying the drives. So I will add the proviso: if the update is not more than 1 month old Google it to see if there are any problems, Anandtech.com have loads of stuff on firmware updates toasting SSDs and finding problems with updates.
The current C300 release is from the 16 November 2010 so I would say it is fairly stable, it worked for me but you must read the update guide and follow all the advice in there, if you already using drive do a backup and have a spare drive to restore to should your SSD become a broke.
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