What made my Crucial SSD take a dump

[chefwong]

Been running my M3 SSD for almost a good 1 year.
Just used my MBP this morning. Came back to it and it would not come back from standby.

Couple times trying to reboot, it would not.
Booted into safe mode, ran disk repair .
Got about 15% and then it crashed.

Fast forward now. Even when booted into Firewire target mode, my other laptop would not see the HD but would it was not mounted. I tried to mount it but it would not - so ran disk First Aid. It found errors, tried fixing - repair could not *repair* - hence would not mount disk.

I ended up doing a reformat, and Super Duper is slowing doing it's thing now that after the disk is reformatted, it will mount.

What would have caused this....

 

[Dark Void]

What would have caused this....

A lot of fried food, possibly beans.

 

[MikhailT]

What would have caused this....

Most likely your SSD firmware caused some corruptions. This used to be a common problem in some SSD brands in the early days (especially the early Vertexes, I had it happen with Vertex 2 and after the firmware updates, it worked fine).

I'd recommend that you check for firmware updates and if nothing is available, see if you can RMA the drive for a new replacement.

 

[FuNGi]

My M4 has the firmware printed on the physical drive. Is yours 0309 or OOOF?
0309 was meant to fix a bug that kicked in after 5,000 hours of use. I'm not sure if it is too late for yours or not though...
http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-S...M4-SSD-firmware-for-Mac-Os-X-users/td-p/59000

 

[hakuin]

Mine suddenly stopped working recently after about 8 months of use. It was the 5,000-hour bug issue, fixed by updating the firmware.

To make the drive temporarily detectable you need to put it through a "power cycle". You can look it up on the Crucial website, but basically it means not putting any power through it for a while. Doing this will make the drive detectable long enough to upgrade the firmware.

Now download the most recent firmware from the Crucial website (http://edge.crucial.com/firmware/m4/000F/Crucialm4_000F.zip) and burn it to a CD using Disk Utility. Do this by simply selecting the firmware .iso file in Disk Utility and clicking on "Burn".

With the CD in the drive and the SSD connected, startup the computer while holding down the option key. Select the CD and it will boot into the firmware update. Update the firmware, restart, and your SSD is working again.

Or if that doesn't help, send an email to Crucial and they will get you a replacement. They provide a 3-year warranty as long as you have the receipt, not sure about other cases.

 

[spoonie1972]

does the application show the existing firmware version?

also, is this a destructive update? (i have backups, just asking).

 

[MikhailT]

....
Now download the most recent firmware from the Crucial website (http://edge.crucial.com/firmware/m4/000F/Crucialm4_000F.zip) ...

...

Don't use his link at all, he provided a link for M4, you have M3. You need to find the right one for your SSD with a specific size.

does the application show the existing firmware version?

also, is this a destructive update? (i have backups, just asking).

The firmware updater will show the current version and you can find out from the OS X's System Profiler on the SSD.

Depending on how big of the change but big bug fixes like this usually are destructive.

 

[chefwong]

I did a Typo. Mine was a M4 - 512. Sad that when you pay big $ when I bought it.....
I've got a RMA on it. Just wished I paid ontop to firmware updates on it....

Thk god for super duper and time machine.
I never really expected a *HD* volume wise bearing SSD. Turns out it was just around Oct 11 of last year I got it. Hopefully, the next one has a better reliability. My old MBP in which I am writing on - 2010 7200RPM is still running like a champ, albit slower than a SSD.

 

[hakuin]

Did you try what I wrote?

It is probably not a bug, but the known issue. If you update the firmware it should be fine.

No need to RMA a functioning drive.