14 DAY TRIAL // After confirming that their 320 Series solid state drives suffer from a bug that can cause data loss and make the drive to drop in capacity to just 8MB, Intel has now informed its customers that they are working on a firmware fix that should resolve these issues.
Intel's plans were announced on the company's official support forums, by a member of Intel’s NVM Solutions Group, who posted the following message:
“Intel has reproduced ‘Bad Context 13x Error’ utilizing strenuous testing methods. This ‘Bad Context 13x Error’ can be addressed via a firmware update and Intel is in the process of validating the firmware update. A future update will define the schedule to deliver the firmware fix.”
The bug was uncovered more than two months ago after a number of 320 Series SSD owners started a thread on Intel's official support forums to complain about the problems.
These issues can be triggered by power failures or even soft reboots as the SSD tries to reconnect with the SATA port instead of starting a proper shutdown.
So far, there is still no clear solution for this problem, although some users have managed to restore their drives to the original capacity by using different hacks.
Intel's 320 Series solid state drives will continue to be shipped and are available for purchase right now. Users who run into any sort of problems with these drives are suggested to contact their local Intel representative or Intel customer support.
Intel's 320 SSD Series comprises six models with capacities ranging from 40GB to 600GB, that are able to reach sequential read and write speeds of 270MB/s and 220MB/s, respectively, and all these drives use the SATA 3Gbps interface.
Since the second half of May, the drives are backed up by one of the largest warranties in the industry which spans over no less than five years.