About a week or two ago Crucial released a new firmware update for the Crucial M4 SSDs, the firmware update is 010G. Last week I updated my M4 towards that firmware as I was still running the old firmware that could crash at 5000 used hours of the SSD ( a known and fixed problem). If it ain't broke, then don't try to fix it, however with that 4000 or 5000 something used hours bug in mind I figured, it is time to update the firmware. With a backup in place I re-flashed the SSD, all data was still there which made it a lovely silent upgrade. But ...
Once I posted about the firmware there was word in our forums that some Guru3D users had the problem that after a reboot or a certian while the SSD was missing from the system and BIOS.
Hunting down the issue I learned that it actually is a massive problem. The Crucial forums are invested with users complaining about this. The root of the issue is that the new firmware has a problem with UEFI based BIOSes (the new flashy GUI based BIOSes). If you have a motherboard with UEFI in combo with the 010G Firmware chances are pretty good that at random after a reboot your SSD is missing -- non detectable in the BIOS. So the secondary scenario would be at power loss or a system crash, this could drop the SSD from your system and it will not be recognized in the BIOS anymore.
Today after running this firmware upgrade for over a week it was my turn, I had a system crash and after a hardware reset, the SSD was gone rogue, missing while not detectable in the BIOS.
There are steps you try to recover the SSD. Windows desktop users follow these steps.
- Connect the SSD towards power only. Once you have the drive connected and sitting idle, simply power on the computer and wait for 20 minutes. We recommend that you don't use the computer during this process.
- Power the computer down and disconnect the drive for 30 seconds.
- Repeat steps 1 and 2 one more time.
- Reconnect the drive normally, and boot the computer to your operating system.
This method so far has worked for some and not for others, me personally still trying to revive the SSD. If you are able to revive the SSD and thus are using a EUFI BIOS based motherboard, then drop down towards firmware 000F which I made available at that link.
We are clueless as to why Crucial is still serving this Firmware actively at their website.
