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lane 7 years ago
Off-Topic
As I learned this weekend, Intel SSDs
PC and Mac
have a major firmware bug: under certain
Phones power loss conditions, the drive can
Please Help! become completely bricked and
Random/Funny unbootable. This bug will manifest itself
Rip and Stream by displaying a drive size of 8MB and a
serial number of "BAD_CTX 00000130" in
Tablets
the BIOS. The issue was supposedly
This is Only a Test addressed in the latest firmware,
4PC10362, as described here. However,
the bug still persists in the latest version.
The good news is that a bricked drive can
be restored to a working state; the bad
news is that the restoration process will
Mirado destroy any data on the drive. I'm
1,537 posts
compiling all the information for fixing this
problem here in one place since I spent a
lane
few hours looking around for a solution
1,357 posts
and only found bits and pieces of what I
WolfOfOne needed as I went and I wanted this thread
1,311 posts to serve as a useful repository of
information for those who encounter this
nickb64 issue as I did.
840 posts
Restoring an Intel SSD affected by the
MAGZine 8MB bug:
831 posts 1. Download and burn a bootable MHDD
CD using the .iso file found here. (You
s
CrippleCaptain
710 posts can burn an .iso file using the built-in
Windows 7 image burning tool or with a
GTFShadow free tool such as ImgBurn.)
650 posts
2. Place the MHDD CD in your CD-ROM
Addfwyn drive and boot your computer. You may
623 posts have to change your boot order in the
BIOS or press F12 during the boot
Fish_Face_McGee process to force your computer to boot
613 posts
from CD-ROM first.
Helushune 3. When MHDD starts up it will ask you if
612 posts
you want to start with or without SCSI
support. If this means nothing to you, then
Fripplebubby
612 posts either option will work.

4. MHDD will then display a list of drives

JoMate
608 posts installed on your system. Type in the
number corresponding to the affected
Shivoa Intel drive and press Enter.
583 posts
5. A password must be set on the drive
CROM before you can restore it. Type "PWD" at
575 posts the MHDD command prompt and enter
something short and memorable like
IzninjaFTW "password". You will only need to
501 posts
remember this for the duration of this
process. Some BIOSes may lock the
drive during the boot process. If the PWD
command fails, then unplug your SSD
and plug it back in once MHDD has
started to avoid having it locked during
boot.

6. Type "FASTERASE", hit Enter, then

enter the password you set in the
previous step and hit Enter again. The
word "BUSY" at the top of the screen will
flash for a bit. When it stops, the process
is complete.

7. Press F2 to re-detect the drive

information. If all has gone well, you
should see the correct drive information
now displayed at the top of the screen.
8. Type "UNLOCK" and enter your
password to unlock the drive, then
s
"DISPWD" to clear the password
permanently.

9. Remove the disc and reboot your

computer. Your drive should now be back
to its original from-the-factory state. Install
your OS of choice and so forth as usual.

Fish_Face_McGee 7 years ago

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. Both
my SSDs are Intel. Thanks for the info.
Bookmarking this in case they get borked.

Edit: Hm. While I'll need to check what my

laptop has, it appears that my desktop
may not be affected, as I have a 520
Series drive.

stenchlord 7 years ago

Does this still apply to the 330 and 520
drives?

lane 7 years ago

@Fish_Face_McGee:

I kind of wonder if their inability to squash

this bug is part of the reason they moved
to Sandforce controllers for the 520.

Fish_Face_McGee 7 years ago

@stenchlord: Unless Lane knows
differently, I don't believe the 520 is
affected. At the very least, I know the 520
is on a separate firmware naming
convention (and install process) than the
320. I don't know how the 330 differs.

CrippleCaptain 7 years ago

Jeeze man I only just bought an intel SSD
like 5 days ago, now luckily seeing as it
s
was a 520 I'm safe, but not the news I
was looking for this early in.

lane 7 years ago

@stenchlord:

The 330 and 520 use Sandforce

controllers, so I highly doubt it.

GTFShadow 7 years ago

Great post here Lane! This will def come
in handy if others have this issue!

Fish_Face_McGee 7 years ago

Well, shit. My laptop has a 320. Well, I'm
glad I've bookmarked this, anyway.
Thanks for the head's up, Lane!

Edit: I just checked, and I have different

firmware than the supposed newest. My
320 has 4PC1LE04. It appears Lenovo
may have made custom firmware for its
laptops' SSDs, which is crazy.

lane 7 years ago

@Fish_Face_McGee:

If you avoid unexpected shutdowns you

should be okay. I don't know what
happened with mine; we never lost power
at the house or anything. Maybe a hiccup
from the PSU? Anyway, if you have a
charge on your battery it's probably fine.

Fish_Face_McGee 7 years ago

@lane: Yeah, the laptop does a good job
of keeping a charge, so I'm not super
worried. I'm also making sure to sync
everything to SkyDrive, so if I have to
wipe it, I'm OK.
s

Again, I really appreciate the head's up. I

tried briefly Googling the issue, and there
doesn't seem to be too much
documentation about how to handle it, so
I'll know what to do if the laptop drive

Lee at Gillware 6 years ago

Good news: If you run into the bad_ctx
error or 8 MB bug in the Intel 320 Series
SSD, the data can be recovered by us at
Gillware. This is a breakthrough for the
data recovery industry, and we believe we
are the only lab with this ability. Please
contact Gillware Data Recovery if you
need data recovered from Intel SSDs; we
charge only if you decide we were
successful after you review a directory of
recovered files. Sorry for sales pitch, but
wanted to let people know there's now a
sure way to get data back after these
firmware errors.

mfalkvidd 5 years ago

@lane: Thanks a lot for this guide! On my
Asus Z77 (P8Z77-V), first I had to enable
AHCI to enable hotswap, then disable
AHCI (=set BIOS to IDE), make sure the
SATA connector to the disk was
disconnected during boot and connect it
during MHDDs SCSI prompt. I could then
lock the drive with PWD just as described.
My SSD is now back to normal. I hope
this helps if anyone else is getting the
Failed message during PWD.

MODERATOR MAGZine 5 years ago

@mfalkvidd said:

@lane: Thanks a lot for this guide! On

my Asus Z77 (P8Z77-V), first I had to
 enable AHCI to enable hotswap, then
disable AHCI (=set BIOS to IDE), s
make sure the SATA connector to the
disk was disconnected during boot
and connect it during MHDDs SCSI
prompt. I could then lock the drive with
PWD just as described. My SSD is
now back to normal. I hope this helps
if anyone else is getting the Failed
message during PWD.

Glad that you got your drive back up and

running!

Spect 5 years ago

Hi,

Sorry to dig up this old post, but I'm just

hoping someone can help me with a
problem.

I have a 320 Series SSD from Intel and I

had the 8MB bug. I followed the guide
posted here but it wouldn't recognize the
FASTERASE command and the drive
now shows as locked when I boot the PC.
I tried the password I had set as per the
instructions but to no avail.

Is their any way I can recover the drive? It

shows up in "Computer Management"
and it is showing its correct capacity now,
but obviously its still locked.

hoping someone can help me with this

one! thanks. :)

Fritz 3 years ago

Geeez!! Bookmarked this like 4 years ago
because i got an intel SSD (320 series i
believe), and now when it crashed and i
was going to look from my external Linux
for salvageable data before ordering a
new drive I by accident saw the drive was
showing 8MB, foggily remembered
something, put '8MB' into my bookmark-
search, dug this out, and VOILA! Its
exactly the same symptom! Only it says
s
BAD_CTX 00000130 (the last figure is 0
not F). Hopefully, I'll get my drive back
now, put in yesterdays backup, and that's
that :-D:-D:-D Signed up here just to post
this and say: THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! If it doesn't
work out, I'll get back here and edit,
otherwise consider me another late happy
Intel SSD Harddrive Resurrector :-D

Fritz 3 years ago

Heureka, it worked. I have the whole 120
Gigabyte showing, I'm confident the rest
will go smothely. I did not, however, follow
this guide after all but this one:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/409684/i
mage-or-reset-broken-ssd, from an
Ubuntu installation on a usb-stick to
circumvent the 'drive frozen -> hotplug
drive' problem. Worked perfect, at first I
still had 8 MB showing, but after a
shutdown and reboot into Ubuntu, its back
to normal. I'm now recovering from a
previous System-Backup and am very
happy..

grayme 2 years ago

hi, i have an intel ssd 330 on my mac and
replaced it with a new 850 evo... after
removing and exchanging from my mac
and putting it to my new acer laptop,
before doing so, i plugged my old ssd 330
to my mac via external drive to check the
files i left there and boom its gone! :( then
after that i researched for bricked and
found this article...

i tried doing the burning of image of ver

4.5 MHDD, but when i do this on my bios
on my acer laptop. the ISO file is not
working.. its just bypassing the ISO file
and go directly to my windows. is there
something i could do to make the ISO
work? so i can rescue my dead intel 330?
s
thanks in advanced! \

;.(

grayme 2 years ago

h!

i managed to get to the bootable CD. but

then its telling me that i dont have enough
memory..

what should i do?

carsey3 1 year ago

Geeez you saved many of us.!!!

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carsey3 1 year ago s
Is this hard drive guide
http://17oxen.com/best-external-hard-
drives authentic according to your
opinion.
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Very informative thread.
alijoseph 1 year ago
Nice thread on <a
href="http://camerasengine.com/best-
vlogging-cameras-for-
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