Firmware update for Mushkin 240GB Chronos Deluxe SSD?

[VirtualLarry]

I downloaded the firmware update program, extracted it, and ran it as admin.

It found my SSD, but it shows current firmware ID as 502ABBF0.

The updated firmware file is 5-0-2.

Are these the same, is this one already sporting the new firmware? Someone in the recent reviews on Newegg said that their SSD shipped with the 5-0-2 firmware.

If those firmwares are the same, I would rather not update mine. Anyone know?

 

[OlafSicky]

I would say it's the same based on the first number

 

[boochi]

Larry, I just got that same drive from Newegg last Thursday and mine came with version 3 something. After I upgraded it showed something like what you posted. $238 for this drive was one hell of a steal, hope it lasts unlike my OCZ's.

 

[Mars999]

I have the 120GB Deluxe version for about a year now and LOVE it!!!!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm, I had plugged the 240GB SSD into my top docking back on my Rosewill Blackhawk. When I first went into Disk Management, it asked me to initialize it, so I did.

I've had the drive just sitting there, plugged in, for the last few days, doing nothing.

I decided I wanted to benchmark the drive, so I went into Disk Management, and created a volume, with quick-format.

It was five minutes ago, and it still says "formatting". I thought I heard some sort of BIOS-like beep a minute ago though, and I'm not sure why. I'm also getting some strange pauses in my words appearing when I type this in my browser, and I don't have anything intensive going on in the background.

I'm not sure if Windows is TRIMming the entire 240GB during the quick format, or what's going on here, or if the SATA cable that is part of the SATA dock on my case doesn't handle 6Gbit/sec connections.

My internet radio keeps skipping now too.

Edit: I noticed clicking on "Hotswap!" doesn't show my 240GB anymore. Wierd. It's like the system lost connection with it.

Edit: If it won't format, I guess it's toast, right? Darn, brand-new drive too.

Edit: Opened HDTune free edition, started the "Error scan", it's been several minutes, and it still hasn't scanned a block yet.

Edit: So I followed this guide to Secure Erase the drive.
http://mackonsti.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/ssd-secure-erase-ata-command/

Booted to Linux, seemed to complete the commands just fine, and even created a FAT32 filesystem on the drive.

But I left the drive in when booting Windows 7, and then it hung at the "Starting Windows" logo, it just sat there.

So I hit reset, unplugged the drive, and am now booted to Windows 7.

Trying to figure this out. The drive seems to work in Linux, but not 7?

Fiddling with it some more, now it won't even detect in BIOS. Guess it's toast.

Edit: How I figured that out, was that I was going to boot off of a Win7 disc and install to the SSD, in case my current software environment was the problem. But when I went into the BIOS to set the boot order to the 240GB SSD, it was no longer showing up. I had noticed that on some of the prior reboots, it was hanging for a short while on the AHCI BIOS drive-detection screen, waiting for the Mushkin to show up.

 

[Coup27]

What were you saying in the other thread about Mushkin being as good as Crucial, Intel or Samsung?

 

[Mars999]

I do think they are good drives, their rating on Newegg is top notch. EVERYONE has some bad product leave their factories...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm, maybe it's not completely dead. I hot-plugged it into my system, into the top docking bay on my Rosewill Blackhawk again, and it detected it in Device Manager. So I went to Disk Management and tried to create a volume and quick-format it as NTFS. It seems to hang again.

Edit: Hmm. Sometimes the HD light is on solid, and sometimes it blinks, semi-rapidly.

But it sure is taking a damn long to time to quick-format. Is it scanning the entire surface of the drive? I didn't think it did that with a quick-format? I know that it sends a TRIM command for the entire drive though. With my OCZ Agility 30GB, that full-disk TRIM takes about 20-30 seconds.

Edit: Wow! The format completed. Sure took a LONG time. I wouldn't have expected that for an SSD, they are supposed to be faster than a HD, not slower.

Edit: Ok, so I decided to bust out CDM. I selected "500MB", 1 pass, and the 224GB (240GB) SSD.
Clicked to run all tests, and it has been sitting at "Preparing" for the last two, maybe three minutes.

Edit: I stopped CDM, waited for it to finish and delete whatever it had written (took another minute or two). Then I started HDTune 2.55 free, and did a benchmark. It sat for like a minute or two, and said "min 0.0MB/sec"/"max 0.0MB/sec". After a few minutes, I got one spike that said "157.0MB/sec". Then it was back to 0.0.

Edit: I cancelled the benchmark, and went to the error scan. It's been several minutes, and it hasn't even scanned one block yet.

 

[Mars999]

Sure you don't have a bad SATA connector? Try a different port, wire... odd...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Tried updating the firmware using the updater, in case it was corrupt.

The icon next to the drive got a red X across it, and when I clicked on the X, I get a message: "FATAL_ERROR: Firmware download failed with error: (ECode: 00000057)."

 

[Mars999]

did you check out the mushkin forums? They have good support their from Sean...

http://mushkingames.com/phpbb2/

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, well, well. It seems that the problem may well have been that Rosewill Blackhawk HD dock. I unplugged my old 30GB SSD, plugged in the 240GB Mushkin, and I was able to install Windows 7 64-bit HP, and it seems to be working now.

Interesting, since I had been using a SATA HD in that dock, and hadn't had any issues at all. Maybe it was a SATA 3G HD?

Makes me wonder, though, about using it with current-gen HDs, if the dock doesn't support SATA 6G.

The funny part is, the SATA cable that I'm using for the SSD, was specced out at 1.5Mbit/sec on the cable's box. It's SATA (1)! Not even SATA 6G. Yet it works fine, and the cable that Rosewill used, does NOT work fine.

Edit: Amazingly, it's going to encrypt the entire 224GiB in less than an hour, probably around 40 minutes. Now that's speed!

Edit: Uh-oh, perhaps all is not well, it just paused the whole system for like 2 seconds, was non-responsive.
Don't know if that was the drive, freeing up more blocks to write to, or what.

Edit: Hmm, three long pauses so far, perhaps I should change out the SATA cable for one that came with the mobo.

Edit: A lot more little "pauses" near the end of encrypting the drive. A little bit worried about them, really affects the feel of using the computer, when everything grinds to a halt for 2 seconds.

I'm thinking, I shouldn't have partitioned the full capacity of the drive, I should have left some unallocated space at the end for spare area. I mean, I thought the mfg already kind of accounted for that, but perhaps I should have left some more, for performance reasons so the drive doesn't get "gridlocked"?

 

[Mars999]

Ah yeah you need a SATA 3 cable man to get full speed out of the new SATA 3 drives... and from the sounds of it you sound wipe that SSD drive and start over...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, it seems that the story isn't over yet.

I used that 240GB Mushkin SSD in my rig for a month, without any major issues. But then I decided to swap my rig back out, so I booted into Linux and Secure Erased it, and put it on the shelf.

Fast-forward to last night, I had purchased an Acer Aspire One netbook, and wanted to put an SSD in. That was the only SSD I had freely available, so I figured, why not.

Last night, I installed the SSD, and installed Win7, and all of the drivers and apps from Acer's web site. I thought it was running OK.

Today, I took it with me, and in Starbucks, it froze up for like 5-10 seconds once, no mouse movement at all. It recovered though.

Tonight, I was using it, and suddenly, the screen was flashing and redrawing strangely. I managed to finally force it to shutdown. When it rebooted, the Windows logo was on the screen for a LONG time (for an SSD machine). It finally bluescreened, then auto-rebooted, and prompted me to do a Windows Recovery. I did that, and during the loading of the recovery tools, it gave me an Unexpected I/O error, said it was probably something wrong with the HD.

So I did a force shutoff, and then when I restarted and went into BIOS setup, it didn't detect ANY HD.

So this time, it seems truly DOA.

Shame. Hopefully the RMA process isn't too painful, since I had a friend purchase it for me.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Ok, now I'm really confused. I'm starting to think that perhaps the drive is overheating somehow or something.

I plugged the "dead" drive into my Rosewill Blackhawk SATA HDD dock (connected to a SATA2 port on my P35 mobo), and Windows detected it fine. In fact, Windows Explorer showed a list of files that were on it, including my prior install.

So I did a "Properties" - "Tools" - "Error checking" on the drive, and with the first box checked, it went through, and said it fixed an error. So then I'm trying it again with both boxes checked.

I'm really not sure what to think about this. How could the drive not be detected in my Netbook, but the original HDD was fine, and now the SSD IS detected in my desktop.

I don't think that the chipset in the Netbook supports SATA6G.

The wires connecting the SSD to the mobo, are these thin flat ribbon cables, like they use in laptops to connect the keyboard, etc. Not a proper SATA cable. Not that that would make that much of a difference.

Anyways, while the SSD is checkdsking in my SATA dock on my desktop, it must be having issues reading it, because my internet radio is skipping out.

Edit: The second Checkdsk operation, with the "Scan for bad sectors" checked off, took up all my RAM (8GB) and then some (10GB commit charge). It said no errors were found. But now, when I click on the SSD in Windows Explorer, it just scrolls the green bar along the top, and doesn't find the drive.

Edit: I had to hit RESET on my main machine after Checkdisk'ing the Mushkin SSD, my main machine wouldn't safely eject the drive, and wouldn't shutdown either.

I put the SSD into my Netbook again, and it ran Startup Repair successfully, and then said that it was restoring from a restore point. I lost some of my installed apps, but it booted, finally. So then I reinstalled my apps. I got a few minor app hangs, but overall, it was working. I used it for a few hours, then plugged it in to charge and went to sleep. When I woke up, it was at a BIOS PXE boot screen, and said "no bootable devices". I forced power-off, and then booted it again, and it couldn't find the HDD (SSD) in the BIOS again. Bottom of netbook was warm, not too warm to touch, but warm.

This Mushkin SSD is the flakiest thing that I think I've seen, as far as computer parts go.

Edit: Just as I suspected, I left the netbook off for a few minutes, to let it cool down, and now the SSD is detected again in BIOS. However, when I tried to boot it, it said no boot device found again, strange.