3 replies to this topic

[Odins Fist]

I just ran into this issue with a Crucial M4 128 gb SSD....
WARNING...!!!

Beware of a condition where an incorrect response to a SMART counter will cause the m4 drive to become unresponsive after 5184 hours of Power-on time. The drive will recover after a power cycle, however, this failure will repeat once per hour after reaching this point. The condition will allow the end user to successfully update firmware, and poses no risk to user or system data stored on the drive.


After first BSOD and restart every Hour on the Hour this issue hit my system.

Just a good excuse to upgrade to a new Samsung SSD, i'm going to flash the Crucial M4, and use it as a boot/OS drive on an older system..

Yay, I get a new SSD.. Anyone with an older Crucial M4 128gb SSD, this issue could hit you after "5184 hours of Power-on time".

Hope this helps anyone that thinks their SSD just died.

Edited by Odins Fist, 24 May 2014 - 03:26 PM.

[PanzerFurrry]

This is a known issue with specific M4 SSD drives and is only present in the drives with firmware stock version 1 and 2 (AFAIK, from my memory). A simple upgrade to version 3 or later fixes this issue completely (and also provides a significant perfomance boost from v1->v3+).

[Odins Fist]

PanzerFurrry, on 25 May 2014 - 10:39 PM, said:

This is a known issue with specific M4 SSD drives and is only present in the drives with firmware stock version 1 and 2 (AFAIK, from my memory). A simple upgrade to version 3 or later fixes this issue completely (and also provides a significant perfomance boost from v1->v3+).

Most people don't really think about it flashing the firmware on their drives.

Yeah it might be a KNOWN issue, but not a very WELL known issue, I figured I would just throw a heads up if someone else ran into this and didn't know why their M4 decided to bunk out..

I never flashed the firmware on the drive, I didn't bother checking, and it never crossed my mind to do so since it was purchased from a friend that only ran it for 3 months and decided he needed a bigger and different SSD (Corsair Neutron 240gb) I got the Crucial M4 off of him for $30.00, and used for a boot drive.. I just assumed he would have flashed it to the current firmware, but I didn't ask, my fault.. I'm usually on top of those things.

Edited by Odins Fist, 26 May 2014 - 05:45 PM.

[PanzerFurrry]

I completely agree it is not a common issue, since it was only present in the limited timeframe when original M4 discs came out. Later revisions had updated firmware by default, so the problem got buried.

I know I stumbled upon the solution for this completely by accident. First firmware (V1) had issues with UEFI and Linux, which was solved with newer version of Firmware (v3 or something). While reading the patch notes I also noticed this 5184 hour of uptime bug had been resolved. Later that year a friend of mine started having problems with his M4 v2, and after suggesting to upgrade to newer firmware, those issue disappeared.

I know people in general do not upgrade firmware, I didn't mean to be rude by my statement, so I apologize if that got you upset.