Avoid Problems When Speeding Up Your PC With An SSD
I wrote in this post how I upgraded my SSD from a smaller one that I had upgraded to from a conventional 7200rpm hard drive to massively speed up my PC.
What I haven’t reported on yet (I don’t think) is the need to IMMEDIATELY upgrade the firmware on your SSD before you get any real data on it, or while you still have the old hard drive (or SSD) that you just cloned it from.
Products in retail distribution are always behind a little ways and yes, products get released before all the kinks are worked out.
Why You Want To Upgrade SSD Firmware Right Away
You always want to have a current backup when you do a firmware upgrade just in case things go South and you lose data. It hasn’t happened to me (yet) but I make extensive use of UPS’s to make sure power doesn’t go out at just the wrong time, either.
My first SSD worked just fine for a long time, then I all of a sudden started getting the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death). A quick Google search revealed that this was a problem after XXXXXXXXX number of reads and writes to the Crucial SSD drive I was using.
FANTASTIC! (Not!)
Fortunately, a firmware upgrade was available for that SSD, was painless to download and install (again, with a current backup just in case) and the BSOD problem went away for good.
Other Drive Problems SSD Firmware Related?
With this current SSD I have had two issues, and due to procrastination they have been left go until this morning.
- The PC seems to “hang” more than it used to when – considering it’s Windows 7 64bit with 8GB RAM and an SSD – I didn’t think it should, or even did with the old SSD
- When I would reboot (not that often) Windows would usually claim the drive needed to be checked, something that ordinarily is only an issue after an abnormal system restart – like when the power goes out on you or the machine hangs and you hold the on/off button to force a restart; none of which had been happening with me.
So I checked Crucials website for SSD firmware upgrades, found one for my SSD and this morning finally applied it after making sure my data was backed up-to-date with SOS Online Backup.
Time will tell if it solves either of the minor issues noted above, but I certainly feel better having it done. I trust the Crucial brand and know I have a rock solid drive now.
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