Intel's first 34nm SSDs hit by Bios flaw
Summary
Topics
The chipmaker announced last Tuesday that it had started shipping its first SSDs made using the 34nm manufacturing process — a shift that should make the drives faster and cheaper. However, on Friday a US custom computer maker said the Bios defect had forced it and other online retailers to pull the first batch of 34nm SSDs from their sites.
"There was a lot of confusion, but it was clear that something was wrong with these first units — enough so that Newegg and other online vendors had also pulled them entirely from their sites," blogged William George, the customer service lead at Puget Systems. "We too stopped listing them, and began contacting our customers who were expecting us to ship them out this afternoon."
Intel confirmed the flaw on Monday. "If a user has set a Bios drive password on the 34nm SSD, then upon disabling or changing the Bios drive password, followed by powering off/on the computer, the SSD becomes inoperable," the company said in a statement.
George said Intel had initially told Puget that the drives might require a complete reworking. However, the chipmaker said it has come up with a firmware fix that it expects to deliver in about two weeks.
"The root cause has been identified and a new fix is under validation," the company said. It suggested that users who have not yet enabled a Bios drive password should refrain from doing so until the firmware update comes through.
This article was originally published by ZDNet UK.
Talkback Most Recent of 11 Talkback(s)
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That's right
PC users are still hobbled with 1970s BIOS technology.
frgough28th Jul 2009 -
Why
fix something that is not broken?
Oh yeah and btw the EFI system that Apple uses was developed by HP and Intel and Apple licence it from them.
And My Dell laptop uses it too!
jdbukis@...28th Jul 2009 -
EFI
So Apple rely on an old MSDOS FAT32 file system to start their computers, from a hidden partition.
Never trusted BIOS passwords ever.
Keithgl29th Jul 2009 -
RE: Intel's first 34nm SSDs hit by Bios flaw
Yea! A password scheme that really works!
bump91128th Jul 2009 -
LOL
haha...
Been_Done_Before28th Jul 2009 -
glad they caught it soon.
i hope everyone is offereing full refunds and a guarantee for first delivery as an option if they desire the fixed ones.Been_Done_Before28th Jul 2009 -
fixed one?
They are issuing a patch - the physical drives won't be altered.... or did I read that totally wrong.
Fark28th Jul 2009 -
Yes, patched not replaced.
Doesn't mean that it necessarily wasn't a flaw in the hardware, just that it was fixable from the firmware. Like when Dell DVD drives were making noise and they put out a firmware patch to slow the drives down. For all you know, the update could disable passwords, omit security permissions from system portions of the drive, or anything.
Socratesfoot29th Jul 2009 -
RE: Intel's first 34nm SSDs hit by Bios flaw
I'd gladly take a couple of their hands for "testing" purposes, even though i wouldn't use a bios password ever.
I Hate Malware29th Jul 2009 -
RE: Intel's first 34nm SSDs hit by Bios flaw
Hmm just an afterthought, what happens to the stored info on those un-usable drives, can it be repaired?I Hate Malware29th Jul 2009 -
RE: Intel's first 34nm SSDs hit by Bios flaw
who sets HD passwords in the BIOS anyway? It's not the most secure form of encryption. Odd that Intel is making such a hoopla over this, they've shipped CPUs with far worse bugs. I wonder if it's a PR thing.
chefp6th Aug 2009
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