If you jumped on board with the newer, cheaper solid state drives from Intel, be careful.
The company has confirmed a corruption issue related to the drives' BIOS drive passwords, DailyTech reports. Users who set a password, then disable or change it, will inadvertently render the drive inoperable, with all its data gone forever. The corruption error does not affect computer, operating system or server passwords.
To be clear, we're talking about Intel's X-25M line, which now use a 34 nm process for decreases in latency over old models. Intel released the new models last week, and slashed prices up to 60 percent from the drives' predecessors.
A firmware update should be available within two weeks, but Intel has delayed new shipments until the problem can be fixed. In the meantime, the company is advising customers not to change or disable their drives' BIOS passwords. Online retailers such as NewEgg have pulled the product from their systems.
Intel's response seems impressive from a customer service standpoint. Word of the issue popped up late last week, and though the problem won't affect every user, Intel acknowledged what was happening and took steps to prevent people from losing their drive and their data. It wasn't the speediest response on the books, but it shows that the company won't continue to ship faulty products and rely on firmware updates to fix them.
