Kingston is warning customers of some of its Solid State Drives that a technical issue has been discovered that could lead to the drive failing in a small percentage of cases. To address the issue, Kingston recommends all customers of these hard drives upgrade the drive’s firmware. The firmware correction is to correct the ssd hanging in the BIOS and boot failure.
From Kingston’s Support:
We have discovered a technical issue with our SSDNow V100 which could result in drive failure. While we have observed this issue in only a small percentage of drives, Kingston strongly recommends that a firmware update be applied to all V100 drives to prevent possible failure.
The firmware update to fix the technical issue is available via Kingston Technical Support. As with any firmware update, we recommend that you back up your data prior to applying the firmware revision.
Solid-State Drives with these part numbers are included in the firmware update:
SV100S2/64GZ, SV100S2D/64GZ, SV100S2N/64GZ
SV100S2/128GZ, SV100S2D/128GZ, SV100S2N/128GZ
SV100S2/256GZ, SV100S2N/256GZ, SV100S2N/256GZ
SV100S2/64G, SV100S2D/64G, SV100S2N/64G
SV100S2/128G, SV100S2D/128G, SV100S2N/128G
SV100S2/256G, SV100S2N/256G, SV100S2N/256G
The fix comes in the form of a 3MB .iso file. You download the firmware update, a .iso file, and burn it to a CD-R. Then, upon rebooting the computer, you boot from the CD which will launch a FreeDOS session and automatically prompt for the firmware upgrade. Once it completes, you eject the CD and reboot. You can find a complete walkthrough of this process in the Firmware Update Guide that Kingston Support provides.
Here’s your Mighty Convenient Disclaimer Of The Day:
Please note: Kingston is not responsible for damages or data loss arising from the download and/or installation of the SSD firmware.
So, if you don’t apply the update, the SSD could fail and if you apply the update, it could fail. So much for solid state drives being more stable since they lack moving parts. Also, Hmm… the same drives that had the mail-in rebate are the same ones that have risk of failure. Hmm…