Intel Corp. this week resumed shipments of its second-generation X25-M solid-state drives (SSDs) after it discovered a firmware bug and had to correct it. Intel’s partners will either have to re-flash existing stock of the X25-M based on 34nm NAND flash memory or send the SSDs back to Intel.

The new firmware that corrects the bug which affected early batches of Intel X25-M SSDs is available at the company’s web-site. The chipmaker advices end-users to precisely follow the re-flash instructions and also keep in mind that firmware update is done entirely at end-users’ own risk.

Late in July Intel had to stop shipments of its new SSDs because of a bug. According to numerous reports citing Intel, when a user sets a password in BIOS to limit accessibility to the drive and then either changes or removes it, data becomes corrupted. If a password is not set, the error does not occur. In order to fix the issue, Intel needs to update the firmware on its X25-M second generation SSDs, which effectively suspends shipments.

Compared to its previous 50nm version, the new Intel X25-M offers 25% reduction in latency for quicker data access. Besides, Intel X25-M delivers 6600 4KB write IOPS and up to 35000 read IOPS. The original Intel X25-M features up to 250MB/s sequential read speed and up-to 70MB/s sequential write speed and offers 1.2 million hours MTBF. Actual performance figures for the new X25-M were not revealed now.

Intel X25-M 80GB costs $225 for quantities up to 1000 units, the 160GB version is priced at $440 for quantities up to 1000 units.

Tags: Intel, SSD, 34nm, X25-M, Failures