Intel's SSD 320 series offer some great storage solutions for enthusiasts. For those with the budget, getting 600GB in solid state is quite impressive – of course, that is until it fails and reports itself as a cry-worthy 8MB.
A bug that afflicts the entire 320 line can cause an SSD to revert to 8MB following a crash or power failure. The Register quotes a couple of users from the PC Review forum:
"Be wary of the new Intel SSD 320 series. Currently, there's a bug in the controller that can cause the device to revert to 8MB during a power failure," wrote one user. "AFAIK they have not yet publicly announced it, and won't have a firmware fix ready for release until the end of July."
Another posted, "I just had this happen to me. Had the 600G model for a month. Then the drive crashed and now DISKPART shows 8MB for that drive. SMART attributes are gone... The drive worked great for a month!"
Fortunately, Intel did eventually acknowledge that it is aware of these "customer sightings" on the 320 SSD series. Intel isn't yet revealing more about the nature of the bug, or when a fix is coming.
If you have a 320 SSD, we recommend that you backup all of your data ASAP.
