SSD Firmware update. Why is this so hard?

[dragmor]

Why is this so hard? I'm building a new PC for a friend, everything goes together easily, windows 7 64bit is installed, drivers, patches, etc. Then I go to update the firmware on the gskill falcon 64gb SSD. I visit the forums download the update and follow the instructions.

1) I plug in the jumper.
2) I pull apart my current PC (NF3 chipset, XP 32bit), add the SSD, neither windows or your app can see the SSD. Bios sees the drive YATAPDONG. No luck
3) I take the DVD out of my laptop (780G chipset, Vista HP 32bit) and plug in the SSD. Windows doesn't see it, neither can the app, Disk Manager wants to format the drive. Bios sees the drive YATAPDONG. No luck
4) I copy all of the data from my PC's secondary drive to a USB drive. Takes 3hrs.
5) I take the secondary hardisk and plug it into the PC I'm building and install Windows 7 HP 64bit, install the drivers, patch the OS, etc
6) Add the SSD. The OS and your app can't see the drive. Windows Disk Manager wants to format and initialize the drive. Which I even tried but it doesn't do anything it just hangs.


So I've spent an entire day on this, its been 41c in the shade and I'm a little pissed off, why is this so hard. What am I doing wrong, why won't windows pickup the drive. I'm not upset about it not working with the Nforce3 chipset, but why can't I get it to work on the new PC? Is their a problem with the app and AMD's SB710?


Side note
1) It would be nice if you just had an ISO I could burn that would boot and do this. Since at the moment you need a 2nd PC or HD with an Windows OS installed (which I can't get to work).
2) How can you tell what version of firmware your SSD is running?


I posted this to support 4 days ago now with no response so far, as the admin has finally authorised my account to post in this forums I'm putting it here too.

So forum members what am I doing wrong? The wiper tool works. I notice in the upgrade screen shots the drive appears as a removable drive. On my machines nada.

[G.SKILL]

it's normal to see it shown as YATAxxxxx while you plug the jumper into the Falcon SSD, because it is in factory mode, not normal mode
and you'll have to make sure your Falcon SSD is installed in disk 0 in disk manager before you upgrade the firmware
thanks


G.S

[sirius69]

you can see what firmware you have on it by installing HDtune and click info... you can also see it in the HD properties,
seem like it's not going together so easily if it's a new SSD it might have the proper firmware on it already..


sorry for not reading the whole thing. it's a friend's PC but you copy YOUR data to a USB..mmm confusing a bit.. as gskill said don't try to install an OS on the SSD with the jumper ON.

My last advice, just use the SSD with the default firmware for now.. and yes it's normal to grow very old while waiting for an answer from gskill support .

[dragmor]

and you'll have to make sure your Falcon SSD is installed in disk 0 in disk manager before you upgrade the firmware

This is the bit I was missing. It would be nice if something like that was in the update notes/post. It's kind of important since nothing works without it.

[dragmor]

sorry for not reading the whole thing. it's a friend's PC but you copy YOUR data to a USB..mmm confusing a bit.. as gskill said don't try to install an OS on the SSD with the jumper ON.

Since the update process requires another copy of windows I needed a drive I could install windows 7 onto in the new machine that wasn't the SSD.

The only available solution was to take the second hard disk out of my shuttle and use that, but to do this I had to copy the data off it to an external storage and reformat then install windows 7. Not the quickest of processes.

[G.SKILL]

This is the bit I was missing. It would be nice if something like that was in the update notes/post. It's kind of important since nothing works without it.

how does it work after placing it to disk 0?


G.S

[dragmor]

Its picks up the drive, you hit update and it displays dos prompt that shows its working and finished.

A couple of interesting things however.
1) The drive is 64GB but when I ran HDTune in YATA mode the drive shows up as 128GB.
2) If you go to apply the firmware a second time then you get a message saying the drive is not compatible (not the exact message I'm doing this from the top of my head). Maybe it should say your firmware is already current?

Also the plastic L part of the SATA power connector on the drive has snapped of, barely used. Doesn't effect anything, I just expected higher quality on an expensive drive.

[Ginsok]

Its picks up the drive, you hit update and it displays dos prompt that shows its working and finished.

A couple of interesting things however.
1) The drive is 64GB but when I ran HDTune in YATA mode the drive shows up as 128GB.
2) If you go to apply the firmware a second time then you get a message saying the drive is not compatible (not the exact message I'm doing this from the top of my head). Maybe it should say your firmware is already current?

Also the plastic L part of the SATA power connector on the drive has snapped of, barely used. Doesn't effect anything, I just expected higher quality on an expensive drive.

64GB turning into 128GB? I'd like to know how that's happening too. I think we can definitely add all this information to a continually upgrading database.

[skittle]

I find that instead of having a separate copy of windows or separate computer, its easier to create a winpe image and boot from that. Its like running a live session of windows from a USB flash drive or CD-ROM.