Crucial M4 SSD Firmware Updates

[Ya93sin]

For anyone with this SSD, like myself :

Crucial boosts M4 SSD speed

Will TTL do an update on his review maybe? I'll update you guys when I do the update tonight on the improvements.

Firmware here

Thoughts?

I'm personally pretty happy with my SSD anyway, and if I'm going to get even better performance, then I'll be even happier. Not that it will make such a difference now

Firmware upgrade guide

Review of firmware upgrade

 

[Ya93sin]

Before:

After:

Upgrading process is a piece of cake, can work out the percentages, but first, dinner.

 

[rishisen]

i would be very interested in what you find, ive got two of these in seperate pcs, but im a tad bit worried ill screw it up , it wa so hard to get the 128gb to work with my asus rampage 3 gene board and hate the idea of changing to ide ect as it sometimes makes it impossible to use the ssd boot and windows needs a reinstall

just saw you figures sounds very good did you encounter any problems and do you have to switch to ide?

 

[Ya93sin]

Basically

1. Backup (just in case)
2. Burn .iso image to CD/DVD
3. Turn off the PC
4. Disconnect all other SATA cables from motherboard, and plug the M4 into any one of the first 3 "normal" SATAII ports
5. Now get the BIOS up, if you have the same BIOS style as me, its Advanced Options, then the SATA Configuration part, you must set the mode to "IDE mode".
6. One time boot the DVD drive (i.e. ahead of Windows boot manager)
7. Will load the files, then type "yes" (make sure its lower case) when the prompt appears, hit Enter
8. It will update, and say you're now on 0009 , then last line is A:\ or something like that
9. Turn off the PC (by holding down the power button)
10. Put all the other SATA devicees back in, put your M4 back in the Marvell controller space
11. In the BIOS set the SATA back to AHCI mode
12. Boot Windows normally, the SSD configures itself, you restart
13. All done and dusted

This is literally the guide condensed, read it yourself though, things like BIOS/Boot passwords need to be removed.

The whole upgrade process is designed not to erase any of your data, so you should be fine. Backup jic though.

The switch to IDE is temporary, you won't ever have to boot up Windows in IDE mode. Windows needs nothing, but you restart when you boot it up just after successfully upgrading firmware.

Results:

Sequential read: +8% read +6% write

512K: -2% read +34% write

4K: +4% read +7% write

4K QD32: neg. read neg. read

 

[rishisen]

thanks for the advice mate, will try and have a go on the weekend that is if i am not on call, thanks again,

oh by backup all i ve done is copy all the files over into a folder on my hd is that ok or do you recomend anything different

good day

 

[Ya93sin]

Acronis image will create an image of the hard drive, which essentially just makes sure nothing is left out, including the entire registry.

Restoring an image backup is as simple as copying the image back to the SSD, no need to reinstall Windows or change anything.

Anyway, so long as you follow the instructions carefully, you can't really go wrong

 

[Ya93sin]

Interesting review on the firmware upgrades to the Vertex and M4

Prices are going down on these things all the time it seems.