Updating Sandisk SSD Firmware

T4rd

Fully [H]
Joined
Apr 8, 2009
Messages
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I'm trying to update the firmware on my Sandisk 120 GB Extreme SSD (model SDSSDX120GG25) and having some issues.

Relevant information:

PC: Alienware M11x R2 (no optical drive)
SSD: Sandisk 120 GB Extreme SSD / model SDSSDX120GG25 on firmware R112

I downloaded and installed Sandisk's SSD Toolkit software (available here), used the firmware updater tool in the software to create a bootable USB drive with the new firmware on it, boot off of thumb drive and get the following message on my laptop:

RD5xbGXl.jpg


The ISOs are available here for you to burn to a disc too, but I don't have an optical drive on this laptop.

I've tried searching on Google and here on [H] for other people who've had this issue and am not finding anything specific to my issue. But from what I've found, this update tool is using an old Linux kernel or something and the boot disk is setup to boot like a floppy disc, which (obviously) isn't supported by this Linux kernel. I'm not a Linux guru by any means and have no idea what I need to do in order to make this drive bootable. So any help is appreciated!

PS. Just for anyone curious as to why I want to update the firmware, it's because this drive really seems to run and bench considerably slower than it should. So I'm hoping a firmware update will alleviate that a bit. Here's what I'm seeing on this drive that should be getting 500+MB/s read/write:

tL51Oi6l.png


If you have any other theories or tips to fix its bad performance, I'm all ears! I have confirmed that TRIM is enabled in the command prompt and the SATA operation mode is in AHCI in the BIOS.

Thanks!
 
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Could be that you're on SATA2 as your laptop is a bit older.
 
"48195 K - BAD" means it's not aligned properly. Mis-aligned partitions on an SSD can reduce performance. This is the first thing you should fix.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1226963/how-to-properly-re-align-your-ssd-hdd-partitions

Ahh, yeah, I caught that a couple weeks ago when I ran that test, but forgot about it when I went to make this thread. So thanks for that catch and info!

I fixed it with the MiniTool Partition Wizard that was recommended in that thread and it did indeed help out a bit, esp with the seq writes:

IkxDOFkl.png


Still not as fast as I hoped it would get up to though and I'd still like to update the firmware just to improve its TRIM support and know that it's running optimally..

Could be that you're on SATA2 as your laptop is a bit older.

Yeah, I thought about that too and hadn't looked it to up confirm that my laptop was only SATA 2, but I just did and it is indeed on SATA 2. So I googled the differences between them to see if I could get a rough estimate as to how much SATA 2 would be bottlenecking it and according to Sandisk, I should still see around 280 MB/s seq read/writes on this SSD. I'm not way too far off on seq reads, but seq writes I'm not even half that still. Would they be exaggerating their numbers that much?

Thanks for the help so far!
 
I'd be trying the Intel chipset drivers and enable write caching and disable the write-back buffer.
 
I'd be trying the Intel chipset drivers and enable write caching and disable the write-back buffer.

Yeah, I'm on the latest chipset drivers according to Intel's site. I just checked and write caching was already enabled. I'm not sure if the write-back buffer is disabled, but I assume you're referring to the write-caching buffer (that's an option on the same menu as the write caching option) and it was indeed disabled already as well.

Any more advice is much appreciated.
 
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