Crucial M4 009 Firmware update

Crucial.com Product Downloads - Firmware Updates

Anyone bite the bullet yet?

Release Date: 08/25/2011

 

Doesn't sound like enough change to get me to update from 0002...Sounds like minor changes when you read between the lines. Tweaking is good, but I say if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

 

I updated after seeing the speed increases. It booted windows about 1 second faster than the 002 firmware, and bechmarks show 500+ reads now. Seems stable so far but in all honestly I cant tell much of a difference.

 

well it matters a lot for the people who had incompatible chipsets, about to install, hope it works with my G53SW now!

edit: just updated, works with my chipset now!

 

Ah, missed the chipset part, that is indeed important! All I saw were the speed bumps.

Perhaps I'll flash but only if others see real gains (aside from those having compatibility issues that this fixed).

 

well i can't comment on the boot speed since with f0002, i've had to enter bios, save changes exit everytime i want to launch my freakin computer so i was honestly amazed when i just pressed the power button and 22 sec rainmeter was running on my desktop. no harm in updating unless you don't have any spare CDs lying around (im sure you can make a bootable USB as well).

 

Yea the 5MB ISO killing a CD stinks...but I hardly use CDs anymore and have a bunch of el-cheapos floating around that'll do the job. I'll think on it.

 

I am getting stuck on "INITDISK" when I run it off the CD I burned. Any ideas?

 

Anyone try flashing with a USB yet? I haven't got an optical drive anymore, and cracking open the case etc for a miniscule performance gain seems quite the waste.

 

Most of these image are just DOS so it should not have any problem so long you can boot off the USB and can still see the program(after boot up).

 

Tried flashing with USB and got the same problem.. stuck at INITDISK.

 

i can imagine people wanting to boot from USBs to save discs, i bought a 100 spindle of CDs back in 2004, thinknig i was going to put them to great use and today, i have 91 remaining. utilizing 1% of the disc and making it unusable after isn't something i favor, but i have no use for CDs anyways

 

I updated with cd without any trouble.

 

Yo,i had the same problem as you last night,tried countless times including changing BIOS from ATA to RAID to AHCI.Finally managed to go past the infernal screen after UNPLUGGING all USB devices before doing the update.I reckon its my external HDD confusing the BIOS when trying to boot,even though i already changed boot up priority to CD/DVD.Try unplugging & see if it works.

 

Sorry I didn't report back earlier. I was able to get it to work last night doing just as you said, shinob. My usb modem was conflicting with it. Kudos!

 

@V10Ace,glad i could help,at least now we are aware why firmware updates should be done by unplugging all USB peripherals from the lappy.Enjoy the update.

 

mine worked with the CD firmware update, with ~7 USB devices plugged in :\

 

OMG this is sick !

I had to do 2 things (temporarily)

1) Change AHCI to Compatible
2) UEFI Only to Legacy BIOS

Upgraded in seconds.

My results (on a X220 laptop with Core i5 2520m)

497 MB/s sequential read
197MB/s sequential write

25MB/s 4k reads

Amazing boost from a firmware upgrade !!!
Crucial is now at the top of my SSD list for performance/reliability/price.

EDIT:

It FEELS a LOT FASTER. Especially the boot. Somehow my BIOS is faster too

 

Found the following bench in case someone is interested (this are desktops),

 

results with new 0009 firmware on crucial m4 128GB:

- firmware 0002:

- firmware 0009:


Absolutely love this drive!!!

 

Updated mine to FW 0009. Nice boosts across the board on reads, basically the same on writes for me. Still have bad 4k performance (17 MB/s read, 28ish write, both about 50% of what they ought to be), but the drive has performed well feelings-wise so I am not digging too hard at the reason behind the 4k random issues. Everything else is in line with what others get on a 256GB M4.

 

I got my 4k's to go from 14mb/s to 22mb/s changing the power options as suggested in this guide, maybe it will help you if you wish to try it out.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...s-4-5-965-chipsets-jjb-tweak.html#post6700345

 

* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 498.531 MB/s
Sequential Write : 263.660 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 411.617 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 262.101 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 16.330 MB/s [ 3986.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 50.446 MB/s [ 12315.9 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 204.245 MB/s [ 49864.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 231.598 MB/s [ 56542.5 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 30.5% (143.2/469.6 GB)] (x5) <all 1Fill="" 0xFF,=""></all>
Date : 2011/08/28 20:20:13
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

 

I just installed 0009, I hadn't gotten around to 0002 so I was hoping for increased speeds. The install took less than a minute and worked even though I installed it on sata 6 port instead of a 3 since I didn't want to pull the side off my desktop. Speeds are about the same from what I remember but nowhere near yours... I can't even crack 300mb/s on the sequential speeds, my 4K read speed is the only one that is faster, and the final one at the queue depth of 32 is only around 30mb/s read where as your result is over 300???

 

Is your SSD aligned?
Could you please post a screenshot of AS SSD benchmark on that drive?

 

Not sure if its aligned or not. I did a clean install on Win 7 and I have ACHI chosen in my bios. I am using a Marvell 6g port on the center of my motherboard instead of the 2 included on the side (maybe that's the problem just haven't switched it out yet). Here is an AS run, didnt close anything in the background but its showing about the same results.

 

Maybe you need to install drivers for the Marvell controller. You do not seem to be in AHCI mode.

 

Thanks for the help, I just did some more digging in my bios and I just uploaded a pic that shows why I was a little confused. There was a separate section for the marvell controller in the bios and it was indeed set on IDE. It was in a totally different section from all the other sata ports. My results are much improved but still rather low, now I think that I installed Win 7 while in IDE mode...would that make a performance difference now that it is set correctly? Will I have to do a fresh install again?

I think I'm going to ditch the marvell controlled port altogether just don't want to tear into my desktop atm.

 

I don't believe that there would be any difference as alignment is fine and it's in the correct mode. Maybe there might be improvement with Marvell drivers for the controller installed in Windows.

 

Thanks again, I guess that Marvell sata controller just sucks...My motherboard book made it sound as though it was better but I don't think it is.

Edit: Just found this, no more Marvell port for me, review site found avg read using a Vertex 3 being over 120mb/s slower than the intel port and over 140mb/s slower avg writing on the ATX version of my board!!! And sorry to hijack this thread, thank you.

 

Yea some Marvell controllers don't seem to work nicely with SATA 3 SSDs in terms of unlocking their full potential. Use the Intel 6G ports instead.

 

Anyone get it to work using a USB on a Mac?

 

Alright finally got it all sorted out. Here are my 0009 results.

 

Seems a bit off?

 

Which driver, iastor or msahci?

 

Hi namaiki

going into device manager it shows a microsoft driver 6.1.7600.16385?

 

If you open AS SSD benchmark, the driver name should be listed in the top left corner of the window.
If msahci, you can temporarily try set the power profile to High Performance and see if that makes any difference.

Err, anyway, how has real life performance been? Any lagging or stuttering?

 

Seems to run fine without stuttering

 

There's no reason to skip this firmware update, as mentioned the compatibility with chipsets has improved and Crucial's 20% read speed quote is pretty accurate, depending on the test. We saw a 32% gain in our gaming trace for instance. Incidentally, Crucial did tune for client usage, as can be seen in the serious drop in queue depth performance after 8 in the synthetic server profiles. So I suppose if you're using the drive in a non-client way, holding on to FW 0002 isn't a bad idea. But really, I'd think most enterprise users are on the C400 or something else entirely.

m4 FW 0009 Re-review

 

Nice test and it put things into perspective with knowledgeable comments on what the number means.

 

No chance to do this without a cd :s I dont want to waste a dvd on less than 5mbs

 

bootable USB is the same as CD.

 

putting the iso content on a bootable usb drive just gives me "missing bootmgr"

 

Is it bootable by itself ? If not, it is not a bootable USB. A bootable USB would be able to either boot into say DOS or some other OS.

How did you make it bootable ?

This is a pretty good way to make a DOS USB(which is usually what these bootable firmware flash is about)

MS-DOS Bootable Flash Drive - Create - Windows 7 Forums

 

yeah, you need to add boot files to the usb to make it bootable.

 

I added the files in the ISOLINUX folder to all dirs, so they are in the root of the drive, under \boot and \boot\isolinux and cant do anything when I get into Freedos

 

at the freedos prompt, can you see the content of the CD ?

EDIT:
oh, I was wrong. they are not using DOS but ISOLINUX. Then you need this

http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/SYSLINUX

to make a bootable syslinux base. and copy the BOOT there.

 

so I have to download that and then compile that, jesus crist :s not very noob friendly

 

I believe they have precompiled binary in the package.

This one is also using syslinux if I am not mistaken

UNetbootin - Homepage and Downloads

so you can use it to first create the base and replace the BOOT directory.

Of course, burning a CD/DVD is the simplest if you find it too complicated

I myself hate burning and some of my machine doesn't have optical drive so this syslinux/msdos/Windows bootable USB becomes second nature to me.

 

i find Grub4DOS much easier than syslinux (for some reason couldn't get it to work for me).