Can't update Crucial SSD firmware on UEFI T530

Got a Crucial 256GB M4 SSD on Amazon for $159.

Installs easily in a nice $10 caddy from ny-compu-tek on eBay.

The firmware is two versions old. Can't update it because the Crucial update tool doesn't work with many UEFI BIOS machines, which the T530 apparently is. Worked with Crucial tech support and they said no go. UEFI users will have to await the new installation tool for which there is "no ETA." I said I was a dissatisfied customer.

They agree to overnight ship me a new SSD with current firmware (charging my credit card) and email me a prepaid UPS air shipping label to send my old firmware SSD back to them (after which they will credit my card). And they gave me a 45 day free return period, no questions asked, in which event they would return to me the price I paid to Amazon.

A convoluted journey, but a reasonable outcome. Spinach to the Crucial product planners. Roses to their customer service.

 

How do you intend to clone the existing drive?

 

I don't plan to clone because I don't have to.

I took a lot of advice from the good people on this forum, but had to keep my fear of cloning in mind. So I returned my original T530, which had an HD, an mSATA SSD cache and an HD+ display, and replaced it with a differently configured T530, which has a factory installed 180GB Intel SSD primary drive and an FHD display.

I liked the speed and total quiet of the main bay SSD so much that I decided to get another SSD, instead of an HD, for my ultrabay. That second and secondary SSD is the 256GB Crucial that is the subject of my OP. I intend to keep W8 and install all my applications on the main bay SSD and put my files on the ultrabay SSD. I don't even know how to do that, so I'll probably be back asking some more novice questions.

I must say that making recovery media onto a 16GB USB 3.0 drive under the W8 recovery procedure was a piece of cake. Three screens, push a button, and it all pumped out in 8 minutes, including the Lenovo recovery partitions. If all I had to do was restore that USB onto an SSD, I think I could have done that easily. I forget whether that would have given me the same thing as a clone, though I know you all explained it to me in a thread two weeks ago.

 

Awesome. I guess I misunderstood the problem.

 

The only thing I was intending to do -- before I went off on my tangent -- was to alert other Lenovo owners of UEFI BIOS computers that they may not be able to update the firmware on a Crucial M4 SSD to the current version (040H - Dec. 4, 2012) until Crucial finishes a new firmware update tool. Unless you buy from a source who has new SSD's with that firmware version in stock.

 

AFAIK the M4 SSD drive should be usable, even with an older firmware in it.

Out of honest curiosity, did Crucial's tech support mention this to you?

And are you planning to use that M4 SSD as your boot drive?

 

So how does that protect you?

e.g. if the boot drive fails, can you put in a new boot drive and recover?

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

I hope this is helpful but I was able to update my Crucial M4 to 040H that I got yesterday. Before I installed anything on the drive I downloaded the update and put it on a flash drive and was able to boot from that and update the drive on my T530.

 

I really don't know whether the newer firmware version will improve anything for my usage. But I've read a lot of forum chatter about SSD failures and blue screens because of downlevel firmware.

Yes, the Crucial tech made the swap offer. I said I was unsatisfied because I had paid for a new SSD, that I consider the newest firmware to be part of a new product, and that Crucial was not even offering me a usable tool to upgrade to newness.

I've already made the swap. The Crucial 256GB SSD will be in the ultrabay as my data/files storage drive (instead of a HD). My boot drive is also an SSD in the main bay, a 180GB Intel, which I ordered as a custom build from Lenovo.

 

OtherSongs, I'm not sure I understand your questions.

As soon as I got my 530 up and running and before I added or changed anything, I made a recovery drive using the Windows 8 recovery procedure onto a 16GB USB 3.0 drive. I have no idea how to restore from it, as I never have done that, but the manual makes it seem simple.

If my main C drive doesn't electronically fail, I can at any time restore the original factory load from the recovery partition (which I didn't erase) using either the W8 "refresh" or "reset" procedures. I did this a few times on my first 530 just as experiments and it works very well. If the C drive gets electronically fried, I'm assuming I can restore the original factory load onto a new, blank C drive by using the USB recovery drive.

 

That's always there in today's world of instant communication and Internet access. Some of it is FUD, some of it is dumb people doing dumb things, and some of it is real.

Thanks for your response on this.

Since you got your new T530 with a boot SSD already in place, how long does a boot take?

I'm still using a HDD with my new T530 and a boot takes ~ 1 minute and 25 seconds until the last of the start-up software finishes loading and the machine is ready to be used.

FWIW I've finally got my new/unused boot SSD and am close to putting it in and doing a fresh install of Win7/64_Pro. My expectation is for a boot time in the neighborhood of 15-to-20 seconds.

 

You can cut that down some more by scrutinizing the startup list and disabling Windows logo animation. (They are on separate tabs in the msconfig.exe program window.)

On my home-bound systems, I cut the boot time down further by disabling the log-in sequence. (Run netplwiz program.)

 

The one thing that I've learned about backups is that the majority of non technical people never actually do a trial restore.

The trick is to figure out a way to actually do a valid trial restore, and not screw things up because of that effort.

And with regard to your boot drive, if that fails then odds are that your current backup efforts are inadequate.

 

Thanks very much, I'd forgotten about checking through what all msconfig does at startup.

I'll run msconfig at the command prompt and check it out.

I don't presently go into a "log-in sequence" at boot time. For others, running "netplwiz" at the run command prompt gets one into the User Accounts screen.

 

I timed it several times. As preface, I'm running W8 and I have no password of any kind set up. So it boots to the user Welcome screen and then automatically, in about 1 second, goes right to the W8 "Metro" Start screen.

The average is 12 seconds to the Start screen.

I suppose if I had a password I would be reporting 11 seconds to the Welcome screen, where I assume I would have to enter a password.

I suspect that W8 is still doing some boot stuff in the background after reaching the Start screen because the main drive is still flashing and there may even be an hourglass on the cursor for a while longer. But I can launch a browser immediately upon getting to the Start screen.

My first T530 had a HD boot drive supplemented by a factory installed mSATA SSD express cache. That took about 16 seconds to get to the Start screen.