On 11/28/10 20:01, Claus Assmann wrote:
I was about to buy an OCZ Vertex 2 SSD when I read that firmware
updates for that kind of SSD require some M$ Windows version. Is
someone using SSDs with a high IOPS rate (the Sandforce controller
claims 45-50 kIOPS) which can be updated under some freely available
software? I would like to try an SSD as mail queue FS etc.
Yet another "I've not done this, but here's what I'd do" answer:
Your local very well stocked computer store might have one of these USB
to IDE/SATA adapters, designed to plug into the back of a bare drive. I
have one sitting here on my desk that I paid $15US for, including a
power supply for the drive.
Assuming your firmware update utility works through the USB interface (I
suspect it would, they have to be doing some kind of command
abstraction, since they probably don't wish to deal with all the
potential different drive interface hardware out there!) and you have a
dual-booting laptop handy, take the laptop with Windows and the update
utility to your machine, shut down the machine, unplug the drive, plug
it into your USB->SATA adapter, do your update, unplug, hook back up to
host, enjoy. Probably don't even need to remove the drive from the
machine, just unplug the data cable, maybe the power cable.
Sure, less convenient than booting off a CD with an update utility on
it, but probably far safer than doing the update on a windows machine (I
got to believe you really don't want any activity on the device when you
are updating its flash, and that's hard to promise under Windows).
Nick.
