ATTENTION Crucial M4 SSD owners

It's starting to get harder and harder to suggest products without supplying a list of caveats these days

That is certainly true. All manufacturers seem to have their share of problems. With my Intels and OCZs I have been lucky up to now (the oldest being appr. 4 years old), but this M4 worries me - especially since I have not yet figured out how to set my Sata3 port to IDE (which is required for the firmware flashing). All I have is AHCI and Raid0.

whs said:

especially since I have not yet figured out how to set my Sata3 port to IDE (which is required for the firmware flashing). All I have is AHCI and Raid0.

Sounds like a Sata 3 controller chipset limitation perhaps.

If desktop, putting it on the sata II controller should be enough to trigger the IDE option. If it's one of the laptops, a quick transplant into a desktop may be required.

It looks gymnastics may be unavoidable...

It looks gymnastics may be unavoidable

I am afraid you are right. Britton was so kind to research the Sata setting options for my motherboard and it appears that there is no IDE option at all.

I already called Dell 4 times but was cut off every time. I think they know that they have no good answer. I will try their live chat and see whether that yields something.

That is great news. Thank you for finding it. No more gymnastics in my future. My M4 is still on 002, so I have to upgrade one day.

Has anybody read which firmware is affected, 002 or 009?

All firmware apparently.

Most of the failing drives would have shipped with 001 though, however those that have updated in the interim and are still affected.

Yikes!