Crucial m4 solid state disk users smile breathe again as the company has finally released a firmware fix for a fatal flaw that caused the disks to become very unstable after using the drive for around 5,000 hours. The new firmware can be downloaded at Crucial's support page.

Changes made in version 0002 (m4 can be updated to revision 0309 directly from either revision 0001, 0002, or 0009)

Correct a condition where an incorrect response to a SMART counter will cause the m4 drive to become unresponsive after 5184 hours of Power-on time. The drive will recover after a power cycle, however, this failure will repeat once per hour after reaching this point. The condition will allow the end user to successfully update firmware, and poses no risk to user or system data stored on the drive.

This firmware update is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED for drives in the field. Although the failure mode due to the SMART Power On Hours counter poses no risk to saved user data, the failure mode can become repetitive, and pose a nuisance to the end user. If the end user has not yet observed this failure mode, this update is required to prevent it from happening.

If you are using a SAS Expander please do not download this Firmware. As soon as we have a Firmware Update that will work in these applications we will release it.

And if you haven't done so, check out our M4 review right here.