Just a heads up for anyone contemplating an Intel 320-series SSD.

Shortly after the release of these drives, a number of users began to report that on booting after an unexpected power loss, they found the capacity of their drives reduced to 8GB. The event was accompanied by an electronic serial number field containing a message of “BAD_CTX 0000013x”. Once this error occurs, no data on the SSD can be accessed and the user cannot write to or read from the SSD.

A secure erase would return the drive to full capacity, but of course, all data would be permanently lost.

On the 24th July, Intel posted an acknowledgment of the error on their Support Community website, and stated that it could be solved by a firmware update.

On the 13th of August, a further post appeared saying that a firmware update was undergoing validation testing, and would be released within two weeks.

Four days later (Aug 17),the update was posted (firmware 4PC10362).

However . . . a number of people who've installed the firmware update - either to fix an affected drive, or as a precaution against the problem - have found that it has not prevented the fault from occuring, with some suggesting that applying the update actually precipitated an occurence (see links below).

As of today, no response has been forthcoming from Intel, and the drives are still on sale without caveat.

http://communities.intel.com/thread/23610?start=0&tstart=0

http://communities.intel.com/thread/24121?start=0&tstart=0

http://communities.intel.com/thread/24205?start=0&tstart=0