Solid-State Drives (SSD)

[tysonedwards]

I have now created a USB Bootable Key that successfully gets into MS-DOS via the utility provided by HP. The only limitation there is that the drive must be smaller than 2GB.

However, running the CT256M.exe file from the USB Key under either my Macbook Pro or my Dell Latitude E6500, I receive the following error message:

"Unable to find any drive"

From a search across these forums, it sounds as though this is an ongoing theme when not using a CD.

~Tyson

[rjc]

As I only have a Mac, is there any possible way to actually upgrade my 256Gb SSD?

At the moment, it looks like I need to go and buy an external USB SATA enclosure and take trip to a PC user.  Worse would be to have to ask to take apart a friends computer to upgrade the drive.

Not exactly customer friendly, more so as Crucial is so well respected by Mac users worldwide.

[elcarbonite]

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megastuff999 wrote:

Quick question - I have no problem sticking the SSD in a PC to run the upgrade. However, anyone done it yet to know whether the Mac data on there gets deleted?

I'll obviously make a backup before commencing but I'd be interested to know how long a job it *should* be before starting...

---

It's possible for me to test this, but I want to know if my data will be kept or not - anyone know?

[tysonedwards]

I have successfully upgraded to 1819 using *solely* a Macbook Pro and a USB Floppy Drive with no data loss.

I created a MS-DOS Boot Disk via a Windows XP VM, copied the firmware updater file from the CD image to the Floppy Drive, Held Option at boot, choose the boot disk, and loaded the firmware update.

~Tyson

[ai_enabled]

I have successfully upgraded to 1819 too, but i'am using my 8gb flash drive to do it. It works flawlessly, nothing's been erased or lost!

I have written this guide for every Mac & Crucial user.

HOWTO - flash 1819 firmware for 5 minutes!

0. You need to have Windows XP/Vista/7 (x64 supported too, working via Boot Camp / Parallels / VMWare / etc) and USB flash drive. 

1. Download and install rEFIt 0.13. It's takes just one minute. Snow Leopard compatible, to install it boot in x86-mode, not x64!

2. Go to Windows XP/Vista/7, mount your USB flash drive to it, on VMWare Fusion 3 it's look like this:

3. Download this utility and run RMPREPUSB.exe. Set parameters like on this screenshot and click "Prepare drive":

4. Download packed by me archive, which contains files from Windows 98 boot disk and Crucial 1819 firmware, unpack and copy all files from it to the root of a formatted flash drive.

5. Reboot your Mac, hold Option (Alt) key while booting, and you will go to rEFIt (if no, try manual installation), select Flash Drive. When it's loaded to DOS (you will need to press Enter one time), print CT64M.exe / CT128M.exe / CT256M.exe depends on capacity of your SSD drive and press Enter. It takes around 20-30 seconds to execute, be patient. After that, select 'Y' and choose SSD drive, it will instantly flashed. Reboot and enjoy your hyper-fast SSD with new firmware:

Now you can uninstall rEFIt: while booted into Mac OS X, rename or remove the “efi” folder. For a 100% clean de-installation, also remove the folder “rEFItBlesser” inside “Library/StartupItems”.

P.S. Sorry for my bad english - hello from Russia :-).

[elcarbonite]

Unfortunately this didn't work for me, I tried three different flash drives - all giving me an error saying, "The firmware refused to boot from the selected volume."

[jordzilla]

The following zip files contain bootable .iso images that contain the 64, 128, and 256GB versions of the 1819 Firmware upgrade respectively.  Unzip and burn the appropriate one to a CD/DVD (from Mac OS X, or a VM, doesn't matter how or where you burn it).  Put the CD in your mac.  Shut down.  Turn on and hold down the "c" key.  You should boot from the CD-ROM.  At the C: prompt then do a "dir" command and you will see the CTxxxM.exe file.  Type the .exe file name and hit enter to run it.  It should find your disk and ask you to select it by number.  Select your SSD drive and then flash takes literally seconds.  It did not require me to reformat or anything.

USE THESE AT YOUR OWN RISK... I DID THESE FOR MYSELF AND AM SHARING THEM AS A COURTESY... THERE IS NO GUARANTEE THAT THEY WILL WORK FOR YOU.

- Jordazilla

64GB FreeDOS Boot Disk: http://public.me.com/jordan.olin/Crucial1819BootCD64GB.zip

128GB FreeDOS Boot Disk: http://public.me.com/jordan.olin/Crucial1819BootCD128GB.zip

256GB FreeDOS Boot Disk: http://public.me.com/jordan.olin/Crucial1819BootCD256GB.zip

[megastuff999]

jordzilla - thanks very much for taking the time to make those iso files.

Worked a treat on mine.

Thanks again.

[rjc]

jordzilla, 

That seems to have the trick for me.   On a MacBook 5,1 if others are wondering.

What is odd is write performance is much lower, read down a little, according to XBench.  Perhaps it is up to stuff internally, so I'll try the stats again after it's been on a while.

[targetbsp]

jordzilla's discs work on a PC too in case anyone is wondering.