I have one more question: Is anybody able to tell me which version of Sandforce SF 1222 firmware (or OCZ Vertex2 fw, as the OCZ fw numbering differs from original SF numbering) is fixing this "brick issue" (=prevents from bricking again)?
I have two Vertex 2 80GB, SF1222 ... latest firmware is v1.37 (as far as I know)
Thanks for the guide and links, I was able to revive one of the SSDs which I bricked after I "forgot" to switch off the sleep on my laptop - The laptop slept, the SSD never woke up again.
I'm not aware of a standalone way to flash the firmware. I think (although not sure), that this link downloads the latest firmware from OCZ (now Toshiba's) server :
http://update.ocztechnology.com/firmware/release/sf/p1/12222(as referred to in this post -
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/ocz-vertex-2-ssd-firmware/msg565210/#msg565210 )
If someone knows how to (force) flash that, would be helpful, but obviously need to confirm it's the right file first.
By the looks of things, the OCZ server that provides Firmware update for older SSDs still is online (for how much longer, who knows). Firmware can be updated in linux using a download I found on Arch linux website
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ocztoolbox/ :
http://url.muflone.com/ocztoolbox-4.9.0.634_linux.tar.gzJust download, extract and run the executable.
There are also versions of standalone OCZ Bootable tools, which is based on TinyCoreLinux. It's a bit more fiddly to setup, as you'd need to create a USB stick, that boots, then mounts and boots the .ISO file from the USB stick (the .ISO provided by OCZ doesn't include a bootloader !). What I think is the latest version can be downloaded here :
https://web.archive.org/web/20140716061012/http://ocz.com/consumer/download/firmware/OCZ_PC_Bootable_Tools-5.4.298_UUI.zipAND, there's a Windows tool which still also seems to work (latest version I think) :
https://web.archive.org/web/20160320062612/http://ocz.com/consumer/download/firmware/OCZToolbox_v4.9.0.634_win32.zipRegarding "MP Tool", it's quite fiddly, but it's really worth persevering with it, because eventually I managed to bring the SSD back, even though I was getting errors in the log window.
Of note is, if you want to at least try to update the firmware (or at least, for any of the OCZ tools to recognise the drive) with any of the above tools, you'd need to setup the Drive information a bit more precisely. Of note are :
"IEEE Company ID" - I believe this should be set to "E83A97" (The hex code for 'OCZ Technology Group')
"Increment" - I set to "0"
"Serial Number" - I wasn't able to get the WWN to match what my "good" drive reported in 'smartctl -a' ... anyway I just entered "fcd03878d", which is part of my serial number.
To confuse matters there's a decimal serial number printed on the SSD case, which doesn't seem to match the Hex one reported in smartctl -a
Maybe there's a setting somewhere in MP Tool to set it up correctly, never used it before, so I don't know.
And "Model Number" - I set to "OCZ-VERTEX2" (again what's reported in smartctl -a
And, also, I don't know if this makes any difference but I changed "Flash Connectivity Test" to False.
With my doing all these things I was able to get both *all* of OCZ tools suggested above to recognise the drive, but unfortunately, they all reported back the the drive had rejected the firmware update. As I can make use of the drive anyway, doesn't really matter, and I'm out of time now.
Hope this is helpful.