Latest Windows 10 Version Incompatible With Intel SSD 600p
by Billy Tallis on May 11, 2018 5:00 AM EST
Microsoft has advised that the most recent version of Windows 10—version 1803, codenamed Redstone 4—is currently incompatible with the Intel SSD 600p and the related Intel SSD Pro 6000p. Windows 10 version 1803 can crash when attempting to update Windows 10 installed to an affected SSD. The Intel SSD DC P3100 and SSD E 6000p were not mentioned but are probably also affected as they share the same controller and firmware platform as the 600p.
The Intel SSD 600p consumer drive and its relatives for other market segments were Intel's first M.2 NVMe SSDs, a radical shift from the large Intel SSD 750 and its enterprise counterparts. The 600p family uses Intel's first-generation 32-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory and a customized variant of the Silicon Motion SM2260 NVMe SSD controller. This combination made for the first low-end, (relatively) low-cost NVMe SSD, though more recent drives with controllers designed specifically for the entry-level NVMe market have now reached much lower prices than the 600p sold for when it was current. Intel's replacement for the 600p is the Intel SSD 760p, which uses a newer generation of 3D TLC NAND and a newer generation of controller from Silicon Motion. The 760p has not been reported to be affected by the same incompatibility as its predecessor.
It is not yet clear what is causing the incompatibility between the Intel 600p and Windows 10 version 1803, but the most likely culprit is a bug in the 600p's controller firmware. Intel has issued two firmware updates for the 600p family, each fixing several bugs including some that had the potential to cause data loss or corruption. The most common theme in the release notes for 600p firmware updates seems to be power management troubles, but those are unlikely to prevent Windows 10 v1803 from even installing to the 600p.
It is also possible that there's a bug with the 600p that cannot easily be fixed with a firmware update. The Linux NVMe driver has workarounds for two such issues with the 600p. The first workaround was for Linux to not attempt to use the deepest idle power state provided by the 600p; that was added about a year ago. The second workaround was added earlier this week. That issue is documented as affecting some P3100 drives but the workaround applies to everything in the 600p/P3100 family because they use the same PCI device IDs. The problem lies with the drive thinking that it has been instructed to use the optional weighted round robin method for deciding which queue to service commands from next, instead of the default simple round robin method. The workaround chosen by the Linux developers is to ensure that command submission queues on the 600p are assigned medium priority even when the driver doesn't intend to use the weighted priority feature.
For now, users with the Intel SSD 600p or one of its siblings are advised to not upgrade to Windows 10 version 1803, and Microsoft is working on a patch to allow version 1803 to work with the 600p. Owners of a 600p should also be on the lookout for a possible firmware update from Intel. The current version is 121 for the 600p, Pro 6000p and E 6000p, and version 119 for the P3100. A patch for this issue from either Microsoft or Intel would be sufficient to allow Windows 10 version 1803 to work with the 600p.
Other SSDs based on the SM2260 controller do not feature Intel's customized firmware, and historically have not been affected by the same bugs as the Intel 600p family.
Source: Microsoft
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Drazick - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
To think only few years ago Intel was the benchmark for SSD's.For some reason they felt they should let others do the Controller thing.
Now they are far behind the others.
Who makes the decisions there?
FwFred - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
Intel still makes controllers for the enterprise market, where they make most of their revenue.Billy Tallis - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
It really didn't make sense for Intel to keep investing in in-house client SSD controllers given how Samsung was dominating and Intel didn't have NAND that could keep up even if they could provide a controller as good or better than Samsung's. Now that they're back on a level playing field with 64L 3D NAND, it would be nice if Intel could produce another top-notch in-house consumer SSD, but that's a big investment with relatively little payoff compared to their enterprise drives and 3D XPoint stuff.Drazick - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
Who makes more money (Profit), Intel on the enterprise or Samsung on the PC's market?I bet Samsung and they should have been where Samsung is and it would have made them more money.
A better choice than dropping the controller would have been switching to Samsung NAND for a limited period.
They made the wrong strategic choice (Again, as they do a lot lately).
Even 3D XPoint doesn't look as shiny as they thought it would be.
watchmania - Saturday, May 19, 2018 - link
Enterprise always makes the money. Consumer, nah.Samus - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
It really is sad how the king has fallen. An 8 year old X25-M is still a relevant, reliably SSD for many PC's (especially those that lack SATA3) as a cheap upgrade from an HDD.Even though Intel has released almost nothing noteworthy since (I have a soft spot for the Intel 730 - based on the Enterprise S3700 - as I've had the 480GB model for four years in my workstation and it's been a great drive) they set out to accomplish one task by even releasing the X25-M and further mainstream SSD's, and you can pinpoint the exact moment when they gave up: when they went to Sandforce controllers.
Those drives (330, 530, etc) weren't necessarily bad, and it is undebatable they were the most reliable Sandforce drives ever produced. But they weren't the best drives produced at the time, like the X25-M series that just killed everything from the late 00's.
Eventually Samsung's 830's, Crucial's C300's, and a flood of budget drives from Kingston, Sandisk and Toshiba (OEM) hit the market and Intel was able to just give up.
So what did they accomplish? They surged an industry that barely existed, and needed to exist, in order to stop bottlenecking their CPU's. Without SSD's, the user experience on any PC is bad, no matter how fast the CPU. Intel had tried working with Microsoft through Vista with ReadyBoost and various SSD caching, but it was obvious in order to push powerful CPU's to the lucrative HEPC market they would need reliable, high performance solid state storage and nobody was really pushing it because nobody had as much at stake as Intel.
If they hadn't pushed SSD's as early as they did, there would be more iPad's and Chromebooks than there already are, and the PC industry would be in even worse shape.
FunBunny2 - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
"So what did they accomplish? They surged an industry that barely existed"more than 60 years ago, RCA pioneered color TeeVee, then lost. USofA capitalists do this sort of thing as a matter of course.
peevee - Tuesday, May 15, 2018 - link
Large old corporations in the US are mainly owned by mutual funds which are owned by pension fund holding money from everybody. Literally, publicly owned = owned by public. Basically, they are like ministries in a socialist country. No real owners. And just as inefficient and stupid, and infestation with incompetent managers (MBAs) makes them hopeless.PeachNCream - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
The good news is that Windows 10's flexible update policy allows end users a very high degree of individual choice when it comes to changes from Microsoft so issues like this aren't forced on a system once they become known. I'm grateful to these developers for recognizing that updates can sometimes cause unforeseen problems and then graciously offering such easy configuration adjustments so we can wait out issues until Intel or Microsoft can deploy a proper fix.p1esk - Friday, May 11, 2018 - link
I bet half the people here didn't realize this is sarcasm.