Intel announced last Tuesday that it had started shipping its new "Postville" solid-state drives based on a 34nm manufacturing process - a shift that promises faster performance and lower prices. With only a few days on the market, however, online retailers including Newegg have pulled the new X25-M G2 SSDs from their websites due to a recently discovered firmware defect.

According to OEM system builder Puget Systems, those who already purchased the new 34nm SSDs may experience data corruption when adding, deleting, or modifying the drive's password in the system BIOS. Intel had initially told Puget that the drives might require a complete reworking. However, the chipmaker said it has come up with a firmware fix that it expects to deliver in about two weeks.

For those who do not intend on password protecting their SSDs there ultimately should be no problems. On the other hand, if this is a feature you are likely to use then you should wait for the factory patched drives to be released, or until the firmware fix is posted here.