*Unofficial* G.Skill Falcon SSD Firmware Upgrade Instructions

Check Disk Management to make sure the SSD is set to Drive 0. Upgrade AP must be on another HD (Drive 1) or USB Flash drive, etc.
*Some drives will show odd GB's available, but once you flash it and undo the jumper it will be correct.*
Now go to Upgrade AP, RIGHT CLICK not double click, then select "Run as administrator". If you double click, the SSD will not be recognized, so make sure you right click and select "Run as administrator".
First, it shows the SSD in Drive 0, then some other details about the SSD.
Now for SSD Model, simply select your Falcon 64GB, 128GB, or 256GB..
Click Upgrade F/W and sit back and relax.
Once the upgrade is complete, there are two messages that tell you to remove your pin jumper. As you should know by now, if not, it will be recognized as BAREFOOT instead of G.Skill Falcon SSD...
Clear the two messages by clicking OK.
Notice Pass and Success for the firmware upgrade.
Shut down, remove pin jumper, restart.
Use HDTune or whatever program to check firmware (v1916 so far), run benchmarks, with the 64GB Falcon SSD, I was averaging 206MB/s min, 217MB/S.
Simply create partition in Disk Management and install Windows or do whatever you please.
Firmware can be done many times. Enjoy!

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• G.Skill
• Falcon
• SSD
• 64GB
• 128GB
• 256GB
• GSkill
• Firmware
• Upgrade
• Instructions

[djxp01]

the video is crystal clear ! good job ! ...

[GSkillUSA]

@NoGufff HD Tune Pro, you should be able to download for free on download.com

[NoGufff]

@GSkillUSA .Sweat. Thanks for your replies. I've noticed a slight reduction in start up time compared to the factory FW. More noticable is resume from sleep time, down from 13 sec to 3. Can you recommend any free software to test/benchmark the perfermance of my SSD ?

[GSkillUSA]

@NoGufff Cool, yep, if it said PASS, then the upgrade is complete. You don't need the clean function anymore since apparently there are no bad blocks SSD. If there are ANY bad blocks, it can not upgrade firmware and it will give you the "please choose the right parameter for your SSD blah blah" errors message.

Enjoy!

[NoGufff]

@GSkillUSA O.K, I gave it a go. Ended up just installing it in another system. Upgrade_AP.exe gave me a "PASS". Does that mean I didn't need to bother with the Clean Function ?

[wattgn]

@GSkillUSA . The references on the 'sticky' on your forum refer to tweaks for Vista and XP which really treat an SSD like any other drive as they came out before SSD's did. Windows 7 64 bit like I use though should optimise the drive automatically or so I thought. If not let me know where these options are enabled in Win 7.

[wattgn]

@GSkillUSA . I think not a lot of people have a second hard drive which happens to have their OS on it so I read it differently. I assumed that the hidden partition on the drive had DOS or Linux and that it updated using that with the firmware on another hard drive. I notice vertex just suggest making a DOS bootable USB drive and put the files on that which is sensible also. The way you guys have worked it out is really not that sensible and so maybe a bit more explaination would be useful.

[GSkillUSA]

@NoGufff Yea, I told them I would because it seemed like so many people were having a problem. Although it's not high quality and detailed, I just thought I'd do my best. Sorry, no camcorder, only Blackberry, so poor quality. Which is why I'm offering help because it is a 1:30 minute process but everybody's confused like it's rocket science. =P

[GSkillUSA]

@wattgn Guess it's somewhat confusing for basic users eh? Make sure Win7 SSD options are enabled, do NOT treat the SSD like a normal platter drive. The things Windows can do if treated like a normal HDD can destroy this SSD. Hopefully you are to maintain it. The new firmware upgrade they just released has a "clean" function, so if your drive does get corrupted on accident, you can fix it in a couple minutes. Very convenient. Once you understand how SSD's work, it's no biggy.

[GSkillUSA]

@wattgn The SSD can not be the main drive or operating system. How is the operating system to run the firmware upgrade if you are running on it?? Disk 0 should be the SSD, Disk 1 should be another hard drive with an operating system. So you boot with Disk 1, to upgrade Disk 0.

After you flash the firmware upgrade, you still have to format the drive! The drive is bare and you have to format it so it is recognized. Win7 does that for you which is why a fresh install worked.