Intel released an update to their SSD Toolbox software today which fixes an issue with the power management that makes Intel 530 series SSDs hang on some occasions. The bug affects all drives of the Intel 530 solid state drives and is caused by Agressive Link Power Management (ALPM).
ALPM is a feature of the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) and allows SSDs to go into a deep sleep. This makes the drive to consume only very little energy when in an idle state. When the computer becomes active again the SSD can return to full power in only 10 milliseconds. With the feature it's possible to save energy of the computer without any noticeable performance loss.
Unfortunately this feature introduced a bug in Intel 530 series SSDs. The bug lives in the firmware of all drives of this series and causes the computer to hang when the drive tries to wake up from its deep sleep state. Once it hangs the computer has to be restarted. For some reason the bug seems to appear randomly, some owners of Intel 530 SSDs have never seen it and it doesn't happen all the time.
An updated version of the Intel SSD Toolbox brings a firmware update (DC12) that solves the issue. Besides fixing the bug it also brings other improvements, Intel has added new descriptions for SMART attributes C2, C5, EA, and F9, corrected calculations for E1, F1, and F2 SMART attributes and corrected the display of word 79 in the drive details screen.
You can download the updated version from Intel's SSD Toolbox page.
