January 23rd, 2012 by Brian Beeler
OCZ SSD Firmware Upgrade Guide
As with most SSD vendors, OCZ regularly updates SSD firmware across their multiple lines of SSDs. OCZ offers a one-stop firmware shop for all of their products, including SSDs like the Vertex 3, RevoDrive 3 X2, Octane, Agility 3, Synapse and RevoDrive Hybrid, and even the Z-Drive R4. Most firmware updates are relatively minor, but on occasion OCZ will release firmware that has significant impact on an SSD in terms or performance, reliability or compatibility. The process of upgrading SSD firmware varries, in OCZ's case, the steps to upgrade firmware are very simple, which isn't always the case with SSDs.
To get the latest firmware on any of OCZ SSDs, go to the OCZ Updates and Tools page and download the latest OCZ Toolbox for your drive. Generally speaking the latest version will handle every OCZ product - the current version of the OCZ Toolbox supports all of the OCZ drives we have in our lab right now, including the OCZ Octane that we will be upgrading the firmware on in this guide. The one downside is that OCZ Tooolbox is currently Windows only.
Once OCZ Toolbox is loaded, the first step is selecting the SSD you want to upgrade the firmware on. In this case we have two OCZ models attached, although we only want to update the firmware on the Octane. The one catch with the firmware updater is it must work with a secondary drive only, not a boot drive.
With the Octane selected, click on the "Tools" tab. Next select "Update Firmware" and a little progress message displays on the lower left side of the window describing what is going on in the background. Once finished, it will say complete and prompt for a restart of the computer.
As long as you can configure your OCZ SSD as a secondary drive, the updator works great. If you only have one system though or a Mac, the process is a little more cumbersome and may rely on leveraging a friend who has a Windows desktop with an open drive bay. OCZ does not currently offer a USB/CD firmware update method, which would be helpful in some cases.
