Shipments to resume ...
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4212928/Intel-resumes-shipment-of-error-plagued-chip
And to squall_leonhart:
I've lost a hard drive and almost lost another to defective SIS parts so I know how that goes. As for 'what is what and when' it was stated that what you put on the affected is what matters. If you used the ports for a primary hd then it's likely to go a lot faster. The cycle times are measured in millions before degradation but if you look at the average number of read writes under windows you will be in millions within a few weeks on most gaming systems.
The other thing of interest, is that although say CD/DVD/BR drives have a LESS likely hood, windows itself WILL be to blame for the degradation. If you haven't noticed windows seemingly at random access resources periodically. CD/DVD/BR drives are included in this. When ever you open IE windows poles devices. Whenever you open 'My Computer' windows poles devices. Windows poles devices periodically based on the 'fast' search system for indexing, this includes your CD/DVD/BR drives. The big difference is windows can't as easily screw the CD/DVD/BR drive and the periodicity is significantly lower. That means it may take as long as a year to cause failure instead (as if that were a good thing).
The reason why those hard drives went south is, although HD have spare sectors have lots of redundancy etc. the manufacturer assumes that the primary controller is doing it's job correctly. With erroneous data being spewed to a hard disk there is no telling what will happen. What likely they noticed is random writing to locations within the disk itself. This likely will permanently corrupt the file system. You reformat right? Ok with a screwed up controller reformatting can be VERY BAD. You can also permanently DESTROY the disk because the commands being sent could also be random format commands that are suddenly stopped. This is an example of why you should have error correction and detection on ANY data channel including one that is assumed to be infallible such as an SATA or PATA channel.
My experience was a defective PATA channel. (I lost 3 years worth of work because of that).
Back to the story at hand:
Intel has apparently have not begun producing the corrected parts. About 100K + worth of bad parts shipped. That's about the equivalent of 200 to 500 300mm wafers (a LOT of parts). Lesson learned? Check your design with high stress levels before shipping.
Cyb
