We have recently identified a SSD firmware issue that can lead to unrecoverable data loss, although instances are very rare. Affected customers will be unable to begin sequencing experiments, read existing experiment data and have less or no storage available as per the image below.

Thorough root cause analysis identified a firmware bug on SSD drives from the manufacture. This issue only affects A100 / A-series towers with serial numbers less than PCA100181. All previous generations of P24/48 data acquisition units are not affected (i.e. non-A100/A series towers) and all new shipments of A-Series / A100 data acquisition units will have the latest firmware installed.

As preventative maintenance, we strongly recommend customers of potentially affected towers to proactively prevent the unrecoverable loss of data by following tutorial video and the instructions below. The process take no longer than 15 minutes and requires on site access to power cycle the tower.

Step-by-Step Guide Before you start: we recommend offloading any important data to remote storage (in case errors occur during update)

Make sure both data acquisition and base calling are stopped through the MinKNOW GUI

Open a terminal by searching for ‘terminal’ and pressing enter.

Enter the following commands by copying and pasting into the black terminal window.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y ont-promethion-smart-tools
sudo Micron-Update-Firmware data AUTO

Power off the Data acquisition unit and sequencer as per the PromethION Flyer J2151_PromethION QSG_flyer_v3.pdf

Power on the sequencer and data acquisition unit as per the PromethION Flyer

Confirm the RAID0 data array is active with the latest firmware version using the following 3 commands.

df -h | grep "/dev/md"
cat /proc/mdstat
sudo Micron-Update-Firmware data AUTO-

Expected output of the above commands is shown below.

df -h | grep "/dev/md"
/dev/md125          429G 273G 135G 67% /
/dev/md126          1.9G 159M 1.6G  9% /boot
/dev/md127          56T  33T  21T 62% /data

cat /proc/mdstat  
Personalities : [raid1] [raid0] [linear] [multipath] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] 
md125 : active raid1 nvme4n1p5[0] nvme5n1p5[1]
   457693184 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]
   bitmap: 4/4 pages [16KB], 65536KB chunk

md126 : active raid1 nvme4n1p3[0] nvme5n1p3[1]
   1997824 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]    

md127 : active raid0 nvme1n1p1[1] nvme0n1p1[0] nvme3n1p1[3] nvme2n1p1[2]
   60011151360 blocks super 1.2 512k chunks

sudo Micron-Update-Firmware data AUTO
X12 system detected
All drives are in good health
Current firmware should be E2MU200
Current firmware is:
/dev/nvme0      E2MU200 ... At the right level
/dev/nvme1      E2MU200 ... At the right level
/dev/nvme2      E2MU200 ... At the right level
/dev/nvme3      E2MU200 ... At the right level

All disks have this firmware version (E2MU200)

Troubleshooting Device Name:
/dev/nvme1
Drive Status:
Attention! Drive is in Write Protect (Read Only) Mode due to degraded device reliability!

Thank you for being an integral part of Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Together, we strive for cutting-edge discoveries while ensuring your data is in safe hands.