Intel Matrix Storage Manager version 9.6, A01

Does anyone have experience upgrading to v9.6 of IMSM, released 7/16/2010 to correct randomly failing or degrading RAID volumes which was a bug found in Intel Matrix Storage Manager version 8.9?  On 7/27/11 Dell Support successfully rebuilt a failed RAID 1 drive on a Studio XPS Desktop 9100 (and were quite competent in doing so), but now the drive has failed again.  At the time of the rebuild, Dell Support said upgrading to IMSM v9.6 might result in lost data and therefore advised against that update, and it wasn't applied.