After user complaints, Intel to re-release firmware upgrade for SSDs

The firmware also optimizes SSD's performance

By Lucas Mearian

November 18, 2009 11:49 AM ET

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Computerworld - After pulling a firmware upgrade for its X25-M consumer solid state drive last month due to user complaints, Intel Corp. indicated today that it would be re-issuing the upgrade by the end of this month.

On a user support forum on the company's Web site, a representative from Intel's NAND Solutions Group said the company planned to re-release the firmware upgrade in order to fix an issue that users of the drive said crashed their drives.

The firmware upgrade, which was meant to correct a past problem, is also needed to optimize its SSD for Windows 7, was pulled only a day after its initial release.

The firmware update is required for using a new utility called SSD Toolbox, which monitors and manages the performance of X25-M SSDs on systems running the Windows 7, Vista or XP operating systems. The firmware upgrade and Intel SSD Optimizer use the Windows 7 ATA Data Set Management Command (known as Trim) to help keep the Intel SSD running at continued high performance. The Trim attribute of Windows 7 synchs the operating system's view of deleted files with those that are marked for deletion, but not erased on the drive. Trim tells the SSD which data blocks are no longer in use. Intel said this helps stabilize the performance and health of the SSD over time.

For X25-M owners with 160GB of capacity on the dive, the firmware update also offers a performance boost to sequential write speeds by delivering up to 100MB per second, a 40% performance improvement over the existing firmware version.

Read more about storage in Computerworld's Storage Knowledge Center.

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