Intel fixes drive bricking firmware update for flash drives
Company to re-release SSD software
By Lucas Mearian | Computerworld US | Published: 10:08, 19 November 2009
After pulling a firmware upgrade for its X25-M consumer solid state drive last month due to user complaints, Intel indicated that it would be re-issuing the upgrade by the end of this month.
On a user support forum on the company's website, 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 optimize its SSD for Windows 7, was pulled only a day after its initial release.
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The firmware, called SSD Toolbox, monitors and manages the performance of X25-M SSDs on systems running the Windows 7 operating system. The firmware upgrade and Intel SSD Optimiser 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 syncs 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 stabilise 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.
The SSD Toolbox and Optimiser also allow the respective enhancements to work with Windows XP and Vista.
