New SSD Toolbox is a winner!!!

[idata]

Just installed the intel matrix storage manager and then the ssd toolbox. Took 45 minutes to optimize my ssd but well worth it, I don't think windows 7 was trimming anything even with the proper firmware and using the microsoft ahci drivers. My boot time went from 15 seconds down to 10. Everything just seems to be even faster and smoother. Kinda like disk defragmenter for SSD's. Great job intel. Nice fix. Since you only have to run it once a week, forget using the windows 7 built in trim. The matrix storage manager drivers are WAY better and really how much trouble is it to click the button once a week to run the toolbox.

[idata]

I have to say I was very surprised to read about the new 'TRIM' feature in v1.2. Until I hear something from Intel regarding the impact of this on wear levelling I'm staying well away. Writing 80 / 160 GB per week to the drives just can't be good? I can perhaps see this resulting in better synthetic benchmark performance versus TRIM only but in real world ops is the difference even going to be noticible? I don't use system restore, preffering my own backup / imaging solutions anyway. Anyone have any idea what their rationale is behind this? This their fix to get around the system restore issue? For now I'll stick with a v1.1 daily schedule and wait for a TRIM aware version of their controller drivers. What would have been good would have been to see the Toolbox offer both methods of optimisation since the new one provides something similar to the benefits of a HDDErase without the hassle but I really do not want to be doing this weekly, or even monthly for that matter.

[idata]

I have 160gb g2, 62 GB free space, with 1 restore point and the new optimizer takes 10 seconds to run.

The drive can not write 62 gb of free space in 10 secs, so it is not rewriting the free space.

[idata]

I'm not doubting you here but according to the documentation the optimiser has changed significantly:

Note: Each time you add a schedule, the tool displays a duration warning screen (see 

Figure 10) to explain that the Intel SSD Optimizer may take many minutes tocomplete. This process will temporarily consume all the free space on the SSDexcept for one gigabyte (1 GB) while completing an Intel SSD Optimizer session.Upon completion, all free space is restored to the system.

Having had time to think about this, even if it does indeed write to the entire free space, the wear would not amount to much I think. In a year each block would receive 52 additional writes (assuming the recommended weekly schedule) with a lifetime of some 10,000 on average. I remain a bit wary however. Naturally Intel advise shutting down programs during the operation (not so convenient if it's on a schedule) but I'd be cautious of some background task causing problems e.g. AV software. I don't know, to me it seems like overkill when running a simple TRIM schedule daily did the job. I'd just like to know a little more about the new process and the reasons for the change before using the new Toolbox. Version 1.1 works fine on my system so I'm thinking, if it's not broken...

[idata]

Just had a thought Wolf. Do you have system restore enabled? Wondering if the free space write is something that is only performed if this is turned on or if system restore points are present? If you don't it might explain why your run only took a few seconds? Saw on another thread there are folks who are finding the new optimiser does take a while.

Would be very much appreciated for someone from Intel to briefly explain some details of the new process.

[idata]

Yes I have system restore enable, but I only have 1 restore point.

I did measure the 10 seconds with a watch and i'm using win7.

Maybe my drive was previously trimed, I dont know, but based in my 10 secs runs, I dont think it's a dumb process, neither it will blindly overwrite all the free space... but I really dont know how it works.

I never understood in 1rst place how optimize could only messup restore points and not other files.