Update from Intel's NAND Solutions Group - Toolbox issue

[Alan_F_Intel]

To 34nm (G2) Intel® X25-M Solid-State Drive consumers,

• Microsoft* alerted Intel to an issue with the Intel® SSD Optimizer tool and Intel is working on a fix to the issue. After the SSD Optimizer is run, the SSD Optimizer renders all previously set Windows* system restore points unusable. However, user data is not affected . The SSD Optimizer tool is part of the Intel® SSD Toolbox (ver 1.1).

• This applies only to users who meet all four criteria below:

• Use Windows*7 or Vista and

• Use the System Protection feature which sets system restore points (enabled by default in Windows*7 and Vista*) and

• Have installed 02HA firmware and

• Have used Intel SSD Optimizer (which was available from intel.com from 10/26 to 11/4).

• A workaround for this issue and additional details are available http://support.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/sb/CS-031073.htm here . Intel will give regular updates on this issue. Please note this issue is not related to the Intel SSD firmware update process covered in a separate announcement (Intel® Solid-State Drive Firmware Update).

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Alan

NAND Solutions Group

Intel Corporation

[idata]

Trim is automatic with a drive that supports it in Win7 IF you are using Microsofts AHCI drivers, so no need to run the optimizer.

However, if you are using the current Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IMSM), it does not pass TRIM through to the drive, so you need the optimizer if using IMSM.

[idata]

TRIM actually seems to work on my 160GB drive. I have now been using the new firmware for exactly three weeks and the performance of my drive hasn't dropped at a all (measured with CrystalDiskMark 2.2), if anything it's slightly improved.

Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit RTM has been on the drive for almost 2 months. I'm using Microsofts AHCI-drivers and the BIOS was set to AHCI when upgrading the firmware. It was the Windows 7 installation that took care of the initial partitioning of the drive and it added the 100MB "System Reserved" partition.

The drive is even encrypted, using Bitlocker, and it was encrypted before upgrading the firmware.

I only ran Toolbox/Optimizer once, right after installing the new firmware. The Toolbox didn't schedule any future Optimizer sessions.

I must admit that I have been a bit scared the past weeks since it's my work computer and I really need it to be functioning well. I have read everything I could lay my hands on regarding TRIM and it really seems to be tricky implementing. Check out the discussions regarding problems and bad performance on Crucial's and OCZ's sites.

All in all I'm a happy SSD user but Intel really could have done a better job COMMUNICATING with it's customers!

Message was edited by: RollerBoy reason: typo

[idata]

That is the theory, but for that to be true the native Win 7 support for TRIM would have to be working differently to trim via the toolbox. If it works in the same way then it would be reasonable to assume that system restore files were also being deleted. In that was the case why have Intel not flagged it up? Either native trim is not working or it works differently and consequently does not delete system restore files.

I submitted a support ticket to clarify this issue and this was the reply:

Thank you for contacting Intel Technical Support.

ME: Thanks for your reply. Just to clarify; are you saying that you need the

Intel Tool Box to schedule TRIM because it does not happen automatically with Win 7? (I.E. TRIM does not automatically occur with Win 7 using Win 7 AHCI drivers).

INTEL * That is correct, it will not happen automatically you have to start it manually using Intel® Tool Box.

Maybe the support guy got it wrong, but if that is the case then trim must be working differently between the toolbox and OS..

[idata]

When you have a file in your hard drive, the file has one or more clusters allocated for it to hold the file contents. It also has an entry in the Master File Table (MFT). This MFT record specifies everything about the file: its name, size, what clusters are allocated for it etc. (In fact, if the file is small enough, all its contents are stored in its MFT record and no extra clusters are allocated.)

Now when you delete the file, Windows simply wipes the file's MFT record and then the file essentially does not exist anymore. Its file contents, however, still exist wherever they were on the disk. At this point Windows 7 will issue a TRIM command for those clusters that contained the file data to inform the SSD that these clusters are not anymore used and can be erased (so that future writes to them would be faster).

Now consider what the SSD Toolbox's optimizer has to do: It doesn't get notified on the fly of file deletions and content modifications. It has to, one way or another, figure itself what NTFS clusters are free and what are not, and issue TRIM for all free clusters. This is why the SSD Optimizer can easily have a bug which makes it think a cluster is free when in fact it is not, and is being used by NTFS. In this case it seems the SSD Optimizer has a bug which makes it incorrectly think the clusters that are used for storing restore points are free. Then it issues TRIM for them, and the drive makes what it's supposed to and erases the data -- and then your restore points are gone.

Regarding the SSD, there is no difference what software (Windows itself or the optimizer software) issued the TRIM. The drive will simply erase the blocks it has been told are empty, so in that sense TRIM works exactly the same way in Windows and the SSD Optimizer.

Contrary to what some people have said in this thread, you do not need any extra software in Windows 7 for TRIM to work. Windows 7 will issue TRIM commands automatically by default. Incompatible drivers (the matrix storage driver for example) can, however, filter out these commands.

[idata]

As someone else said above, there is no need to run optimizer if you have Microsoft AHCI storage driver, BIOS set to AHCI, and Windows 7. The Microsoft AHCI storage driver passes the TRIM command to your SSD if your SSD has TRIM installed. When installing Windows 7, you should have had BIOS set to AHCI.

From the Intel white paper on the Toolbox, no longer shown but I copied it when the Toolbox was available:

When using the latest Microsoft Windows* 7 operating system with Microsoft AHCI storage drivers the OS will contain native support to execute the Intel® SSD Optimizer on an Intel SSD without requiring any user interaction.

Microsoft Windows* 7 

Microsoft* AHCINative OS support (Intel® SSD Toolbox not required)