Update from Intel's NAND Solutions Group

[Alan_F_Intel]

Dear User of the Intel® SSD Communities:

Thank you very much for your blogs on Intel Support Community related to updating the firmware on your Intel® 34nm High Performance SSDs. Intel is committed to its customers and its products and is taking this issue very seriously.

We have been contacted by users with SSD issues after using the firmware upgrade tool (version 1.3) in a Windows 7* 64bit environment. Intel has replicated the issue on 34nm SSDs (X25-M) and is working on a fix. If users have downloaded 02HA firmware and not upgraded, Intel recommends they don't upgrade until further notice. Intel is pursuing the resolution of this as a high priority. No related issues have been reported by users who have successfully upgraded to 02HA firmware via the firmware upgrade tool (version 1.3)."

You should know that Intel is seeking direct feedback on this issue from members of the Community. In fact, we have communicated with selected users of the blog "Trim Update Hosed my Windows 7 Install", asking them to send their drives directly to Intel to expedite the analysis of the issues. This action will enable us to more quickly generate a resolution for this issue.

We appreciate your patience in this matter. And thank you for participating in the Intel Support Community.

rgds,

Alan

NAND Solutions Group

[idata]

You are going by what is written on a blog before the final Windows 7 release, and the quote I gave you may apply as the Intel drive is not all that fast with Writes.

If you want Superfetch disabled, then disable it yourself, same applies to prefetch and defrag. I do not know for certain that Superfetch is working. Just because it says automatic does not necessarily mean it is running. Do you see your hard drive light on computer front panel flickering? I don't. I know with Vista it was flickering even when doing nothing. So, I am not at all concerned about the things you are. I do know TRIM is working and for me that is all I need to know on that subject.

[idata]

The MS Engineer clearly states in that blog "As far as Win7 RTM goes, trim is in its final form. Of course it could evolve in service packs, etc., as the market demands."

Before that blog, this was stipulated by MS: "SSD can identify itself differently from HDD in ATA as defined by ATA8-ACS Identify Word 217: Nominal media rotation rate. Reporting non-rotating media will allow Windows 7 to set Defrag off as default; improving device endurance by reducing writes."

The Intel G2 with the latest f/w is not able to do that.

Regarding hdd light activity: If you are running Vista or Win 7 your hard drive is always actively writing small files. If you don't believe me get something like Hard Disk Sentinel to track what is being written and read from the disk.

[MJohn29]

So are we thinking that Intel's G2 SSD is not telling Windows 7 that it is a SSD rather than a HDD upon first install and this is why Windows 7 is not optimizing specifically for SSD? (i.e. disable defrag, etc.)

And in regards to TRIM support (which is different from the SSD OS optimizations above), I believe the drive needs TRIM support in the firmware (which we will have), the chipset driver must support TRIM (which currently the native Windows 7 driver supports...not Intel's driver) and finally the OS must support TRIM (which Windows 7 does).

So the bottom line right now is that we need two questions answered:

1. Is Intel's G2 SSD telling Windows 7 it is a SSD upon first install?

2. What is the best method to verify TRIM is ON and working correctly? (i.e. How-to verify TRIM in ON in SSD firmware, chipset driver & OS). Would be nice if there was a utility that could check the entire chain and verify that TRIM is ON or OFF.

[idata]

It is possible to run the "fsutil behavior query|set DisableDeleteNotify" command to query or set Trim from Win 7. I don't know how to check if the ssd is accepting the Trim command or how to make sure the controller is passing through the command.

What I do know is that as part of Win 7 SSD optimisations defrag should be automatically disabled. I had assumed that a TRIM enabled SSD would implement this feature but obviously that is not the case for the Intel drives.

This is an interesting read. Especially the bit about method 2 and the NCQ issue.

http://www.snia.org/events/storage-developer2009/presentations/thursday/NealChristiansen_ATA_TrimDel... http://www.snia.org/events/storage-developer2009/presentations/thursday/NealChristiansen_ATA_TrimDel...

This is also interesting although it is now quite dated. Amongst other things it talks about Windows Logo certification for SSD's. As far as I know the G2's do not have a Win Logo cert, but maybe that fell by the wayside.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/E/6/5E66B27B-988B-4F50-AF3A-C2FF1E62180F/COR-T558_WH08.pptx http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/E/6/5E66B27B-988B-4F50-AF3A-C2FF1E62180F/COR-T558_WH08.pptx

All it really takes is a quick explanation from Intel to shed some light, but don't hold your breath.

[idata]

Windows 7 is passing the TRIM command to the Intel SSD Gen.2 as long as you have the Microsoft AHCI driver installed and BIOS set to AHCI and TRIM firmware installed. It really is that simple. You can verify it by running the AS SSD benchmark tool.

You could disable Superfetch and whatever else you don't want to see running. I think you guys are making much ado about nothing of signficant importance.

The first thing I did upon booting into Windows 7 was uncheck scheduled Defragmentation, and disable System Restore--I make my own backups.