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]

If you don't update the firmware, then TRIM is not available to keep your drive up to specs. You could use the Intel Toolbox to do a manual TRIM and keep things up to specs, but the Toolbox was taken down for some reason.

Rather than take a chance, wait until they update the firmware, which shouldn't be too long. I installed the firmware before and after all the mess, but I knew it installed fine on my first drive so I wasn't worried about doing it again.

Yes, you can safely do the install without updating firmware.

[idata]

Reading this (http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1112/2/) article, shows why Intel removed the toolbox software.

For the optimization the latest firmware is needed, so I guess Toolbox is firmware dependant. That's why the toolbox has been retracted.

Reading the previous reaction I conclude that with my older (02G9) firmware, I could install Win7/64 without bricking my SSD .

During use the performance of the drive would slowly degrade, but would remain working.

Assuming that Intel eventually releases a stable updater and firmware that works fine with win7/64, I could update the firmware on this later date, without losing the data on the SSD. And then performing SSD maintenance (TRIM) to get the SSD speed back up to par.

Is this assumption right?

[idata]

If you have the new firmware with TRIM support, then you do not have to run the Toolbox unless your storage driver does not pass the TRIM command or you are running Vista or XP. With Windows 7 you do not need to run the Optimizer unless using a driver that does not pass the TRIM command, such as Intel Storage Mamager driver.

When you update with new firmware supporting TRIM, you will not have to use Optimizer (manual TRIM) if using a driver that passes TRIM command in Windows 7, such as the driver that comes with Windows 7, just set your BIOS to AHCI before installing Windows 7. You should not lose any date updating to new firmware. The new firmware will automatically bring your system back to specs. You can verify that by running the AS SSD tool to benchmark: http://www.alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php http://www.alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php

[idata]

I know the article suggests using the Optimizer and seems to suggest doing that regardless of driver, but the Intel White Paper states:

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)

[idata]

That's clear enough for me now!.

ThanXaloT 4 taking the time to answer this.

I think a lot of people will benifit from this (simple) clear answer.