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]

So it does. MS also say that Win 7 should automatically do the following when it detects a ssd; disable defrag, superfetch, readyboost and application prefetch launching. So, did any of the above happen when you updated the TRIM f/w? For me the answer is no. Nothing was automatically configured on a fresh install with the new f/w and Win 7 AHCI drivers.

According to that Legit review: [Intel] "don't have any documentation from Microsoft on how TRIM is run." WTF?

How do you know if the drive is auto trimming?

[idata]

[According to that Legit review: [Intel] "don't have any documentation from Microsoft on how TRIM is run." WTF?]

I truly believe Microsoft marketing dept. should comment on that statement from Intel!

[idata]

How do you know if the drive is auto trimming? Run the AS SSD tool I linked to above and see the benchmark results. I ran it before the TRIM update and after the TRIM update, and I run it occasionally now with TRIM enabled. The results continually confirm TRIM is running.

As for ReadyBoost, that is disabled on my computer. Superfetch is on Automatic and I can't be certain it is running. Microsoft may have changed their philosophy with regard to Prefetch and Superfetch, so I really couldn't say what is going on there. However, none of that changes the fact TRIM is running without using Toolbox when you have Microsoft AHCI storage driver installed and BIOS configured for AHCI in Windows 7.

[idata]

The important thing is TRIM is working to keep your SSD up to specs--and that is the bottom line. How it works would be nice to know, but it wouldn't change what is being done.

[idata]

MS made it very clear how Win 7 would optimise itself for SSD's. Those optimisations were built into Win 7 from day one and as far as I know they have not changed. You can read about them here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

It would seem that the recent Intel f/w update is not compliant with Win 7 TRIM ssd requirements. If it was those optimisations would be automatic.

So outside of benchmarking how can you check if your ssd is auto trimming and more to the point why are the G2 drives still not compliant with Win 7?