The Intel Company has released special software called SSD Toolbox, which includes updated firmware for it’s advanced solid-state drives X25-M series and SSD Optimizer, which will improve performance of the SSD. New firmware in conjunction with SSD Optimizer and SSD Toolbox allows you to use a special ATA-command to ensure continued high performance. This command, called Trim, synchronize list of actually deleted files with list of files, which are deleted but still physically exist on drive. Trim command tells SSD what exactly blocks became available. In other operating systems new tools for optimization are not yet available because the Trim command is part of Windows ATA Data Set Management Command and is only implemented in Windows 7. So Intel SSD will work faster only in Windows 7 for now.
Drives X25-M series are relatively new and are manufactured by the most modern 34 nanometer technology. Despite the novelty, these drives are affected of the general SSD problem – “degradation” after rewriting a large amount of data. According to the developers, the gain in speed from the new firmware and optimizing utility can be different. For 160 Gb Solid State Disk write speed is increased from 70 Mb/s to 100 Mb/s.
Intel SSD Toolbox Screenshot
It should be noted that experts from WindowsITPro reported that the Trim improves drive performance not in all cases, but only after complete removal of files. If you just rewrites existing files, the level of degradation of the drive remains the same as before the using Trim command.
In any event, if you are using Intel X25-M SATA drives, you should be sure to download and install updated firmware and a set of utilities SSD Optimizer and SSD Toolkit to optimize the placement of files on the SSD-drive. You can use this link: http://www.intel.com/go/ssdtoolbox/
