Wait, what's this? Intel admitting that its
X18-M and
X25-M SSDs do actually have the
potential to slow after extended use? After the company
flat out denied allegations brought forth by
PC Perspective earlier this year, it has now quietly pushed out a v1.1 update for the 80GB and 160GB versions of the aforementioned devices. All we're told is that it brings along "several continuous improvement optimizations intended to provide the best possible user experience," but there's absolutely no denying what it's really aiming to fix. Intel still maintains that the likelihood of users experiencing any long-term issues are next to nothing, but we'd suggest applying the update just in case. Wouldn't want to be missing out on any lightning fast read / write rates, now would you?
[Via
HotHardware]
Read - Intel firmware update
Read - Updated firmware review
posted Apr 13th 2009 7:13PM
My ware is certainly firm, baby.
The slowdown issue is fundamentally rooted in how SSD's operate and affects every one on the market at the moment.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=8 If you wan't to know exactly how it works
I am thinking it also has alot to do with Compatibility and less to do with the PCPER article.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3535
All Intel did was to change/introduce a scavenging mechanism to move the blocks/pages around to free up more consecutive blocks for sequential I/O.
IMHO, they didnt "fix it", they simply made it better.
It's a brave new world people, not everyone is an expert yet, not even Intel.
Agreed the issue is real. But if you read the anandtech analysis, remember how he also STILL said even with the performance falling off with use, it still leveled off at a very high level, higher than any other SSD, and significantly faster than any hard disk drive in most respects (for the typical laptop user).
Glad to hear Intel is working on addressing the issue regardless though. Personally I'm waiting on bigger devices from them. I would love to switch to an SSD, but I need more than 160GB. How about a 250GB+ drive Intel?
@Fanfoot,
If you don't mind me asking, but what the hell do you need that much, really fast, storage for?
"allegations but forth by PC Perspective" Brought forth maybe?
no. they used their buttocks for allegations.
I was thinking put forth
I don't deny the possibility, but no company loudly announces firmwares so why was this particularly quiet? In fact the loud firmwares announcements usually signal massive product flaws a la the Seagate 1.5Tb drives.
Maybe the sandforce processor will be what were looking for.
Actually, it's a great news for Intel SSD owners IMO. Intel SSDs carries a price premium over competing products and that's the type of support I expect from a big company like Intel. Kudos to Intel, it's a great news if it bumps even higher the performance of those great SSDs! :)
I just ran the update and my system does seem to be a little quicker.
It's nice that the update didn't wipe out the contents of my drive, unlike updates for OCZ drives.
Are you sure it was quicker immediately? I'd think you'd have to leave it alone for a while (running trim in the background maybe) for the update to make any difference at all...
Two things:
1. I wonder if this has resolved the issue where Macs running Boot Camp could not see the drive. You could run OS X on the X-25M and you could run Windows as a VM, but you couldn't boot directly to Windows natively.
2. On the forums discussing the above Boot Camp issue, I saw numerous posts where people were claiming the X-25M was not firmware upgradeable. Glad to see they were wrong!
Does anyone know if item 1 is now fixed?