G.Skill Falcon 128GB SSD Review

TRIM and Firmware Update

As this review was in the process of going live, a newer firmware was released. It is mainly a bug fix release so upgrading the firmware is not really necessary as all Falcons come with Firmware 1.10 (1370) and are TRIM command capable right out of the box. We of course reran all the benchmarks before and after and there was no noticeable difference in performance. In the end it is up to you if you think it is worth doing; however with that being said, we do strongly recommend you stop by every once in awhile and see if the official Falcon Firmware thread on their forum contains any new information or updates. Here is a link to the official 1571 thread: [ONLY for FALCON SSD]Firmware 1571 released - GSKILL TECH FORUM before running this firmware we strongly urge you to download the manual and read it.


As we said, updating the firmware is not as crucial as it is with other Barefoot-based SSDs as all Faclon's support the TRIM command right out of the box. While support for the Trim command is all well and fine, unless you have Win 7 you would be out of luck….or at least you would be if not for a handy little program called “wiper.exe”. The official thread for G.Skill’s version is here: [only for Falcon Series]wiper.exe - TRIM COMMAND for Falcon Series SSD - GSKILL TECH FORUM. We recommend you also stop by from time to time as the wiper program is still beta.

The most important thing to realize is this is beta firmware and while the chances of data loss are slim you must be cognizant of this possibility. G. Skill’s wiper program bears an awfully suspicious resemblance to OCZ’s original version of their formatting program and as such if you are using a 64bit OS you may wish to wait a bit longer before using it….or backing up all your data just in case. On an interesting side note, all OCZ’s wiper versions appear to work just fine on the Falcon. OCZ states the original version is about 50/50 chances of data loss on 64bit programs but only 10% on 32bit programs. The never 0422 has its detractors as some say its not as good at its job as the original but they say its darn near 100% on 32bit OS’ and 90% safe on 64bit. Food for thought on which program you should use to say the least.


To run the wiper program, the best thing is to have the Falcon be the OS drive and drive 0. To properly run, it needs the Falcon to be Drive 0 but it seemed more hit or miss when it was a data (aka D drive). Since using a Falcon (or any SSD) as a data drive is a little unlikely, this caveat is a minor one to say the least. The only other restriction is it will not work on Falcon’s which have been RAID’ed.

To run it all you need to do is double click the wiper.exe icon. It should be located in the root folder. When you double click it, a DOS window opens up and it runs all by itself. If you have made multiple partitions, you need not worry about running it for each partition as the program is smart enough to look for ALL Falcon drives and run itself on all “drives”. While we only have one Falcon to play with, we assume that as long as you have not RAID’ed multiple Falcons it will also wipe any and all of them in one fell swoop, but this is only supposition. If you have multiple non Falcon drives you need not worry as it will simply tell you it cannot run on XYZ drive and then continue on looking for the Falcon, find it and then clean it and then finish.

We can tell you that this program does work as it restored speed to the drive after we had finished torturing it with IOMeter. With Crystal DiskMark the scores were down right abysmal after IOMeter, but after running the wiper program they were right back up where they were before….like nothing had happened. As with all Indilinx SSDs, you should run any and all benchmarking BEFORE installing the OS. This way you can have your fun, wipe it clean and then use it with no adverse effects.