Intel X25M FW 02HD

[JimboToronto]

Finally it's arrived.

When Intel pulled their latest X25 firmware (02HA) from their site only a few days after release, they promised a fix by the end of November. It finally came mid-afternoon yesterday in the form of 02HD.

I immediately reflashed the 160GB 34nm X25M in my Asus N10J netbook (Win7 Ultimate 32bit). My impressions are mixed.

The reflash was ridiculously easy compared to many other reflashes I've done. No jumpers or data loss.

My original reason for reflashing was to get Trim support but the promise of increased performance, especially in sequential writes where X25Ms traditionally lag, also lured me.

Perhaps I should withhold my judgment until I've done some optimizations but untweaked on a clean install of Win7 results are surprising. Preliminary benchmarks indeed show an impressive boost in sequential writes but everything else seems to suffer.

I'm kicking myself for not running and saving some benches of the original 02G9 firmware, but I think we all know by now how a stock X25M should perform.

After the reflash all the benches seem to agree. Sequential reads are around 120MB/s or half of what I expected. Small file performance is even more distressing, 4KB reads are around 10MB/s and 4KB writes around 30MB/s. Seek time is .2 ms. Everything except sequential writes seems to be at half speed.

I haven't fired up IOmeter yet so I don't know if I/Os have suffered but I'm a little concerned. I love the fact that Trim is enabled but I'm spoiled by my Vertex SSDs and expected better.

Sequential writes are overrated on system drives. They really only apply to app installation, hibernation, etc. Booting the OS or launching apps uses sequential reads but mostly it's about small reads and writes and total I/Os.

I know benchmarks aren't the best indication of real-life performance but this is ridiculous. As I said, I didn't do any any optimizations but it shouldn't be this bad. Maybe I forgot something obvious. My netbook doesn't seem to have lost any of the snappiness it gained when I replaced the old 128GB OCZ Core with the X25M and upgraded from XP to Win7 but it certainly doesn't feel any faster.

Further investigation is required.

[gingerbee]

I am going back to 1571 for my falcon's trim sucks and there no garbage collection so i would just stay with the early one and run wiper ( manual trim command )oh and it's not faster it just has trim hench why i am going back to older ones for the indilinx ssd. I promised myself that i would wait on a intel ssd

[ayah]

Ew. That's crappy. I don't know if I want to install new firmware on my drive now. =\

[Sagath]

Hrm, this is distressing. I have two drives here, both with the 'no boot' firmware on them, that I was going to update to 02HD...Now I'm wondering...

Can you backflash these things to older firmware?

[TopDogZero]

Have a look at this thread Intel Releases New Firmware Updated for 34nm SSD r0bc seemed to have had the same problem with the new Intel firmware but in post #8 he says that enabling write caching fixed his problem and it seems normal again?

[AkG]

Crap that does suck. I feel your pain. Intel needs a wake up call or they are going to kick themselves right out of the market with this firmware crap. Seems Intel's motto w/ SSDs is "good hardware....crap firmware" :/

Looks like the only company getting firmware right is OCZ (and only on their Indi drives)....and only because they offered a non TRIM firmware w/ ITGC (1.4.1). Maybe TRIM will only become the next big thing....on the next big thing: Sata 3 drives.

[r0bc]

Jimbo did you figure out whats happening yet?
I was looking to see if anyone was having similar problems over at the Intel forums but didn't see anything.
You may have to rma it. It really does suck.

[gingerbee]

he's not that active might not see this till the week end but good question jimbotoronto did you get it working ( oh and have a good Christmas J )

[Sagath]

Flashed 02HD on my x25-m before clean installing win7 ultimate. Loaded windows, did all the windows tweaks (write cache on, etc) and SSD things (mozilla cache, page file off, etc). Its been running fine. I have about 32 gigs free, and thats with Office and two games installed on the drive. Its zippy. I love being able to log into windows, and run stuff RIGHT THIS SECOND without waiting for that ~15 second pause. We'll see how it holds out in the comming months. I'll benchmark it in another week or two to see where I'm at, then again in a month. Hopefully trim is doing its dirtywork!

I'm not experiencing any of the things Jimbo mentioned. It would be nice to see a status update from him on if he found the issue/solved it/it persists. So often people complain something isnt working right, but never post when they DO solve the problem, and how to solve it.

[rjbarker]

^^^^ Exactly, I'm reluctant to "flash" to new FW due to his poor benchmarks!