Intel Launches TRIM Firmware For 34nm SSDs

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

With the release of firmware version 02HA, the Intel 34nm SSD family becomes even more impressive. Intel delivered on their promise of releasing a non-destructive firmware update that supports the Windows 7 Trim command along with an end user tool to allow users to optimize the performance of their SSD on Windows XP and Vista operating systems. Those that have the 160GB 34nm SSDs got a very nice performance boost this morning as well. By just installing this firmware update you will see an instant performance boost on the sequential write speeds that allows you to reach speeds well over what you could have gotten with the existing firmware version. Intel recommends that all users install the firmware update and toolbox, and to schedule the Trim function to run daily to ensure best performance. After using the firmware, we too encourage anyone with a 34nm Intel SSD to download the new firmware update and give it a shot. We updated our systems that use both the 80GB and 160GB 34nm SSDs this past week and not one system had any issues with the update.

Our use of the firmware version 02HA for the past week has been nothing but positive. We were under the impression that the Windows 7 ATA Data Set Management Commands trim attribute was something done in the background, but that doesn’t appear to be the case on the Intel drives. From what the documentation says, you need to schedule the Intel SSD Optimizer to run daily to get the best performance from your SSD. This only has to be done once, so after you set it you can forget about it and go about your day. We’ll have to play around with Trim some more in the coming weeks to get the full picture of how it works and what exactly it is doing. No one has given us clear information as to what exactly is being done on the drive, so we are learning as we go just like you are on this one.

Legit Bottom Line: The Intel 34nm Gen 2 SSDs just got a little bit sweeter today from a little firmware update that keeps the drive running at its peak performance level and the 160GB variants got a speed boost for free!