Intel upgrades to fix SSD performance flaw
The one that didn't exist
Wednesday, 15 April 2009, 12:15
INTEL has offered a firmware upgrade for an SSD performance problem which it initially said did not exist.
Even now it claims that the SSD fragmentation issue unlikely to affect average users, but it has issued a firmware upgrade for its X25-M anyway.
It was claimed by PC Perspective reviewers that the drive suffers from fragmentation resulting in performance degradation over time. Intel said it could not replicate the results but soon found it was the only organisation on the planet which couldn't.
The firm posted its update here, while still managing to keep quiet on any ishoos it may or may not be able to replicate. µ
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the biggest performance flaw is the "£ per gigabyte" why do they keep ignoring it?
do they really think that graphs and numbers will convince thrifty consumers to part with cash for a pittance of storage?
the concept is in danger of failure unless consumers get a better deal.
I totally agree with the above comments
about cost.
It seems to me we have been here before,
with the Blu-Ray & HD issue.
We have a potential market being throttled by producers greed,where they think they can recover their cost
without any thought about the price-demand mechanism?
Do they not understand simple economics?
There are many plants getting into the SSD market & this will,whether Intel likes it or not,force them to lower their prices,or drop out of the market.
Conssumers,it seems to me,are a whole lot more savvy than what capitalist are.
Blu -Ray may have won the debate,but where is the market for it?
The same thing can happen with SSD's,the product may eventually be superior to metal disc,but who will be able to afford them?
I was looking into SSDs as i really like fast HDDs for gaming and file transfer ( I do move 73GB files), but they all have one thing in common .... they suck. The performance bump is not that great compared to my RAID0 Raptors, which cost less than half price.
Then there was the X number of writes before they crap out. Not worth it! ... then again neither is Blu-Ray.
Intel Describes situation as "Stuck In Rut" slowing down SSD to One of Fastest today,mere 18 Mb/S. This Is FirmWare Update, from 8610 to 8820. Unfortunately, it helps Wee Few, So theres More Story inside SSD today than Data. drashek
Erm, in any case, better not to call the problem "fragmentation". It's not exactly fragmentation and people reading this might start thinking that defragmenting the Intel SSD will correct the issue.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/759/1051759/intel-recognised-ethical-business-standards
Nuff said.
This article explains quite a bit, including what the problem is, and why Intel is almost the only place to go at this point.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531
If you don't like the price, buy a cheaper and lower-performance SSD from someone else.
Better yet: buy a couple of Raptors. The noise will keep the burglars away, and they even double as space heaters. Win win.
After all, they are still running pentuim pro servers..