Intel updates SSD toolkit
If you run Windows and own an Intel SSD, you should check out the new Intel SSD Toolkit.
Version 2.0 of the toolkit brings two new features to the free utility: the System Configuration Tuner and a Secure Erase feature. The latter is pretty self-explanatory, in that you run it and it wipes the drive beyond economic recovery for when you really don't want people looking at your private files, but the first offers some interesting new functionality to the software.
Joining the existing Intel SSD Optimizer [sic] menu entry, which uses TRIM to optimise the performance of the SSD, the System Configuration Tuner goes through your Windows-based system configuration and makes recommended changes in order to ensure maximum performance while keeping power efficiency high and tweaking the endurance of the drive.
It achieves these remarkable goals by fiddling with your Superfetch, pre-fetch, and ReadyBoost settings, so users that have already manually tweaked their systems might want to avoid running the System Configuration Tuner for fear of losing their customisations. The Windows defragmenter is also toggled, and power saving maximised by tweaking Windows' use of the DIPM power saving feature of the SATA standard.
Sadly, the toolkit still comes with a long list of caveats and known issues: the Windows-only tool requires an NTFS-formatted drive and won't work at all if your SSD is FAT32; the optimisation functionality doesn't work on RAID or Dynamic Disk configurations with multiple partitions; and certain notebook and PC models from HP, Acer, and Dell refuse to run the tool outright.
Despite these issues, if your system is supported and you want to get the best possible performance out of your Intel-brand SSD, you should probably download the toolkit.
Are you pleased to see that Intel is continuing to add features to its toolkit, or disappointed that much of the functionality is disabled on RAID configurations? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
Previous Article
13 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyOff topic, has anyone got any advice for configurations to optimise an OCZ Vertex (1st ed)?
EDIT: It's the same performance as before :D
But now I see that I already made 2.81T of writes on the SSD (how??), it only has 9 months...
towards end of the second paragraph it should read 'but the first offers some...'
other than that, something like this would be handy for other SSD makes... surely the changes to the system settings would be the same for any SSD?
Will try it right away.
[12 seconds later edit]
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand it doesn't work. I click on my SSD and it refreshes again.
LAME
"intel recommends running Intel SSD Optimizer once a week"
i used it for the 1st time today.
Did you do any other tweaks to your system? I took the page file off my ssd etc.
I've had my 160GB G2 since Dec 09
so about 8 months
And i'm only at 778GB's in host writes!
Never did that... I did it on my Q6600 with the GSkill Falcon and forgot to do it in this SSD on the notebook... big fail...
Now I give lots of credit to HDD's too... That's alot of writes to do. Now with this toolkit It will be ok :)
Cheers Intel. I really like being screwed by no TRIM support for being an early adopter. You are not telling me it's impossible to implement it on this drive, they just don't want to.