Gartner has released a preliminary report detailing U.S. and worldwide PC shipments for the first quarter of 2009. The report pegs Apple's U.S. market share in fourth place among vendors at 7.4%, down from 8.0% in the fourth quarter of 2008. More i...
New Firmware Update for OCZ SSD Vertex
OCZ released a firmware update for its SSD belonging to the Vertex series. Once more you will have to run Windows to apply this patch, and you will need to have your data backup on another volume as the procedure entirely erase the SSD.
This update should:
- improve future firmware updates (so be prepared for new ones)
- improve management of defective blocks
- improve compatibility with sleeping mode on Mac Pro, a proof that the company is seriously considering the Mac market
- bring support for TRIM.
The latest point is the most important one. Currently, OS are using SSD as HD, and they have been optimized for such disc-based storage unit. So, when you delete data, the OS will erase the allocation table on the drive, defining this space as now free. Those blocks are not really deleted and you will rewrite on the previous data. This is the reason why some software and companies can retrieve data from erased HDs.
But if one can rewrite data on a block declared as "free" on a HD, it is really different with a SSD. One will need to assign "0" status to all concerned chips, this can take some times and explain why performance gain can dramatically drop over time. The TRIM command is designed to bypass this issue. It will allow the OS to better deal with chips where stored data will be deleted. It will slow down erasing, but this is not a critical point as the writing speed will be preserve over the lifetime of the SSD.
OCZ has added this command in the SSD BIOS, however it is still not integrated in OS. It will be done with Windows 7 and we can hope that Apple will do it too with Snow Leopard. OCZ is already offering an utility to turn all deleted chips to "0" when booting your drive. If it is currently only available for Windows, OCZ promised to release Mac OS X and Linux versions soon.
Apple's US Market Share Slips in 1Q 2009
Gartner has released a preliminary report detailing U.S. and worldwide PC shipments for the first quarter of 2009. The report pegs Apple's U.S. market share in fourth place among vendors at 7.4%, down from 8.0% in the fourth quarter of 2008. More i...
New Firmware Update for OCZ SSD Vertex
OCZ released a firmware update for its SSD belonging to the Vertex series. Once more you will have to run Windows to apply this patch, and you will need to have your data backup on another volume as the procedure entirely erase the SSD.
This update should:
- improve future firmware updates (so be prepared for new ones)
- improve management of defective blocks
- improve compatibility with sleeping mode on Mac Pro, a proof that the company is seriously considering the Mac market
- bring support for TRIM.
The latest point is the most important one. Currently, OS are using SSD as HD, and they have been optimized for such disc-based storage unit. So, when you delete data, the OS will erase the allocation table on the drive, defining this space as now free. Those blocks are not really deleted and you will rewrite on the previous data. This is the reason why some software and companies can retrieve data from erased HDs.
But if one can rewrite data on a block declared as "free" on a HD, it is really different with a SSD. One will need to assign "0" status to all concerned chips, this can take some times and explain why performance gain can dramatically drop over time. The TRIM command is designed to bypass this issue. It will allow the OS to better deal with chips where stored data will be deleted. It will slow down erasing, but this is not a critical point as the writing speed will be preserve over the lifetime of the SSD.
OCZ has added this command in the SSD BIOS, however it is still not integrated in OS. It will be done with Windows 7 and we can hope that Apple will do it too with Snow Leopard. OCZ is already offering an utility to turn all deleted chips to "0" when booting your drive. If it is currently only available for Windows, OCZ promised to release Mac OS X and Linux versions soon.
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