Intel X25-M 34nm Flash SSD

Intel was the first company to deliver a Sata SSD, its 80GB X25-M, and we were blown away by the combination of speed and silence. Unfortunately, the price was rather steep but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. When we reviewed the X25-M, it never occurred to us to ask about the fabrication process that Intel …

[TheTick]

BIOS bug

You did not see the BIOS password bug because Intel stopped distribution of these drives when they found the bug, and only sent the drives back out after they had their firmware updated.

[Leo Waldock]

BIOS issues

To the best of my knowledge Intel hasn't said that a particular firmware version is cursed by the bug however I can state that the drive I reviewed came with firmware 2CV102G2 and the bug fix version is 2CV102G9.

[Annihilator]

Getting close...

To me jumping up and down screaming "I want I want I want!!"

Why are they not making 3.5" versions of this, packed to the rafters with even more lovely solid state storage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Random IO

You review the disks with one perfomance characteristic and for desktops it's the least important.

4k Random IO figures read and write would be nice.

[Bronek Kozicki]

wait ...

... ordered a week ago, still waiting. Not in stock!

And I agree, one of the most important figures for system disk is random small write. Old HD-tach charts (continuous read and write) are almost irrelevant for SSD 1. technology is fast enough most of the time anyway 2. they do not catch "stuttering" problem.

[John Robson]

Max latency?

4k Random IO is the most important IO you do on most machines.

The MAXIMUM, not average latency of these operations is critical - remember the original non intel drives? Really fast, then stalled for a second, then really fast...

That seriously illustrated that the relevant benchmarks are not throughput for almost anyone...