According to an article by TechSpot, Intel has released a firmware update for two of its Solid State Drives that were suffering from performance issues. The firmware update addresses some internal fragmentation issues, which resulted in writing speeds dropping significantly in some cases. This fragmentation meant that the performance of the drives would decrease with time.
The firmware update only applies to the Intel X18-M and X25-M SSDs, and can be installed by using the tools provided by Intel on their website. According to the site, the firmware includes several more optimizations, on top of the issue fix. PC Perspective, who picked up on the issues in the first place, and who received the new firmware in advance, reported significant performance increases, noting that the drive was now much closer to the 80MB/s write speed it was supposed to have, as opposed to the 25-30 MB/s speeds it would occasionally drop to under certain circumstances that the firmware claims to fix.
The update requires the user to burn the firmware update tools provided by Intel to a disk, and then flash the drive from it. The tools, found here, can be used for Windows, Mac and Linux systems. Needless to say, backing up data from the drives is highly recommended before attempting the update.
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