During the month of August, OCZ and other manufacturers of SSD discs based on the Barefoot controller from Indilix offered an important firmware update of their products that brought primarily a function making it possible for the disc to regenerate its memory cells during periods of inactivity in order to optimize them so that they reach their initial write speed.
In the final analysis this firmware has proven to be very problematic. The system of regeneration, the Nand Launderer was very aggressive and consumed a lot of power causing a reduction of the battery life of portables. On the Mac, there were bugs such as the impossiblity to wake from sleep. After having attempting to regulate the problems with two updates, Indilix withdraw the firmware and decided to begin again at zero. This is a great pity for those who had installed it, the only means of downgrading required the erasing the disc and starting up via Windows to reinstall the former firmware on it.
Breaking news: the alpha of the new firmware is currently in test. It finally seems to function correctly and one should see it released in ten days.
The opponents with the SSD are happy to claim that this is evidence that this technology is not yet mature. This is true; it is still at the beginning, but they remain so promising that it would be difficult for us to reject the SSD and go back to the hard drive. Admittedly, young companies such as Indilix continue to learn on the job, but thanks to them one gained more performance in one year than the industry of the hard drive was able to do in the last 10 years.
