Solid State Drives still have a lot of maturing to go though. The main critique have revolved around specific performance issues to the lifespan of the drives. The latter is not only because of the design of SSDs but the support of the operating systems, or more precisely lack of support. Microsoft has promised that Windows 7 will sport better support for Solid State Drives that will improve performance minimize the wear and tear of the drives.
During WinHEC Microsoft revealed that it has improved the SSD support in four distinct ways with Windows 7, and even though we are of course happy about this there changes are far from revolutionizing. The operating system will deactivate the defragmentation if it recognizes a SSD devices, while at the same time partition the drive more efficiently to fit with the SSD technology. It will also introduce a “trim” technology that will improve performance;
“Second, Windows 7’s new “trim” feature will improve performance three ways. It will: Reduce the amount of data to be deleted, which improves the SSD’s lifespan; delete garbage data in advance, which speeds up writing of data; and maximize the amount of unused data, which helps even out the wear and tear on the SSD, Shu said.”
Alas it seems like Microsoft will wait with making the biggest and most efficient change with its Windows operating system, namely replacing the ATA interface used by all retail harddrives. Intel has developed a considerably better interface for SSDs called NVMHCI (Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface) that Microsoft openly supports. However it will not become a part of Windows 7, even if we are still hoping for the best.
