Why you should keep your SSD's firmware up to date News

The firmware, if you will, is sort-of the brain of a drive. A firmware-less drive would be like a zombie…a zombie that’s too stupid to even know it wants brains. Hurr-durr!

Now, much like your operating system (be it Windows, Mac OS X, etc.) or any other piece of software, a firmware is never perfect. It usually is under constant development during the life cycle of a product and being updated by the manufacturer every-so-often. While the changes may not always be obvious to most users, it is critical that your SSD’s firmware is being kept up to date.

Firmware updates may include additional enhancements to performance-relevant metrics such as TRIM or Garbage Collection, bug fixes, resolving compatibility issues, or even introduce entirely new features. In order for you to judge the importance of a firmware update, OCZ classifies firmware updates in three categories:

Important
These firmware updates address critical bugs which improve the reliability and performance of your SSD. It is highly suggested to update your drive as this will ensure the SSD continues to operate at its optimum level.

Recommended
These firmware updates address non-critical bugs and enhance your user experience by offering improved compatibility with additional platform support and external peripherals.

Optional
These firmware updates are improvements implemented at a manufacturing level (e.g. additional NAND support) and do not require any further action from the end-user.

And it’s not a difficult task to complete. OCZ understands that maintenance of an SSD should be a task made as easy as possible and shouldn’t take more time than absolutely necessary. OCZ kept this in mind when they created SSD Guru to provide you with a simple and quick firmware updating mechanism. Look for yourself…all it takes is one minute :-)