Intel's X25-M SSD Judged Insufficient For "Heavy Use"

Intel's much-hyped X25-M SSD is being marketed as a quicker and much more energy-efficient option for laptops than the traditional hard disk drives, but a review site finds it slower under heavy use, writes M Asim for storage-biz.news.

According to PC Perspective, this solid-state drive has problems in the sector relating to wear leveling algorithms and remapping that are considered relatively effective to boost performance.

PC Perspective says that they it does the opposite and becomes fragmented when used heavily.

The problem becomes even worse with usual defragmentation programs.

"If a laptop user places light workloads on its X-25 M, it may not find such issues",the review says.

"But there are some users who are opting for SS drive for the OS partitions, and these drives can be fragmented by a standard power user workload."

Intel responded by saying that its labs couldn't duplicate the reviewers' tests results.

"We have contacted PC Perspective's reviewers to find out about their method to duplicate and scrutinize the data," an Intel spokesman said.

"We think that the imitative workloads they have tested do not represent real world use."

According to the chip maker, almost every storage device can prove a fiasco if tested for anything other than normal use.

PC Perspective's reviewers, meanwhile, say that this performance problem can be fixed with a firmware update from the chip maker.

Intel unveiled the X25-M last December and has already lowered its price.