X25-M G1 usage guidelines

[DAndr17]

Hi All,

Bearing in mind that X25-M G1 SSDs do not support TRIM are there any particular guidelines from Intel on how to best use these SSDs to make the most out of them? For instance if I know in advance that I'll fit into 60GB should I set reserve in my 160GB ones at half their capacity for 75% occupancy (60/80) or rather leave it intact for 37.5% occupancy (60/160)? Also how often should I do Enhanced Secure Erase on them to bring their speed closer to that of their G2 counterpart and how will it affect their lifetime in figures? E.g. ESE done on one of my X25-M G1 80GB SSDs after about a year of light usage in a SATA-I capped ThinkPad X60s appears to be quite helpful, so I wound't mind doing it more often other things equal:

Thanks in advance!

[DAndr17]

In fact X25-M G1/G2 specs, unlike the 530 and 1500 specs you're referring to, even have no SECURITY ERASE UNIT breakdown into these:

- Normal Mode – Full NAND erase of user available space and spare area

- Enhanced Mode – Cryptographically erase data

ftp://download.intel.com/design/flash/NAND/mainstream/mainstream-sata-ssd-datasheet.pdf ftp://download.intel.com/design/flash/NAND/mainstream/mainstream-sata-ssd-datasheet.pdf

ftp://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/ssd/pdfs/X25-M_34nm_DataSheet.pdf ftp://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/ssd/pdfs/X25-M_34nm_DataSheet.pdf

Security Mode Feature Set (albeit optional) with SECURITY ERASE UNIT command reportedly dates back to ATA-2 (cannot see anything like that in ATA-2 myself though) while its implementation is only specified starting with ATA-4:

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/technology/1061788/m15883621/# m15883621 Need to wipe all data from my HD. Want to make sure this is correct. - Displaying message 15883621

So perhaps Intel can claim that (E)SE implementation in their non-Pro SSDs is still ATA compliant implying ATA-2 where its implementation is effectively left up to the vendor?..

[TYan3]

I know right, because "Cryptographically erase data" only apply to those with "AES 256-bit Encryption" (non-OPAL one; and maybe some models do 128-bit, idk). It's essentially regeneration of the encryption key.

And that's why I think that SE and ESE are equivalent in SSDs that do not do encryption at all (e.g. X25-M). To some extent I think vendors should simply declare in such drive that ESE is not supported, and I've seen such SSD from another vendor.

Honestly, who cares if it's completely ATA compliant. It matters more whether the implementations make sense / are useful to the drive. For example, although ESE is supposed to be "vendor-specifc", but that is only about the pattern being used to to fill the drive. As of ATA-8 ACS-3, neither of them should do anything else other than filling. In that case, if those drives which support encryption are made "ATA compliant", there wouldn't be nice feature as "Cryptographically erase data".