Most home users don’t know (or care) about Trim, but Trim support is something like the Holy Grail for commercial computing. Trim is a command that allows an operating system to mark blocks on solid-state drives (SSD) for cleaning and re-use. Doesn’t sound exciting yet? Without Trim, using solid-state drives in Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) arrays becomes very hard because blocks that could be used can’t be easily identified, and in the end, the performance of the entire setup suffers. Intel has just indicated that it plans to offer Trim support in an upcoming Intel driver release.

Not The First Time Trim Support Has Been Announced

Keep in mind that this isn’t an official announcement for Trim support, and also keep in mind that we were led to believe that Trim support would be introduced in 2009. With that having been said, getting real Trim support could make life a lot less complicated for users who rely on RAID 0 storage schemes for data.

Home users aren’t likely to be impacted at all by the addition of Trim support, but enterprise users will welcome the ability to include SSD in RAID storage arrays. SSDs offer some big advantages over their traditional counterparts in terms of space, cost and reliability, but not being able to make efficient use of space has been a serious downer.

The changes, according to Intel, will be released in the 11.5 version of Intel’s Alpha Rapid Storage Technology (RST) driver. The next release is version 11.0, so Trim support is still on the horizon. The ability to support RAID 0 is the first step toward extending support to RAID 1 and RAID 5 setups.
Windows 7 already supports Trim for SSDs, but that support doesn’t extend to RAID arrays. In other words, Trim works on single SSDs in Windows 7, but not in storage arrays. Intel hasn’t provided a timetable for the release of its version 11.5 RST drivers, but the support will be welcome whenever it comes.

Currently, without Trim support, the performance of SSD arrays over time seriously degrades as storage disks become filled with data. Without the ability to identify disk blocks that can be wiped and re-used, the user effectively has no way to defragment an SSD RAID array. Any user who has worked on a badly fragmented drive will immediately understand the implications of that!

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AMD released the latest version of the Catalyst 11.5 driver for Windows. The Catalyst 11.5 drivers do offer some new features, but primarily deliver bug fixes and solutions to known problems. The added features are designed for the Hydravision and Eyefinity models. With one exception, the bug fixes are devoted to addressing known issues in Windows 7. One issue with Crossfire running on Windows XP has been addressed.

Keeping Your Drivers Updated

Knowing when to update a driver for Windows is sometimes as hard as knowing how to do it. When a new driver version doesn’t address issues that a user has experienced, it’s difficult to know whether the driver update is really necessary. I’d like to suggest that, in the absence of a reason NOT to update the driver, downloading and installing a new driver is indeed, a good idea.

Unless you know that you require a specific version of a Windows driver for some reason, updating your Windows driver should be part of your normal maintenance routine. Everyone has heard stories about the “cure” being worse than the disease. This is especially true when it comes to Windows. Updates designed to fix one problem seemingly create another, worse malady that could have been avoided if the update were never installed.

So what’s the incentive to update a Windows driver that isn’t strictly necessary for a particular user? Keeping your drivers updated means that you’re extending the manufacturer support on your equipment. If you have difficulty and contact the manufacturer for technical support, the first thing they’ll tell you is to download and install the current driver.

Subsequent driver versions you may need will require the updated driver anyway. (In most cases, you’ll get all the updates when you download the driver that has the revisions you need.) In the event they don’t, you may need to do more than one driver installation to get yourself squared away.

If downloading and installing drivers doesn’t sound like a blast, you’re right. It’s not. Finding drivers, downloading and installing the correct one, checking for proper operation, removing old drivers… it’s all time consuming and not in a good way.

I recommend Driver Detective because it can take over your driver management chores. When a new driver is made available, Driver Detective will download and install it. It will also disable and remove the old driver, and make a backup copy, in case you want to revert to the old driver, or need a fresh copy of the driver for some reason. Driver Detective will monitor the operation of the driver and replace drivers that have become corrupted or have gone missing.

It’s a time-saving, labor-saving software and it’s definitely worth considering for your computer troubleshooting toolkit.

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If you’re getting ready for Windows 7 SP1, you may be somewhat anxious about the outcome of applying it to your system. Patch Tuesday always brings a small measure of angst. Although you know you should patch your system, you also know that sometimes the cure is worse than the ailment. Nothing is more true when it comes to Windows drivers and gauging the effects of patches and service packs on a relatively workable system.

What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

We’ve all asked that question when it comes to updating or upgrading a system. The “worst that could happen” is that you foul up a working system. Windows drivers that had been working correctly may stop working, or hardware functions that you value may suddenly go dark.

This sets off a cycle of searching for driver updates for your hardware. If you find updated drivers, you download them, not knowing whether they’ll work or not. Some technicians swear by the method of removing the old Windows driver before installing the updated hardware driver. Others simply install the new driver and keep on rolling.

Setting aside the installation results for a moment, hunting for and downloading drivers is the most time-consuming part of the process. Many technicians still use the time-honored “go to the vendor site” route. This method gives you a little more control over the process than automatic driver updates through Windows do. It also may put you in touch with the correct hardware driver sooner than Windows Update will.

Not all computers are configured to update drivers automatically. Although this is what Microsoft recommends, some users prefer to do things the old-fashioned way, usually after having been burned by a bad update, or by missing out on critical driver updates.

I prefer to use Driver Detective to manage my Windows driver updates. Driver Detective will locate, download, install and back up your Windows drivers. It will also completely remove old driver software from your system files to prevent it from loading or conflicting with new versions of your drivers.

With Driver Detective, you don’t have to hunt for new drivers, or worry that you’ve accidentally downloaded and installed the incorrect version of a driver for your computer. Driver Detective will also monitor the function of your drivers to determine whether the installed drivers are operating properly. If a driver is corrupted or has gone missing, Driver Detective will install a fresh copy so you don’t have to.

Driver Detective works with any version of Windows, which is why I trust Driver Detective to keep Windows hardware drivers up-to-date.

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When you want to attach a device to a Windows computer, you’ll need to install a hardware driver supplied (most likely) by the third party manufacturer. Windows driver support is rarely accomplished any other way, unfortunately. With Windows, you also have the added wrinkle of 32-bit versus 64-bit driver support.

Products Are Sometimes Semi-Supported

If you’re considering the purchase of new Windows-compatible hardware, check carefully to make sure you have the right kind of driver support for your installation. For awhile, this wasn’t really an issue because most Windows OS installations were 32-bit.

With Windows 7, it’s a bigger deal because 32-bit drivers won’t help a 64-bit installation and vice versa. You need to know what you have, and then determine whether your proposed hardware addition supports your installation. 32-bit support is common among Windows devices. If a manufacturer makes only one type of driver, the 32-bit OS is likely supported.

Less likely to receive support is the 64-bit installation. That’s unfortunate for users who want to move forward with 64-bit devices or have 64-bit installations of Windows 7 (or Windows XP). Microsoft isn’t in much of a position to demand 64-bit support, and overall, the company hasn’t done a very good job of enticing third-party manufacturers to make the effort to produce 64-bit drivers. This creates the situation that many 64-bit users find themselves in; they have devices that are (and aren’t) supported.

Running a 64-bit version of Windows will give you better memory management, better OS security, and a clean break from the older-than-old 16-bit subsystem. Running 64-bit Windows is a necessity if you want to use more than 4 GB of RAM, also not uncommon these days. Certainly, this is true for servers and has been for quite some time, but even certain categories of users want to have more than 4 GB of RAM.

The decision to adopt 64-bit installations isn’t trivial, nor is the work needed to revert to 32-bit. If you have a 64-bit processor (not uncommon these days), there’s no reason to settle for a 32-bit installation, save for the availability of Windows hardware drivers.
In some cases, 32-bit installations aren’t realistic. If you do a lot of photo editing, gaming, animations, renderings, virtualization or computation-intensive work, you’ll want to load up on memory as much as possible, and that means exceeding the 4 GB RAM limit of the 32-bit version of Windows.

For the most part, both users and Microsoft have to do a better job of lobbying third-party manufacturers to support the 64-bit architecture. Currently, Microsoft is in the process of dropping 32-bit support, but slowly. By accelerating the phase-out of 32-bit support, Microsoft could force the issue of 64-bit support on hardware manufacturers that are consistently late to the party.

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