Microsoft adds SSD to the Windows 7 recipe

Solidly stating its plans for new drive technologies.

Microsoft is looking to implement a change people can believe in when it comes to the way Solid State Drives (SSDs) work with Windows software, and will be discussing how at its upcoming Windows Hardware Engineering Conference this week.

The performance of SSDs under Mincrsoft's Windows XP and Vista operating systems has been shabby to say the least but the Redmond Giant plans to turn the tables when Windows 7 hits the market.

MS plans to use its WinHEC2008, which kicks off on Wednesday, to discuss "Windows 7 Enhancements for Solid-State Drives," amongst other things. In the abstract for the session: "PC systems that have solid-state drives are shipping in increasing volumes" and adds it plans on having "Windows enhancements that take advantage of the latest updates to standardised command sets, such as ATA."

Microsoft will also apparently devote time to talking about file system optimisations, the future of SSDs and their role in Windows. MS will purportedly also be discussing issues surrounding the lifetime of SSDs used in netbooks and ways to develop flash-based netbooks using Windows 7.

Analysts seem to agree that Microsoft weighing in on the issue is an important step, with Jim Handy, an analyst at Objective Analysis telling CNET, "It is pretty widely held that SSDs are unlikely to meet with much acceptance until Windows undergoes significant tuning to take advantage of all the speed that SSDs have to offer".

Gregory Wong of Forward Insights has high hopes for Windows 7, noting it "will be able to identify a SSD uniquely. Certain ATA commands will improve the speed that solid state drives write to disk".

Let’s hope Wong is right about that.