OCZ Agility 3 240GB SSD review
3. OCZ's Toolbox, firmware
Review Pages
2. A closer look
3. OCZ's Toolbox, firmware
4. Benchmarks - page 1
5. Benchmarks - page 2
6. Final thoughts
The Agility 3 SSD is compatible with OCZ's Toolbox software utility. Developed by OCZ and SandForce, the software is packed full of features that you are going to find useful over the lifespan of the drive.
Through the software you can control all the main functions of your SSD, like formatting, completely erase your SSD, installing new software or password-protect your data.
Once we fired up the utility, we were surprised that OCZ's Toolbox could not identify the installed Agility 3 SSD:
After some research we realized that the problem had to do with Intel's SATA drives. We uninstalled them and used the default SATA driver of Windows 7. After rebooting, the drive appeared at the software's list of installed drives with firmware firmware v2.06 installed:
A little bit later the software found a new firmware for the drive (v2.08), which we easily downloaded and installed it:
According to OCZ, the latest firmware (v2.08) has been designed with SandForce in order to address issues that caused blue screens on all SF2000 based drives. OCZ said that the issue was caused by the Intel RST driver. Despite the new firmware, some users are still complaining about problems with their SF2000 SSDs. If you are one of those, you'd better take a look at this page at OCZ's forum for more information.
Update: OCZ has released v2.09 firmware for all the owners of Vertex 3/Agility 3 SSD drives that are still experiencing blue screens. For additional inforamtion. visit OCZ's forums
We didn't experience any additional problems during this test so let's see a few more screen shots from the Toolbox. Below you see the Secure Erase option, which permanently deletes everything stored in your SSD and wipes your drive clean:
Furthermore, the utility provides SMART Data reporting, a file in which everything related to the operation of your SSD is logged:
Review Pages
2. A closer look
3. OCZ's Toolbox, firmware
4. Benchmarks - page 1
5. Benchmarks - page 2
6. Final thoughts