
The GUI has obviously been designed to be functional without placing too much emphasis on design, but it still looks well laid-out.īefore moving forward to updating, it’s a good time to backup important files (photos, documents, etc.). While those were solid additions, the purpose of these tools is to enable firmware updates, and SanDisk definitely provides an intuitive tool for that process. Some of the other firmware update tools we’ve used included SSD optimization tools, Secure Erase functionality, and a couple of bonus features. As far as features go, the SanDisk Toolkit enables you to view drive details and SMART attributes and to update the firmware of course. To get started, we loaded up the SanDisk Toolkit so that we could download firmware and update the SSD. They can easily perform the firmware upgrade without the necessity for a secondary SSD.įor this guide, we are updating the firmware on our SanDisk Extreme. For desktop users, it won’t make much of a difference, but for laptop users who can only have one drive installed at a time, it means they won’t have to install the update via other means such as installing their SSD in a desktop. Something that differentiates the SanDisk firmware process from some of the others we’ve written about is that the installer requires users to use a bootable USB flash drive or a burned CD. Their SSD Toolkit supports drives such as the SanDisk Ultra Plus, Extreme II and Extreme. SanDisk tries to remove the difficulty that can sometimes be found in the firmware update process for users by providing a streamlined GUI and simple process. When that’s the case, most users will want to update their SSD to achieve the greatest performance they can from their drive. These fix errors that might be found, and sometimes they even deliver an impact to performance, increasing it.

SanDisk does its due diligence to ensure the products its releasing are free from errors and performance issues at the outset of launch, however, as with any other SSD manufacturer, from time to time SanDisk needs to release a firmware update anyhow.
