We've started to deploy SSD drives to our developers workstations. At this moment we're having the unpleasant surprise that the systems using the new SSDs often freeze, with the HDD activity led blinking or being continuously on. Benchmarks shows read speeds around 180 MB/s, but write speeds around 5 MB/s. All developers are using Windows 7 Enterprise, 64 bit, SP1. One of our developers suggested (based on his experience) the following sequence:

• backup the workstation
• use a tool to completely erase the SSD
• make sure AHCI is enabled in BIOS
• install Windows
• restore from backup

So far, this procedure seems to work (we're still testing, but write speed seems to be 120 MB/s). There are some questions in this context:

• why do we have to completely reinstall Windows?
• Is it possible to clean the SSD without reinstalling Windows? Is there a reliable tool?
• If AHCI was disabled when Windows was installed and we enable it, shouldn't this be enough to correct the write performance issue?
• If we have to completely erase the SSDs, does this mean the SSDs we've received were used before (SH)? I'm wondering this because the package I've got was open (I didn't think about it at that time, as I considered one of my coworkers simply took a peek inside the package).
• Has anyone seen a similar problem before?