Hardware Why You Need TRIM For Your SSD

Perhaps the solution involves a new filesystem that the drive can know more about.. I guess it won't happen as soon as I thought =\

 

I think the solution involves drives that don't suck.

 

Heres my M225 with latest firmware and Trim enabled:

260 Mbs Read, 200 Mbs Write!

 

At the bottom of page three you say that the Kingston SSDNow M Series is Intel based. In the review that your link links to, you say it uses a samsung one.

Can you correct one of these please? I was/am considering the 64GB Kingston SSDNow M.

Thanks.

 

question: if i RAID'ed 2 drives, then imaged them, then every so often wipe, unraid, trim, re-raid and restore the image, would that be a long way round the "trim not working in raid"?

 

Your assumptions, while typically alarmist, are wide of the mark. While you won't get trim on anything but Win 7 (which is bad) Indilinx drives still support an inbuilt garbage collection algorithm - I've just not had the opportunity to extensively test a firmware dependant update. Performance will not as you say, decrease and decrease in speed until effectively unusable - you won't brick the drive. The speeds we've seen here are absolute worst case scenarios - writing 1TB of data in just 1 day instead of the more reasonable one year, and even then with the Indilinx barefoot, didn't effect real world performance for things like booting Windows 7 at all.

Not using trim IS a major disadvantage, and drives will certainly suffer performance degradation but your continued scepticism is a little over the top. In the end though, you're right to be disappointed and those who want to run RAID 0 (not sure why considering it offers almost zero real world benefits), or older setups are left out in the cold. It's a tough situation, but SSDs are still what you'd regard as an emerging technology - it's why there's no "works with Windows 7" approval system for them yet. Bleeding edge tech always takes a few generations to get fully up to speed and work all the issues out - it doesn't mean it's redundant, or worthless in its current state.

 

That's a hell of a work around. Why the massive need for raid (unless you're running two small drives)? JBOD would allow trim to run and the same amount of storage. If you really want to stick with Raid0 , rather than running trim, you might as well just image off, secure erase the drives and then rebuild - hardly an ideal situation.

It's becoming clear that just having trim isn't enough for a lot of people and that many run specialised setups where it's frustratingly just not an option. I'll have a bash at these drives with trim turned off and post back with a blog post of results using just the onboard garbage collection.

 

Editor's mistake there - the Kingston M series are just rebadged M series drives. They're only available in 80GB, 160GB versions and are effectively just rebadged Intel X25-Ms- if you're looking at a 64GB Drive it's the Samsung controller based version, or possibly something completely different as kingston have a tendancy to swap out the drive controller but leave the product name the same.

 

So what's the solution, use drives under any OS of your choosing, then periodically remove them to a Windows 7 box and trim them?

How does one go about explicitly starting the trim process?

 

<oops>

 

hmn, i have an intel x18m g1 80gb (045C8820 firmware 11/2009) and it reports that it has trim feature enabled, when i ran the fsutil query disabledeletenotify. using the intel ahci drivers from the most recent p55 chipset drivers package.

 

I think that function is just reporting that TRIM is enabled within the actual operating system i.e., Win 7, for TRIM to work, the SSD (TRIM is not supported on the Intel X25-M G1), drivers and OS ALL have to support and run as part of the actual TRIM circle...
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The disable delete notify only checks if windows is running trim, not the drive. Use crystaldiskinfo (linked on page 4) to check whether your drive supports trim - it won't

Windows 7 + disabaledeletenoftify = 0 + crystaldiskinfo says your drive = trim - empty recycle bin = trim triggered.

 

Okay, so my OCZ Vertex is using firmware 1.4 should I upgrade to 1.5? I'm happy with performance so far, and as I understand it I've got Trim in the 1.4.

So is the difference between 1.4 and 1.5 better wear leveling? If so that sounds like a good reason to upgrade.

Anyone got a linky link to a change log between fw versions?

 

For asterisks' sake - where do I get trim.exe?

Does it trim when you format the drive? I'd rather hope it does.

 

SSDs are "worthless in its current state". SSD is not a bleeding edge technology, but it is a technology which is terribly bleeding. You have to be a fool to pay 400$ for only 120/128 GByte hd space and left out in cold, if you don't use Win 7, because other OS do not support trim. When I pay 400 bucks for a pc component, I don't except any excuses. I assembled a brand new system for a friend recently for only 402$ (excluding monitor and the peripherals). Having to pay such a great amount of "hard earned" money for a half broken component is called "highway robbery". Don't get ripped, just be patient and wait a few yaers for ssd technology to mature. With all those sheep getting in line to be milked, there is not much reason for the companies to really push the technology, they will get enough milk anyway.

 

Changelog for V1916 / V1.5 (for OCZ users)
Release Date: 1/21/2010

Change Log:

* Fixed issue that sometimes causes firmware download problem
* Fixed issue that could cause 256GB to be corrupted
* Eliminated performance degradation over time with Wiper with 1819 FW
* Fixed issue where the power cycle count was incorrectly being reported with 1819 FW
* Fixed issue where some SATA 1 hosts weren’t correctly identifying the hardware
* Fixed issue found in simulation (not in the field) where the free block count was incorrectly being reported
* Fixed issue with remaining life not being properly displayed on SMART information
* Added support for additional NAND manufactures and capacities
* Made further improvements to wear leveling algorithm

I'm in the same boat, but will be updating my drive to 1.5 this weekend.

 

Perhaps your pessimism would be right if it weren't for the fact that SSDs (a) improve desktop performance in a way never before possible and that (b) more and more drives controllers are being released on a regular basis (the next few months especially will b very interesting). They are a new technology (we're only just hitting the 3rd generation of consumer drives) around which some changes have to be made to tweak the way operating systems use the storage. The transition from tape based media to hard disk media wasn't a smooth one either, but the benefits outweighed the problems - I'd argue the same is true of SSDs.

Expecting perfection from every product, especially a new type of product is perhaps a little naive. Think about the first mobile phones, or early mp3 players - clunky, and not without thier issues, but the huge benefits justified the trouble. Crossfire or SLI are similar- phenomenally expensive setups that don't always deliver despite the huge outlay, or the first X58 motherboards that had a few bios bugs. The key is that companies keep working at the issues to solve problems for customers, which is what the drive controller makers have been doing. Calling all SSD users "sheep" (surely cows getting milked btw) is a little insulting - they're just enthusiasts looking for the next upgrade in performance, and I'm willing to bet that most of them are pretty chuffed with the improvements possible. Just because a product isn't for you doesn't mean it's instantly worthless (unless it's the Ipad of course).

 

I hope that works on all deleted data, not just stuff that's been in the recycle bin. Otherwise it would have no effect when you uninstall software etc.

 

No trim.exe afaik - it's just built into the OS. yes it does run when you format the drive. remember you need to be using the default windows storage drives - intel INF drivers block the trim command at the moment, even for Intel drives