Crucial RealSSD C300 Series Firmware Update - 0006

Cosimo · 23 Nov 2010 at 09:16

New firmware has arrived:

Release Date: 11/16/2010
Change Log:

•Improved power management
•Improved power-up behavior after uncontrolled power-down
•Improved full drive and corner-case performance
•Improved TRIM behavior

Note: This is firmware from Revision 0002 to Revision 0006. It will not work for updating between any other versions. If your drive has Revision 0001 firmware, then you MUST first perform the intermediate step of updating to Revision 0002.

Guide/Firmware

Forum Thread

Lunatic Dreyfus · 23 Nov 2010 at 10:26

Anything that improves TRIM is cool in my book, but do I really wanna risk bricking two drives...

Then again having new firmware out there is always a dangerous temptation.

Cosimo · 23 Nov 2010 at 17:34

Drive flashed successfully.

Coolasmoo · 23 Nov 2010 at 18:02

Just flashed ok, but didnt like them dots of doom very much

Cosimo · 23 Nov 2010 at 18:44

Coolasmoo said:
Just flashed ok, but didnt like them dots of doom very much

Yes they had me worried as well.

reygjabla · 24 Nov 2010 at 11:32

Any improvement on Read/write speed?

Locky · 24 Nov 2010 at 15:01

it's not destructive is it, ie you have to format?

my drives have 0002 firmware now.

Cosimo · 24 Nov 2010 at 15:11

reygjabla said:
Any improvement on Read/write speed?

Looks the same as it was before.

Cosimo · 24 Nov 2010 at 15:17

Locky said:
it's not destructive is it, ie you have to format?

my drives have 0002 firmware now.

The upgrade is transparent and leaves your data untouched. I did take a system image as a precaution before I did mine.

wozza2k · 24 Nov 2010 at 15:23

Any noticeable improvements at all?

reygjabla · 24 Nov 2010 at 16:07

Updated firmware and just to see if there's any improvements, I secure erased the drive and re-installed W7.

Here's the bench on Sata II.

Microsoft Driver

Intel Driver

WEI is the same.

brit~XR · 28 Nov 2010 at 05:21

I brought this ssd on friday with Asus P6X58D-E motherboard and i just updated the firmware to 0006 and did some benchmark tests

First test was without the marvell 9128 windows driver

2nd test was with Marvell 9128 Controller Driver V1.0.0.1034

Is the driver needed for the ssd to proform well and use trim on windows 7?
I tested the Marvell 912x Controller Driver V1.0.0.1036 aswell but proformed worse then the 1034 driver

reygjabla · 28 Nov 2010 at 11:24

Try using SATA II and install Intel IRST driver to see how it perform on your mobo because the only advantage your SATA III has over mine is sequential read but overall performance is way a lot out of spec.

Lunatic Dreyfus · 28 Nov 2010 at 15:59

Just flash both my drives, finally. Hid in the bathroom while the scary dots did their thing.

Performance is still nicely in the high 340's during sequential read, even on my older c300.

Wasn't expecting any improvements to performance, just hoping that TRIM keeps doing it's thing.

rush_syndrome · 28 Nov 2010 at 17:25

Coolasmoo said:
Just flashed ok, but didnt like them dots of doom very much

Dots of doom

Love it!

Flanno · 28 Nov 2010 at 19:55

Just did the 06 update on both my C300's. Weirdly my AS SSD benchmark on both drives has dropped from around 640 to around 595. For some reason my 4K random reads are now below 20 MB/s.

Now I know recently I recovered my OS image from a backup drive using the Win7 recovery dvd. This was after I did my original AS SSD run so something may have happened there to affect performance. However as I formatted the drive originally using the Win 7 install DVD, created the system image using the Windows 7 backup/restore software, and subsequently re-formatted the driver and recovered the system image using the Windows 7 recovery DVD - I'm told by enerything I read on the web that alignment is fine for the OS and for the Image I restored with. In addition I'm also using auto tweak settings with SSD Tweaker so I can't think of anything else to return performance to the way it was other then let the PC idle to see if trim runs, or else do a secure erase like some people have done.

With that in mind :

1. How long do I need to leave the pc idle for trim to run ?

2. What's the best tool to do a secure erase with ? Will this restore performance ?

3. Do I need to do a fresh install of Win7 after a secure erase or can I use the win7 recovery dvd to restore my image ?
I assume the secure erase just wipes every block and as long as the alignment is correct for my OS image which I think it is, I don't see why I would need to do a fresh install.

Ta

Coolasmoo · 28 Nov 2010 at 22:10

I tried running Sanitary Erase but it just didnt seem to do anything to wipe the contents of the drive,

I formated in Windows 7 x64 and imaged the backup on, but i too have a small performance hit,

:confused:

Flanno · 29 Nov 2010 at 02:19

I was thinking trim not functioning might be the issue. Been reading around on a few forums and some people are saying that although the C300 supports trim and the MSAHCI driver supports trim, trim is not supported if you are running the C300 of the Marvel controller on the Rampage III regardless of what driver you use. Others say the Marvel controller does support trim but only with MSAHCI. No one has the definitive answer as it's hard to tell if trim is working or not since garbage collection works in lieu of trim anyway. And the trim command in dos, just tells you if the command is being passed, not if trim is working. Anyway, I downloaded this program to force trim. Ran it on both drives and let them sit a few minutes.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...Here-s-a-tool-to-force-TRIM-your-entire-drive

My results in AS SSD are almost up to what they are, with both SSD's reporting around 625-635 score. So my conclusion is trim does work on the marvel controller with the msahci drivers. However my random 4k read speeds are still barely above 20MB/s compared to almost 30MB/s before, and my read access times have got worse (0.18ms instead of 0.13ms). I blame this on the firmware update as a few people have reported increase latencies and drops in random read performance. All other figures remain the same or slightly better. I'm willing to live with this for now. The last thing I want is to have to move my SSD's onto the Intel controller and use the RST driver, as that would leave me short ports for my mechanical drives.

Flanno · 1 Dec 2010 at 02:45

Update : I was wrong. Trim does not work on the C300 with the Marvel controller, even with MSAHCI drivers. The conclusions in the review below seems to confirm it. Obvioulsy the performance returns I got was a result of garbage collection kicking in when I ran ForceTrim.exe as that app just filled up my drive with crap and deleted it which prompted GC to do it's thing. I was only able to truly force Trim when I had the SSD plugged into the Intel controller.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=261789

Anyway, leaving trim out of it for now; I think this firmware is pants, at least on the marvel controller. It has played havoc with my read access times and random 4k read speeds making the marvel controller unviable. Back to Intel for me.

brit~XR · 2 Dec 2010 at 07:08

reygjabla said:
Try using SATA II and install Intel IRST driver to see how it perform on your mobo because the only advantage your SATA III has over mine is sequential read but overall performance is way a lot out of spec.

Thanks for the advice. Intel IRST driver is the best driver by far from the tests i done. I also manually aligned the partition to 2048 sectors (1024KiB). On my first post on AS SSD its showing at 103424 K. Is that a bug?

Intel IRST driver

And this is what it was before without that driver

And the best i could get on sata 3