According to this review which is highly regarded on the Crucial forums, Windows 7 does NOT pass the trim command to a C300 if using a Marvel 91XX controller (ala Rampage III), even when using the MS AHCI drivers. See the section on Trim and Garbage Collection towards the bottom of the review.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=261789
This is a bit of a shock to me. I knew the marvel drivers were pants. But the assumption was that Trim worked on the marvel ports if using the default MS AHCI drivers. Of course it's impossible to tell as the Garbage Collection is supposed to kick in if Trim doesn't work (according to some reviews), and it's reported to be very effective. Nevertheless both my SSD's was slowing down a bit and with no trim working and not wanting to do a complete format I found 2 solutions.
1. The most time consuming. CCleaner. If you click Wipe Free Space, making sure in the options\settings to select Secure File Deletion, Simple Overwrite (1 pass), and tick Wipe MFT Free Space. When you run Cleaner with these options selected it effetively wipes your free space replacing each block with 0's which are inverted to 1's when the SSD reads them. It's effecively trim but more time consuming as it takes about 1 minute for every 10gb wiped. I reran AS SSD after doing this and my read speeds were back up to what they were
2. Plug your SSD temporarily into your Intel controller and bootup. Assuming you have the Intel RST drivers installed for your HD's, they will also install for your SSD once booted to the desktop. You can then download a utility on the Crucial forums called SSDTool.exe and force Trim. I'm pretty sure this is like another utility on the XSForums called ForceTrim. It just fills up your drive, removes the data, which then triggers the trim command. I tried this on my 2nd SSD, and I can verify once I benched with AS SSD when I was back up and running on my Marvel controller; that speeds were back to normal.
Both solutions are a bit of pain in the ass, and I'm thinking of sacrificing sequential read speeds, and plugging my SSD's permanently now into my Intel controller. Intel gives much better random read and wite speeds, and has lower latency.
Incidentally, I think the latest firmware update for the C300 sucks. On the Marvel controller Read access time is up from 0.135 to almost 0.19, and 4k random reads are only around 19-20MB/s now which is almost a 50% drop. On the intel controller it's almost double that. Another reason to abandon the sucky Marvel controller on the Rampage III. I hope Intel bring out proper SATA 6GB/s controllers soon. Even the Highpoint ones are rubbish as they don't support Trim and have pants random read speeds.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=261789
This is a bit of a shock to me. I knew the marvel drivers were pants. But the assumption was that Trim worked on the marvel ports if using the default MS AHCI drivers. Of course it's impossible to tell as the Garbage Collection is supposed to kick in if Trim doesn't work (according to some reviews), and it's reported to be very effective. Nevertheless both my SSD's was slowing down a bit and with no trim working and not wanting to do a complete format I found 2 solutions.
1. The most time consuming. CCleaner. If you click Wipe Free Space, making sure in the options\settings to select Secure File Deletion, Simple Overwrite (1 pass), and tick Wipe MFT Free Space. When you run Cleaner with these options selected it effetively wipes your free space replacing each block with 0's which are inverted to 1's when the SSD reads them. It's effecively trim but more time consuming as it takes about 1 minute for every 10gb wiped. I reran AS SSD after doing this and my read speeds were back up to what they were
2. Plug your SSD temporarily into your Intel controller and bootup. Assuming you have the Intel RST drivers installed for your HD's, they will also install for your SSD once booted to the desktop. You can then download a utility on the Crucial forums called SSDTool.exe and force Trim. I'm pretty sure this is like another utility on the XSForums called ForceTrim. It just fills up your drive, removes the data, which then triggers the trim command. I tried this on my 2nd SSD, and I can verify once I benched with AS SSD when I was back up and running on my Marvel controller; that speeds were back to normal.
Both solutions are a bit of pain in the ass, and I'm thinking of sacrificing sequential read speeds, and plugging my SSD's permanently now into my Intel controller. Intel gives much better random read and wite speeds, and has lower latency.
Incidentally, I think the latest firmware update for the C300 sucks. On the Marvel controller Read access time is up from 0.135 to almost 0.19, and 4k random reads are only around 19-20MB/s now which is almost a 50% drop. On the intel controller it's almost double that. Another reason to abandon the sucky Marvel controller on the Rampage III. I hope Intel bring out proper SATA 6GB/s controllers soon. Even the Highpoint ones are rubbish as they don't support Trim and have pants random read speeds.
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