Trim Now Working In Raid ?

budwozza · 3 May 2010 at 21:40

Update (03/29/2010): Intel has recently released a new driver that allows Windows 7’s TRIM instructions to be passed through the Southbridge. The new driver is labeled "Rapid Storage Technology 9.6" and it can be found here. These drivers are also able to pass TRIM commands to RAID 0 and RAID 1 arrays.

My early testing with the new RST 9.6 driver shows that the drive is much faster than the Microsoft Windows 7 AHCI driver whilst also being just as stable. Testing has also shown a significant performance increase in many real world tests with a significant boost in the 4K range.

Can anyone confirm this ?

Source: http://www.tweaktown.com/guides/3116/tweaktown_s_solid_state_drive_optimization_guide/index.html

DIABLO · 3 May 2010 at 22:43

It was a misprint in the driver help files, it doe'snt support TRIM on drives that are in a RAID array it just added support for TRIM on SSD's when the south bridge is in RAID mode like if you had a single SSD along side a RAID1 array.

roachyuk · 3 May 2010 at 23:38

so if you cant use trim in raid what else can you do ....to keep the drives in top shape?

roachyuk · 8 May 2010 at 19:38

anyone know how else to look after a ssd instead of trim?

Josh P · 8 May 2010 at 20:03

Some SSDs, such as the Indilinx-based OCZ drives have Garbage Collection (GC) hard-wired into the firmware. It is independent of the OS and continues to work in a RAID array. The new Sandforce drives don't have this capability, but make significant use of over-provisioning. I'm not sure this is as effective though.

Jokester · 8 May 2010 at 20:09

Crucial M225 drives also have GC at firmware level with current firmware versions.

NathanE · 8 May 2010 at 20:35

Josh P said:
Some SSDs, such as the Indilinx-based OCZ drives have Garbage Collection (GC) hard-wired into the firmware. It is independent of the OS and continues to work in a RAID array. The new Sandforce drives don't have this capability, but make significant use of over-provisioning. I'm not sure this is as effective though.

How does that work? Heuristics that look for NTFS MFT operations? Though then they'd have to support other filesystems like ext3/4 as well...

roachyuk · 8 May 2010 at 23:12

mine is the intel x25 80gb....was thinking off getting another one and using raid 0...what do you think on that ....are there any problems id encounter....or am i best selling this its like 3 weeks old and getting a bigger one as this is to small for my needs....

Josh P · 9 May 2010 at 21:10

NathanE said:
How does that work? Heuristics that look for NTFS MFT operations? Though then they'd have to support other filesystems like ext3/4 as well...

I don't know to be honest, it was the answer given when someone asked a similar question on OCZ's forums.