Solid-State Drives (SSD) topics

SSD and Windows 7

CptDobey — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:41:02 GMT

Hello,

I own a Crucial SSD M225 64 GB and I have some questions about it. I browsed through the forums but I did not find definitive answers to them.

I am using Windows 7 Family Premium 64 bits. I installed the latest bios on the M225, the 1819, before installing W7. I formated the SSD during W7 installation.

In order to maximize the drive speed, do I have to enable the AHCI controller or can I just use "IDE" controller?

If I use "IDE", will the trim function be enabled automatically?

As Windows 7 seems to be "SSD aware", do I have to deactivate anything like files indexation or automatic defrag as it is suggested into some tutorials about SSD with XP or Vista?

Is there any way to be sure W7 is seeing my M225 as a SSD and not as a usual hard drive (and thus activating trim)?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Regards,
Philippe

Correct drive setting in Bios

Allattar — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:40:10 GMT

I was trying to use the wiper tool, and I thought I had the drive set up correctly in my BIOS. Wiper doesnt recognise the drive though.

I have the BFG 680i motherboard, so its an Nvidia nforce 6. I am using Win 7 64Bit, just in case it isnt the bios setting I am supposed to change, and it is actually in windows.

Still on the 1571 firmware.

Now I have tried looking for the EHCI mode in bios, but nothing jumped out at me.

Anyone know the correct settings on these boards?

Thanks.

Very interesting behavior with my M225 128GB SSD.

johnyeah2 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:47:08 GMT

So here's what going on with my SSD.

I have updated the firmware to 1819 the first day it came out. I have also ran the wiper tool and checked for proper disk alignment. However, my sequential write performances have been terrible, even after the wiper tool (seems like the same problem has been plaguing many other 1819 firmware users). It was originally at 100 mb/s. I used crystaldiskmark to test this.

I have noticed though, I haven't performed wiper for a week, and my write performances (sequential write) went up to 115mb/s. And now I haven't used the wiper tool for two weeks, and my performances have been up to 138 mb/s. Of course, it's still far from the advertised 190 mb/s. But at least the benchmarking performances have been increasing. I was wondering if anyone had an explanation to this weird phenomenon.

2 x SSD 64 in Raid 0 on an ASUS PQC (ICH10)

Destombes_Chris — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:26:07 GMT

Hi all,

My two SSD drives in raid 0 give me a very responsive win 7 system.

From other posts, I understand that the trim feature won't be functional on my system before long. OK, that may not be a big deal.

But :

- Any advice on how to keep my disk performance at his best without the trim function ?

- What is the most used software to measure disk's performance, to compare my results with others ?

Thanks for your help !

Chris

Upgrading sata drive windows 7 pc

mranders — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:17:23 GMT

Can I replace the system drive in my laptop running windows 7 with a crucial 256 gb SSD without problems related to TRIM etc. I plan to copy the OS from the old system drive.

Crucial Wiper tool is now on the Firmware page

Crucial_Katana — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:25:04 GMT

I just wanted to let you know that in order to make it a bit easier to find, we have moved the Crucial Wiper tool to the Firmware Updates page. You can find it right below the firmware download links.

Question about pagefile - Help!

digby — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:38:00 GMT

Hi, I'm building a new PC which will be Win7 (64bit with 16GB RAM). After much research I decided to go for a 256Gb Crucial M225 as my OS boot drive. (arrived today). Now I did quite a bit of research on the use of a swapfile and I'm totally confused.

In the past when building nt/xp PC's and Win 2k servers I've always gone down the route of swapfile = 2x RAM on separate partition.

Now surfing the web about swapfile on Win7 I get 2 conficting views 1) if you've enough RAM you don't need one & 2) you MUST have one all the world will come to an end. Both these views have been expressed by so called "MS Experts"

Secondly regarding swapfile on a SSD again I've seen 2 conflicting views. 1) Keep the swapfile on the SSD & 2) Avoid putting the swapfile on an SSD because all the small writes will kill it, best to put the swap on a second IDE drive.

Thanks for any advice.

Boot cd Error ssdchk.exe error

Darklands — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:00:18 GMT

Hi, i just got a 64gb m225 and decided to update the firmware my current is 1571, i made a bootable disk from the crucial dowload page for this drive, tried to use it and got the following error.

i got to the first screen press return to continue to boot from cd, next was a load of dos script to fast to read then

Please eject cd and reboot computer, ssdchk.exe read error.

can anybody help?

Status of Garbage Collection Firmware

Tekno — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:34:04 GMT

When 1819 was release, I believe it was mentioned that a Garbage Collection firmware was also in the works. It's in the Crucial labs for testing. It's been almost 6 weeks or so and I wanted to know if the GC Firmware is still going to be released. If so, is there a timeframe on when that will happen?

Many people are eagerly waiting for the GC version as they don't use WIndows 7 or they use a raid setup which doesn't support TRIM.

M225 64Go no detection in Win 7 installation

Parmenion59 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:44:31 GMT

Hi, i have an issue with my SSD. He is reconize in the bios and in windows seven, but when i try to install win 7 on it, he not appears in the list.

what should i do?

Sorry for my english :/

Really slow performance of 64GB SSD

martinh — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:53:16 GMT

I ran a couple of benchmarks on my new CT64M225, and they seem drastically slower than what everyone else gets for these drives:

It seems like the main problem is the wrtie speeds, which are about 1/10th of what most people get.

Some details:

- Windows 7 x64

- Gigabyte GA P55-UD3R

- IDE mode

- Default firmware

Is there something else I can do to improve this, or could it be a defective drive?

crucial wiper tool taking hours on 1571 (not in raid)

karnius — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:36:12 GMT

I am having some issues with the wiper tools,

for 3 months I am no vista/win7 and decided to give a go on the wiper tool but it takes like 1 hour to get to 1%, I looked throught the forum but can't find a reason to this. I am using a Asus n51 laptop with default win7 configuration

After seeing that most people seem toot hink that this is not a good idea to upgrade to 1819 firmware I decided to stay on 1571 for a little while..

An IDEA on performance and trim.

sfaure — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:29:45 GMT

I'm beginning to wonder if the tools that are being used to determine drive performance with trim are actually contributing to the degraded throughput on the new firmware. From what i can tell the tools almost all write some data to the drive, and then read it back. I'm going to bet that they also delete the data and file from the drive during this test. I believe that the deletion or truncation of the file/data would cause a trim to be scheduled to occur. Well if that is the case then the drive is going to go off and "trim" the associated blocks. Exactly what its supposed to do. If that is the case then everything is doing what its supposed to, however the perspective of performance is going to be impacted by the contribution of the differing events and their associated workloads.

I say this because I have installed the new firmware on both of my crucial drives now (real world day to day work seems to be fine with both drives so long as i performed the procedure itemized below for my upgrade and installation) I have been installing/reinstalling Win 7 OS using large VHD files to test a nuber of scenarios with the drives as well as learning/planning installations for my customers etc.

I have noted something that appears, to me, to actually be an issue here though. Theoretically I should not really be able to tell that "trims" were occuring. The trim should be sent to the drive by Windows 7 and the drive should shedule and trim the blocks more or less in the background. However i have been able to clearly note that when a trim does occur (especially if it is for a large datafile) the IO for the system effectively siezes up while the trim completes. This i would say (if it can be recreated and documented by others) would be a bug in either the firmware, drivers or MSFT's handling of the trim commands itself. Heck it could actually even be an oversight to the design philosophy itself.. The trim should be scheduled to the drive and then run at a relatievly low priority, always being pre-empted by other "real time" reads and writes. Under the new firmware I am becoming more and more sure that these trims are effectively run in the foreground and quite possibly in a single threaded type mode......

That being said, for day to day usage (small file read/writes) the performance of the drive is more than satisfactory on either firmware for me, and with the trim keeping my drive realtively clean i'm going to keep running with it. Looking for some update/patch from either msft, crucial, or intel to resolve some of the other issues.

Just thought i would share an "alternate" idea and/or perspective on what could be contributing to the differing results and performance degradations people have. Everybody uses the drives differently so their mileage is going to vary widely. I am mentioning this all to see if others might also encounter. If what i am proposing above is near the mark, then i'm not sure that any of the current "tools" out there would/should be adequate to give us real performance numbers on the drive, and indeed they may well actually be contributing to degraded performance on the drive. If the trims are freezing the drive up (like a hiccup) then we have a real issue with trim design and or/implementation overall, Though i'm sure some solution will be forthcoming (indeed intel's drivers dont even have an eta yet do they?)

I would further share that I had sustained absolutely horrible write performance under the new firmware when i just performed an upgrade of the old firmware over my existing installed os.. However performance of both drives has remained stable since i executed the following in the order provieded:

1. downgraded firmware to 1571

2. create one large partition spanning whole drive, formatted ntfs.

3. comleted a wipe of the above partition.

4. diskpart clean partition to remove all existing partitions.

5. upgraded firmware.

6. performed a secure-erase on drive.

7. Installed OS from distribution cd (actually customized wim files)

....

Both drives work very well now. So long as i remember that an erasure of files will cause the type of "hic-cup" i mentioned above. As this is usually only on small files i really rarely notice it.

Brand new M225 256GB

TallGraham — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:10:09 GMT

I spent a long time reading reviews before I decided on the Crucial M225 SSD. It did well in all reviews I read and was also reasonably priced too.

The drive arrived Thursday and I was hoping to fit it this weekend until I read all the things on here about the the firmware. Now rather than just be someone to come on here and moan I was hoping to track what went on with my drive in the hope it might helps others too.

First question is: Which firmware should I use? The drive is still in the box so I don't even know what is on it yet, how do I easily find out?. Is 1571 best and occasionally run the wiper tool, or the latest version?

Secondly, if I am installing a brand new drive for the first time, with Windows 7 Ultimare 64bit, I am guessing this will align the partition for me when it creates it. And also there will be no conflicts between TRIM like others who have re-installed have encountered.

I am fitting this drive to my Sony Vaio VGN-FW21E laptop.

Is there anyone who hasn't experienced the huge slowdown in writing speeds using a fresh drive with the new firmware?

Thanks in advance

Graham

256GB M225 Dead

someone — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:24:29 GMT

I recently purchased a 256GB M225 and have been using it for about 1 week with windows 7 32bit. Earlier while using the computer everything froze and when I rebooted the drive was no longer recognised in the bois. I tried swapping cables and sata connections for ones I know work but the drive is still not recognised. There is also a red light now showing on the drive when the computer is powered on. I take it the drive is dead and needs to be RMS'd, but I do not have the original box (was stupid & threw it away) & there are no stickers on the drive so I do not have any of the numbers that are requested for the RMA. Am I still able to RMA the drive and if so how as I tried using the description options in the RMA request page but it just kept going back to that page every time I hit submit description.

Re: Firmware 1819 Release Notes

SchmyeBubbula — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:59:33 GMT

> 6. Bug Fix: Performance boost routine reused the recently

> used block and it did harm to wear leveling.

- Is this a bug fix only with respect to 1711, or does 1571 suffer from it also?

- Please describe more fully how frequently this block reuse occurs. Is it often enough to prematurely reduce the life of the drive? Do we want to extricate ourselves post haste from 1571?

How to regain some lost speed back (1819).

DaZ — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:55:34 GMT

I came across this generic routine to regain some lost speed for firmware 1819. (works for RAID as well).

I could fully explain it all here but it was guy called Tony over on the OCZ forum that originally came up with this.

So not to steal his thunder or upset anyone I will simply link to his post which explains it perfectly.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=64753

I have tried this myself and my M225 write speed has vastly improved as a result. :)

Windows 7 64bit and the 64gig Not showing up

ksarlati — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:11:25 GMT

I am unable to see it in my bios and also in my disk management in windows. I'm about to try another sata cable and port, and turned on smart hdd monitoring on my m3n72-d asus board. Any ideas?

Firmware 1819 Release Notes

Crucial_FAQ — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:32:24 GMT

Release Date: 10/22/2009

Change Log:

Updater runs out of DOS instead of Windows
  1.1 Added ATA8 ACS2 TRIM Support
  1.2 SATA Rx SSC is turned off by default, Now Rx and Tx SSC both off
  1.3 IDENTIFY word 69 bit 14 is cleared (Non deterministic trim)
  1.4 IDENTIFY word 60-61 are changed (User addressable logical sectors for LBA28)
  1.5 FPDMA error return code was not adequate
  1.6 SMART related changes were made (BBM error log was removed)
  1.7 SATA error handling code was enhanced
  1.8 Added paired page calculation for Micron 34nm MLC NAND

Bug Fix: Fixed a bug in error handling in Set Multiple mode command

Bug Fix: Fixed a bug that caused 1.5Gbps diagnostic failure

Bug Fix: SMART related bugs were fixed

Bug Fix: Current ATA security state was not reflected in IDENTIFY information

Bug Fix: Performance boost routine reused the recently used block and it did harm to wear leveling.

Bug Fix: During SATA protocol, abrupt OOB made Controller hang

Bug Fix: In bad block management, wrong number of free blocks is used and it led to timeout and hang

Bug Fix: After STANDBY_IMMEDIATE, most host controllers wait for OOB reply for 100ms. Sometimes Indilinx Barefoot firmware couldn’t answer to COMRESET because FTL initialization took longer time. This bug caused Windows Sleep/Hibernate test failure.

Bug Fix: Various read fail scenario were found with FTL simulation

Barefoot ECO chip support code was added

More NAND ICs supported

READ ME FIRST: SSD Guides and FAQs

Crucial_FAQ — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:22:07 GMT

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Make and model names of computer or motherboard. If you do not know this information, click on the following link to use our system scanner.

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When the scanner has finished, copy the URL from your browser's address bar and paste it into your post, so we can find the information.

Crucial Part Number. The one from the part, not the one from the scan result page (the two are different).

A detailed description of issue. Simply saying "part is not working" does not provide enough information to be able to give a detailed, helpful response.