All Solid-State Drives (SSD) posts

Re: Status of Garbage Collection Firmware

lsdmeasasp — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:16:05 GMT

Ya you are correct on on that, just surprised no one has guinie pig'd up yet. I think it would be fine and work actually, but like you said these are Expen$ive so no one including me has tried yet.

It's too bad Crucial did not offer us the option like the other brand did, with the GC/Trim firmware choices. RAID Users should be able to choose for sure. And you know indilinux sent them both firmware versions.

Please let us have the other firmware Crucial, if you don't want it posted to the main firmware page please at least make it available in the forums to us users who know what it is meant for and know the consequences of wear leveling.

Trim and GC both would wear on the disks, so not sure why they choose one instead of making both available.

Re: Write Performance screwed after firmware update M225 128GB

manishpatel80 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:36:54 GMT

Hello all,

Ok I have read through the thread on the OCZ forum that shows how to improve write performance if its dropped with the latest firmware i.e. 1819 or as OCZ call it 1.4

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=64659

I tried all of it and it works for about an hours then my writes go from 185+ mb/s to about 120+ mb/s.

Now I have seen that is I run the freespacecleaner Check the box to write FF's and pick the SSD you want to clean.

and let it run then I get my performance back up to 185+ mb/s.

This seem to last until I write data back to the drive then the performance goes down again.

So what I do at the moment is run the freespacecleaner program with the checkbox ticked and then don't write to my drive.

Also note that if you run a benchmark on the drive like atto then the first run is fine, but then the second run how the lower write speed, so don't run the benchmark software at all on the drive.

Let hope the new firmware will resolve the problem. Or I am going back to version 1571

Re: SSD and Windows 7

targetbsp — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:40:23 GMT

You can use IDE or AHCI as long as you use the drivers that come with Windows and don't install any 3rd party AHCI drivers. There shouldn't be any real world difference between the 2 on an SSD though I suppose any mechanical drives still in your PC might benefit form the NCQ support in AHCI.

Trim is active in Windows 7 for all drives by default - it's simply ignored by most, so technically it doesn't matter whether it thinks it's a hard disk or not. The only difference is whether it disables certain services or not. You can check the appropriate services by following these instructions: http://www.forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/SSD-Tweaks-for-vista/m-p/4913#M748

Re: Status of Garbage Collection Firmware

targetbsp — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:34:46 GMT

It would obviously invalidate your warranty and I believe (from certain people being unable to flash on OCZ's forum) that they check the name string of the drive before flashing. So you'd have to edit the file in a hex editor before doing so. It would take a brave man to flash a bios he's edited himself onto a product this expensive!

Re: SSD Tweaks for vista

duckson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:22:29 GMT

Cheers.

My mech drive currently has just data stored on it, i was running Steam from there but i've copied it to the SSD and run it from there now. Apps i run from the SSD but docs and stuff are on the mech drive.

My SSD has indexing switched off, i know that, will double check the mech drive but i'm sure its on. I havent switched off the Win Search so i assume thats running.

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

Re: Status of Garbage Collection Firmware

lsdmeasasp — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:08:17 GMT

So no one has tried flashing alternate firmware yet then I take it?

Just wondering, as I have thought about it myself for testing purposes since they all come from indilinux

Re: SSD Tweaks for vista

targetbsp — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:54:39 GMT

To an extent it depends how regularly you load stuff off the mechanical drive. Superfetch loads into a memory cache your frequently used programs. If they're that frequently used you probably want them on your SSD? Certainly anything used during your Windows startup should be.

I for instance have Windows, all my apps, my docs and Warcraft on the SSD. And just keep media and less frequently used games on the mechanical drive. None of which would need cached. If I had the 128gb i'd be keeping whatever are my latest and currently played games as well as wow on there!

The same applies to Drive Indexing. If you keep documents you need indexed on the mechanical drive then I guess it's best to leave Windows Search service running and just disable Drive Indexing on the SSD. You can do this by right clicking the drive in My computer and unticking "allow files on this drive to have contents indexed...". Will take it a while to do this though.

Re: SSD Tweaks for vista

duckson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:40:11 GMT

Should the disabling of the Superfetch service be done if you still have a mechanical drive installed in your PC?

Or is Superfetch only used on the OS partition (ie on my SSD)?

Re: Status of Garbage Collection Firmware

targetbsp — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:38:50 GMT

Yes. As long as you right click it and choose run as administrator

Re: Status of Garbage Collection Firmware

duckson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:15:15 GMT

Got the drive yesterday and it came with 1571, does the Wiper work on W7?

Re: Crucial Wiper tool is now on the Firmware page

Tundra — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:17:52 GMT

You may want to state the reason why it is for Windows XP and Vista users only. Novice users may question that.

Re: Very interesting behavior with my M225 128GB SSD.

johnyeah2 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:12:37 GMT

No, I never filled my SSD up (other than when wiper is executed). I only use my SSD to run boot Windows, run programs, games and browsers (which store temproary cache files). There's still 80gb's of free space left. I don't do any "heavy writing" work, I just use it like a boot drive.

I'll try running wiper in a bit and check my benchies afterwards...(hopefully, it won't drop back to the 100 mb/s region again, lol).

Re: Very interesting behavior with my M225 128GB SSD.

Tekno — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:32:29 GMT

Hrm, that is interesting. Since your last wiper run, have you been using the drive heavily? Meaning, have you filled the drive to near capacity and then deleted files to free up space? You say you used it for a long while with running wiper, but I wasn't sure what you mean by use. Can you clarify?

Re: Status of Garbage Collection Firmware

Tekno — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:28:25 GMT

duckson, if you want a "non-buggy" with TRIM, you can use 1571 with the wiper tool. Though, 1819 isn't buggy per say. It's just got performance issues for the sequential writes. If you are bothered by the write degradation, then use 1571 and just run wiper.exe every now and then.

Re: Very interesting behavior with my M225 128GB SSD.

johnyeah2 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:42:43 GMT

I updated 1819 first. Then I proceeded with a clean install of Win 7 64-bit. I ran wiper a couple times before and I've consistently got only 100mb/s writes after. And now, after not running wiper for a while, I've consistently gotten 130 mb/s+ on my CrystalDiskMarks.

Re: Status of Garbage Collection Firmware

targetbsp — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:04:13 GMT

1819 isn't buggy - it's just slow. And it's not just Indilinx - there isn't an SSD out there that has a Trim firmware working correctly and at full speed atm :(

Re: Very interesting behavior with my M225 128GB SSD.

sfaure — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:48:58 GMT

Question:

Did you update to 1819 w/ enabled trim on an existing install?...

My thinking is that you suffered degredation until the trim/free lists of the new firmware actually "matched" the drives use/non-use of blocks.

This would jive up with some who have increased performance (myself included) by running the OCZ SecureErase tool, which completely cleans the drive.

Re: Correct drive setting in Bios

sfaure — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:43:30 GMT

I believe the most common reason for the drive not being seen has to do with whether is is run in administrator mode or not.

I have successfully ran it w/ win64/win32 and ACHI/IDE mode all....

The only time i have ever expereinced the "unable" to find the drive is if i forgot to actually plug the drive in, or if i ran the wiper program w/o administrator mode.

Re: Correct drive setting in Bios

Allattar — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:44:34 GMT

Other here have used the wiper tool on Win 7 64Bit, and yes I have read the warning that it may lose data. But it will need to be run at some point (crosses fingers).

Ill try and find the right bios setting for that drive.