Anybody find any shortcomings with Mushkin Chronos SSDs? I did . . .

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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Said it enough already over the last week or two: WHS 2011 doesn't need a lot of disk space -- maybe 26 GB or even less than that. If I put a 60GB partition for it on a 320GB HDD, there's another 260GB begging to be formatted as a simple/basic volume. But do I really want a 260GB disk volume to merge with my StableBit drive pool?

So I'm trying to collect spare SATA drives in the house to use as hot-swap backup disks, and decided I could put a $55 Mushkin Chronos 60GB on the server as boot/system disk. All wonderful and fine: Acronis cloned the HDD to the Chronos perfectly.

Now I find there's a firmware revision for the Chronos, and I downloaded the installer for it. And the installer . . . DOESN'T RECOGNIZE THE CHRONOS on my WHS system, when the BIOS does, Windows does, and it's working just fine!!

What's to blame for this? Mushkin apparently created their updater program so it would only work with its SSD under a BIOS AHCI configuration!! And why is this simply stupid?!!

Because SSDs by both Intel and Patriot -- which I also use -- had firmware revisions that installed effortlessly on SSDs configured as "RAID" with their own firmware update software! That's why!!

To update the Chronos, I have to shut down my server, extract the Mushkin SSD, plug it into my workstation's Marvell controller (set up as AHCI), and run the updater on the workstation for the Mushkin -- hopefully without mishap. Then, remove the drive from the workstation and put it back in my server box.

This is absolutely dumb. Anyone want to recommend either a 60GB or 120GB SSD that wasn't produced, supported and marketed by simpletons?
 

Charlie98

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2011
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The Crucial M500 I just got works the same way... except it has to be run IDE. Swell...
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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The Crucial M500 I just got works the same way... except it has to be run IDE. Swell...

I just submitted my Egg review for the Mushkin. I let 'em have both barrels, so to speak.

Just looked again, and I haven't discovered any 60GB Samsung 840 "out there." It just seems that this problem with the Mushkin "updater" would make you think twice. I expect the drive will continue to work just fine for what I'm using it for. But this firmware update issue -- no reason for them to be so shortsighted.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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why are you running an ssd as an ide device?

you should always run them as ahci.

You can't be referring to me -- it was Charlie98 who said his Crucial SSD "had to be run as IDE." But what he meant was that it had to be run as IDE to flash the firmware! That's my understanding of what he said.

But even so, consider this. Even two years ago, 60GB was too small for most folks who wanted SSD speed for a boot drive. The only way such a purchase would be useful has two prevailing possibilities: the buyer bought two or more for a RAID0 configuration, or he/she bought one 60GB SSD as the caching drive in an ISRT configuration with a large HDD.

In either case, the user is going to configure his SATA controller in BIOS as "RAID": It has to be configured that way for any RAID0; it has to be configured that way for ISRT. He/she is not likely going to flash the firmware until after installing the OS in one configuration or the other. And he/she is going to set up the BIOS before installing the OS, since everyone knows about the boot problem and conversion difficulties of having an OS drive configured one way when it's suddenly decided to change between AHCI and RAID in another configuration.

At least two other makes of SSD -- Intel and Patriot, which I know of firsthand -- never had this problem. They didn't have it three years ago! You could flash the firmware in RAID mode. So if you ask me, Mushkin (and from what Charlie says, Crucial) has done something pretty darn stupid.
 

Charlie98

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2011
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You can't be referring to me -- it was Charlie98 who said his Crucial SSD "had to be run as IDE."

From the Crucial website:

If your M500 drive is not recognized in Step 7 of the “Run the Firmware Update” section above it may be necessary to run this update in IDE mode instead of AHCI mode, on some older systems.

As it turned out, I was able to update my FW without pulling the drive, but it was not intuitive, and a little scary for a moment before I was sure it was updating the Crucial drive... and not my Plextor OS drive in the same system. D:
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,052
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From the Crucial website:

If your M500 drive is not recognized in Step 7 of the “Run the Firmware Update” section above it may be necessary to run this update in IDE mode instead of AHCI mode, on some older systems.

As it turned out, I was able to update my FW without pulling the drive, but it was not intuitive, and a little scary for a moment before I was sure it was updating the Crucial drive... and not my Plextor OS drive in the same system. D:

Always a pesky little detail -- to write down the model code of your hardware before fiddling with it. But then, you can't guarantee in advance what sort of identifier a flash-updater is going to throw up for your choice, either.
 

Charlie98

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2011
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No, it wasn't that... I finally got into the utility screen (been trying for 3 days...) accepted the license and *BAM* off it went... shutting down the system and going into DOS or something. I had no choice in the matter.
 
Feb 25, 2011
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His controller is set up as RAID as he's running a file server.
With any decent RAID controller - even the motherboard integrated ones that I've used - you can set that on a per-port basis (AHCI, IDE, or RAID mode.)

And for home RAID, you're better off setting the controller in JBOD mode and using software raid. It's more configurable and easier to recover data if worse comes to worst.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,052
1,681
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With any decent RAID controller - even the motherboard integrated ones that I've used - you can set that on a per-port basis (AHCI, IDE, or RAID mode.)

And for home RAID, you're better off setting the controller in JBOD mode and using software raid. It's more configurable and easier to recover data if worse comes to worst.

Not the case with the Intel controller on my P8Z68-v Pro motherboard. You either set all the ports in RAID mode or in AHCI mode, and I think it's the same for the Marvell controller as well.

As for my NVidia controller in my server, now you have me thinking I should go back into the BIOS and have another look . . .
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,570
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At least you could flash the firmware. I bought a pair of 64GB A-Data SP600 drives off of TD one time, and tried to update the firmware using the firmware update package on their website (which you have to supply your e-mail address in order to download anything off of their site, sucks). Anyways, it got to the updater, booted in DOS off of a USB drive, and then it complained that the update package didn't have the specific firmware file for my specific drive + NAND flavor. At least, that's how I interpreted it.

So I have no idea if I need to update it, or if I should use it as is.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,052
1,681
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At least you could flash the firmware. I bought a pair of 64GB A-Data SP600 drives off of TD one time, and tried to update the firmware using the firmware update package on their website (which you have to supply your e-mail address in order to download anything off of their site, sucks). Anyways, it got to the updater, booted in DOS off of a USB drive, and then it complained that the update package didn't have the specific firmware file for my specific drive + NAND flavor. At least, that's how I interpreted it.

So I have no idea if I need to update it, or if I should use it as is.

So we are talking about a problem plaguing more than just Mushkin SSDs.

To touch again on my experience, I must have been lucky with the Intel Elm Crest and Patriot Pyro I purchased in 2011. The firmware updates worked for both with the controller set to RAID mode. You'd think the other manufacturers would have solved this problem before now, if their competitors and industry leader had it right all along.

I can imagine how they might think these drives would "mostly" be used by laptop Mainstreamers with BIOS options never anticipating RAID mode, but "mostly" is a sloppy way of avoiding an issue when we see plenty of desktop users here with intentions for a range of SSD sizes and uses.

My concerns had originally been spurred by my WHS-2011 event-log clean-up effort. The old nForce controller would source the occasional yellow-bang warnings about controller resets. It seemed as though I resolved this problem by updating the drivers, and to seem naïve -- I was surprised that the device recognition in device manager was moved from "IDE-ATAPI"-etc. to "Storage controllers." Now the yellow-bangs seem to have disappeared. I installed CrystalDiskInfo to get a better reading of SMART and disk health, and it all looks happy -- no less for the Mushkin SSD boot drive.

Just reminding myself that when I first used the motherboard of the WHS system, it was paired with a 3Ware (LSI) PCI-E controller: little attention had been paid to how the onboard nForce works with its drivers, or whether those drivers were ever "quirky" under Vista or Windows 7.

All I can say now is that the board, the NVidia chipset and the WHS [2008 R2] OS are working happily together. But my problem with a firmware updater is not unique, as respondents to this thread have shown.

If I thought to shop around for another hardware controller like an Intel, Adaptec, LSI or God-forbid a HighPoint, I have little reason at the moment to hurry. But it's not NVidia's fault that the SSD firmware updater doesn't work!
 
Feb 25, 2011
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But it's not NVidia's fault that the SSD firmware updater doesn't work!
Yeah, it probably is, actually.

The firmware updater would probably work fine if the RAID controller implemented AHCI properly.

I have two C2D Macbooks in the house with nVidia PCHs, and neither of them works "right" with SSDs. (Mis-negotiation of link speed, working in IDE mode and not AHCI mode, stuff like that.)

They work fine with HDDs. And they "work" fine with SSDs too, just not the way you'd necessarily expect.

Apple blames nVidia, nVidia blames the controller makers, and so the circle of blame goes. But when you test the SSDs with different machines and OSes, and make a little chart'o'blame, the common denominator of all my problems is nVidia hardware.

It seems like people with non-Intel SATA controllers or pre-7x series chipsets have more than their fair of issues with SSDs.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,052
1,681
126
Yeah, it probably is, actually.

The firmware updater would probably work fine if the RAID controller implemented AHCI properly.

I have two C2D Macbooks in the house with nVidia PCHs, and neither of them works "right" with SSDs. (Mis-negotiation of link speed, working in IDE mode and not AHCI mode, stuff like that.)

They work fine with HDDs. And they "work" fine with SSDs too, just not the way you'd necessarily expect.

Apple blames nVidia, nVidia blames the controller makers, and so the circle of blame goes. But when you test the SSDs with different machines and OSes, and make a little chart'o'blame, the common denominator of all my problems is nVidia hardware.

It seems like people with non-Intel SATA controllers or pre-7x series chipsets have more than their fair of issues with SSDs.

Well, as I look at my WHS-2011 event-logs, the only issue I see now and at the moment is a lack of ability to flash the firmware of the Chronos with this configuration -- and, yeah -- the NVidia SATA setup seems a bit primitive: I don't recall seeing the acronym "AHCI" anywhere in the BIOS menus. If I really want to do the work, I can shut down my server, move the Chronos over to my workstation's AHCI-configured Marvell controller, flash the Chronos on the workstation and then move it back to the server.

Still. A P-I-T-A.