Good SSDs for systems without TRIM?

[VirtualLarry]

Were there any SSDs that were good for systems without TRIM support (XP, etc.)?

I recall hearing something about the Kingston V200 or V200+ drives being good like that, but they don't make those anymore.

 

[Cerb]

SSDs for which that is their thing:
Corsair Neutron series
Crucial M500
Sandsik Extreme II
Seagate 600 series

Good, but not great (at least not today):
Crucial M4
OCZ Vector
OCZ Vertex 4
Plextor M5 series
Sandisk Ultra Plus

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/sandisk-ultra-plus_5.html#sect0
There's a reasonable number of them, right there.

 

[Makaveli]

SSDs for which that is their thing:
Corsair Neutron series
Crucial M500
Sandsik Extreme II
Seagate 600 series

Good, but not great (at least not today):
Crucial M4
OCZ Vector
OCZ Vertex 4
Plextor M5 series
Sandisk Ultra Plus

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/sandisk-ultra-plus_5.html#sect0
There's a reasonable number of them, right there.

Does the garbage collection still work if you have two of the top 4 ones quoted above in Raid 0?

 

[Cerb]

Does the garbage collection still work if you have two of the top 4 ones quoted above in Raid 0?

GC works, regardless. Wear-leveling (GC) is part of what makes SSDs viable at all. TRIM is extra, and may or may not be allowed in a RAID array, depending on implementation (new Intel chipsets, FI, allow TRIM w/ RAID 0, in Windows).

 

[sub.mesa]

Samsung SSDs generally are favorable for systems without TRIM, due to their agressive garbage collection, if you care about performance. If you care about write endurance, the Intel drives or Crucial M4 are best, due to their passive garbage collection. However, without overprovisioning those SSDs degrade in performance more severe than the Samsung SSDs.

 

[Cerb]

Samsung SSDs generally are favorable for systems without TRIM, due to their agressive garbage collection, if you care about performance. If you care about write endurance, the Intel drives or Crucial M4 are best, due to their passive garbage collection. However, without overprovisioning those SSDs degrade in performance more severe than the Samsung SSDs.

As it is now, the Samsung 840 favors low WA over high performance w/ included OP alone, replying on TRIM and/or user-added MBR OP for better performance over time (since almost all consumer systems will have TRIM, it was a good compromise, for the TLC non-Pro variant). It'll still be much faster than an HDD, and benchmarks show it still being faster than most SF drives, but there's better for the money, if you might not have TRIM available. Though, if you have one already, and run an older Windows, you can just use their software to run a TRIM pass every now and then (but, with RAID, and/or various *n*x systems, you'd just end up screwed, much of the time). The older 830 did very well w/o TRIM. Now, that said, for an older laptop, if it was one that got 4+hrs or so on battery already, an 840 SSD could help it eek out just that much more, compared to other SSDs, so could still be a good one to get, even if you're going to have no hope of any TRIM ever (again, it's steady state w/o TRIM is still tons better than older controllers like SF's, just that there's several other options, today, and it is a reversal from their past SSDs' behaviors).

Intel's better drives, for consumers, at least, are about EOL. The SF drives, which are still easy to find, act like other SFs, including needing lots of OP to have good performance over time w/o TRIM. The non-SF drives, while good, are awfully expensive, compared to more current options. Even the lowly new Sandisk Ultra Plus beats the 320 .

Crucial's M500 does, however, manage just fine w/o TRIM or user-added OP (though you still might want to add some, if you have a harsh workload), building on what made the M4 good (and, so far, no major firmware issues--that was kind of a thing w/ the M4, but they did deal with their bugs pretty well).

 

[RU482]

I tested some Sandforce based drives on a system with no TRIM, running Anvil Disk Utilities endurance test (fill and erase) and the performance held up very well over the couple weeks I ran the test (10's of TB of writes)

 

[kmmatney]

Intel SSDs are great for Windows Xp, as they have a manual TRIM you can run (and schedule automatically). However I think Intel may soon be getting out of the consumer SSD market. Samsung SSDs also have a toolbox that let's you manually "optimize" the SSD (I think its a manual TRIM, but I'm not sure...).

 

[Emulex]

as long as you have 30% OP most drives are pretty compliant (840 pro) with modern raid controllers. Take a look at most light server drives and you'll see a bit of OP going on.

 

[OldOfflineMan]

SSDs for which that is their thing:
Corsair Neutron series
Crucial M500
Sandsik Extreme II
Seagate 600 series

Good, but not great (at least not today):
Crucial M4
OCZ Vector
OCZ Vertex 4
Plextor M5 series
Sandisk Ultra Plus

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/sandisk-ultra-plus_5.html#sect0
There's a reasonable number of them, right there.

Sorry to revive an old thread, but is there an updated list? I look through all the reviews and specs of recent models but they seem to take TRIM for granted (or maybe I don't know what I should be looking for). I'm trying to find a good model for my old PS3, which doesn't have TRIM.

 

[Shmee]

Samsung 850 Pro, the best SSD in terms of longevity IMO. (10 year warranty! :O ) Pricey though.

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but is there an updated list? I look through all the reviews and specs of recent models but they seem to take TRIM for granted (or maybe I don't know what I should be looking for). I'm trying to find a good model for my old PS3, which doesn't have TRIM.

Doubt it's very common to check if drives work well without TRIM nowadays.
Though there's a few drives I think may do well without TRIM.

First some old models:

OCZ Vector 180

SanDisk Extreme Pro

Also SandForce drives may perform well due to the compression, the Intel 730 probably being one of the better options.
Have no idea how well compression would work for your intended use however.

Some modern drives:

Crucial BX300

WD Blue 3D/SanDisk Ultra 3D but you might want to skip the 250GB since according to my tests it can be slow to recover.

SK Hynix SC-series since it uses MLC NAND (like the ones above) paired with a LAMD controller.
LAMD used to (still do?) make controllers for enterprise drives.

Not sure how well any of these perform without TRIM however so take my advice with a pinch of salt.

Samsung 850 Pro, the best SSD in terms of longevity IMO. (10 year warranty! :O ) Pricey though.

Not sure if that would be best option here, actually.
I've seen the sequential write speeds go down to like 20-30MB/s and the WA go up to about 10 for an 850 Pro without TRIM.
That was under specific conditions however so it would not necessarily be something he'd notice.
Still it would not be my first choice if TRIM is unavailabe, though if you increase the OP it may be an option.

 

[OldOfflineMan]

Shmee, Glaring_Mistake, thank you so much for your replies.

WD Blue 3D/SanDisk Ultra 3D but you might want to skip the 250GB since according to my tests it can be slow to recover.

An interesting page comparing the performance of various SSD's with and without TRIM. As you noted, see how the drives 256 GB and below suffer without TRIM:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-850-pro-ssd-performance,3861-8.html

Also SandForce drives may perform well due to the compression, the Intel 730 probably being one of the better options.
Have no idea how well compression would work for your intended use however

The chart above also shows the performance of the Intel 730, which is quite impressive. You have a good point regarding Sandforce drives. The Playstation 3 data is uncompressed, I believe. Also, Sandforce controller does foreground garbage collection, I believe. Since the PS3 is never idle/asleep, maybe they are more suitable for running without TRIM?

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

An interesting page comparing the performance of various SSD's with and without TRIM. As you noted, see how the drives 256 GB and below suffer without TRIM:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-850-pro-ssd-performance,3861-8.html



The chart above also shows the performance of the Intel 730, which is quite impressive. You have a good point regarding Sandforce drives. The Playstation 3 data is uncompressed, I believe. Also, Sandforce controller does foreground garbage collection, I believe. Since the PS3 is never idle/asleep, maybe they are more suitable for running without TRIM?

I meant WD Blue 3D/SanDisk Ultra 3D specifically but obviously most drives 256GB or smaller will likely have lower performance compared to larger drives.

The Intel 730 does perform really well as you noted yourself.
850 Pro doesn't look to be a slacker either which may mean that the issue I encountered is rare.
First noticed it with an 850 EVO, when writing to it when it was nearly full it did not have much of an issue.
But then I removed all those folders; ironically enough to reduce the WA and suddenly write speeds went down to 20-30MB/s and the WA went up to 8.
If I remember correctly then in addition to the 850 EVO/Pro it also affects both the 840 EVO and the 750 EVO though the WA is higher for the 850 EVO/Pro.

Don't know how easily compressed the data it would have to deal with would be so can't really help you with that.
The Intel 530 does not seem to perform very well with or without TRIM so it's not certain that other SandForce drives will be able to match the Intel 730.