SSD Trimming etc dumb grl question

[ssan1987]

Hello, i have Win7 64bit, Asus P5B-V and fairly normal workstation.
I have had that Windows installed on normal HDD and the OCZ Vertex 2 60GB (lastest firmware) added to the system now.
When that windows was installed, in BIOS it says SATA is in compatible enhanced mode, not AHCI.
Now drive works fine (about 145MB/s benchmark'd), but i need it as temp drive.

Question is: does all that SSD necessary housekeeping / Win7 support happening even when SATA is in normal mode? How can i check it? I tried to find some maintenance tools on OCZ website to do it manually, but no luck. Support forums at OCZ also mention no needed steps, requirements...

Please? I dont want to reinstall PC, it is fairly complicated for me.

 

[Obsoleet]

Your choices within the bios should be compatible (IDE) -or- enhanced mode (AHCI). If it's saying 'compatible enhanced' and AHCI, then I'm assuming the former is IDE.

TRIM is passed through IDE mode and AHCI as long as you are using drivers that pass the command. The default MS storage drivers pass the command so no changes are needed. If it's an Intel chipset, you can install the Intel Rapid Storage software and gain their (better) storage drivers. AMD chipsets you are best off using the Microsoft drivers that 7 installs on default.
There is no easy way to check if it's working AFAIK, you can check if TRIM is -enabled- in Windows 7 by opening a command prompt:

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify
DisableDeleteNotify=1 (disabled)
DisableDeleteNotify=0 (enabled)

I know you could not change from IDE to AHCI mode without a reinstall in previous operating systems, but you could give it a try, if it fails just switch it back from AHCI. A repair install of Windows 7 would surely allow the change and not require a reinstall.

 

[ssan1987]

i see, thank You for fast response!

It says:
C:\Users\sandy>fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify
DisableDeleteNotify = 0

C:\Users\sandy>

so i am fine? I remember that rapid storage driver installation failed because "requirements are not met" or something like that...

When i switched to AHCI, it keeps restarting and dont goes up to desktop

 

[Obsoleet]

RST requires AHCI I believe. If you want to make the switch to AHCI, you'll have to do a Windows repair install hitting F8 with the Windows 7 disc in the drive on boot and select repair install. Really, it shouldn't make much of a difference between IDE and AHCI. OCZ used to recommend IDE mode over AHCI, for a time. I never noticed much of a difference.

 

[ssan1987]

i would prefer not to make the switch to AHCI, but the guy over at our PC shop is telling me that in that IDE mode Trimming is not working and my SSD will slow down in few days and then die overused.
And i dont know if he trying to get reinstallation fee from me or just is not informed.
I use it as temp drive, so it will get some stress though :-(
thank you again

 

[sub.mesa]

TRIM works in IDE legacy mode with pciide.sys microsoft driver; not if you user other vendor drivers.

But SSDs in IDE mode can only receive one I/O request at a time (no NCQ) and thus their random read IOps is about 10 times lower (~18MB/s) without AHCI than with AHCI (~180MB/s). In essence, you will only be using one channel out of 10 (Intel) when using IDE mode and doing random I/O. Sequential I/O doesn't need NCQ.

So AHCI is highly recommended.

 

[ssan1987]

i see... thanks a lot. this performance is ok for me, i just am not sure enough to do it by my own and give pc to somebody with private data on it.

 

[FishAk]

I don't understand why you aren't using the SSD as the OS drive, since it's the small file operations where the SSD has such a huge advantage in speed. For large files, an SSD is at best, only twice as fast as a good HHD.

Also, it's my understanding that if you don't use ACHI mode, you loose the advantage of the SSD's main attraction- namely it's ability to deal with small files quickly.

Edit:
I understand there is a way to switch to ACHI mode without re-installing, but I haven't tried it, and it sounds like it's somewhat complicated. There were some links on this forum a few months back.

 

[sub.mesa]

Correct.

Though writing depends much less on NCQ since writes can be buffered and thus build up a queue of requests so they can be worked on by all RAID members or SSD channels. But random reads are much more difficult and requires NCQ to let all disks in a RAID or channels inside an SSD work instead of only one disk/channel at a time without NCQ.

This can be clearly measured with CrystalDiskMark or AS SSD.

 

[Obsoleet]

I didn't know that about IDE mode being so slow. As I said at one time, OCZ was recommending it! That goes to show to avoid Sandforce and Indilinx drives and go with Intel, I'm fairly certain they've never recommended IDE mode for SSDs. I'm sure it was to prevent some problem OCZ drives were having and that's a crappy solution.

 

[postmortemIA]

I didn't know that about IDE mode being so slow. As I said at one time, OCZ was recommending it! That goes to show to avoid Sandforce and Indilinx drives and go with Intel, I'm fairly certain they've never recommended IDE mode for SSDs. I'm sure it was to prevent some problem OCZ drives were having and that's a crappy solution.

it is slow compared to AHCI mode; still latency will be way lower than any mechanical drive.

 

[ssan1987]

ok, i see, will try to reinstall that in the AHCI mode. Hope it will work and not make my pc brick. it would e sad if i had to buy a new HDD because i cannot give that mine to somebody else.

 

[flamenko]

Yup...AHCI is the way to go...Install the OS on the ssd.