Check out our newly posted SSD New Users Guide

[idata]

Hi All,

First, I'm an Intel employee. Thought you should know . In an effort to make this communities site a more useful place and to reduce the amount of repeat questions, we've added a new users guide. You can check it out here:

http://www.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/sb/CS-031549.htm http://www.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/sb/CS-031549.htm

Even if you're not a new user, take a look ; it may answer some standing questions you have. Also, we're open to suggestions on further topics you'd like to see us cover. Thanks for your support!

Scott

[idata]

All, I've got a question for you as well. This guide was mentioned here:

http://www.tweakhound.com/blog/?p=1338 http://www.tweakhound.com/blog/?p=1338

However, the guide mentioned that there's "not a lot in there". What do YOU guys want to see? If you compile a list of realistic questions I'll do my best to answer them. Cool?

-Scott

[idata]

Here's one question: For those of us running a single Intel SSD off an Intel chipset, what are the advantages of using the Intel RST drivers as opposed to the native Windows drivers? I think the Guide does refer to advantages but doesn't get specific. Thanks.

[idata]

I would love to see your response to Raid (0 in particular) with the use of SSDs and TRIM. Atm, my understanding it isn't supported, and is what is lacking - would love to see an offical response.

[idata]

Yes... I would be very interested in this as well as Intel has jumped all over this.

1. It is documented that it is supported;

2. Intel then denies that it is supported;

3. Tests show that there is something going on because on RAID volumes something exactly like TRIM is going on. Performance is being restore very quickly after large deletions;

4. This ONLY works with the latest RST release;

5. Many start accounting for it as effective GC;

6. Dell denies GC abilities in their drive;

Yet...at the end of the day their is something going on with RAID MOUNTED volumes as their performance is returning soon after deletions and the process surprisingly is exactly like TRIM which they first published as working with RAID mounted drives.

[idata]

Flamenko1, I'm very much interested in your posts here. I've been running an X25-M G2 80GB RAID-1 array since January 2010. The testing, benchmarks and observations you and others provide are invaluable because I don't have time to do it myself. Without any actual measurements, I can only say anecdotally: despite lack of TRIM there has been no noticeable degradation in performance after numerous multi-GB deletions and countless smaller ones. And I'm still on RST 9.5.0.1037.

Scott, I really appreciate your responsiveness and willingness to seek more in-depth content for the SSD Users Guide. As you can see, silence from Intel on TRIM for RAID arrays is a big issue for us. Even if there are competitive reasons for not discussing future support, it would be helpful to at least have some official whitepaper on what to expect as far as performance degradation over time for SSD (G1 and G2) RAID 0, 1 and 5 without TRIM compared to non-RAID with TRIM when using the latest RST drivers on the 3400 series ICH10R.