Do Intel's new RST AHCI/RAID drivers support TRIM?

[DZand]

Win7 users with an Intel chipset mainboard and Intel X25-M 2G SSD's, who successfully have flashed the actually withdrawn Postville SSD Firmware, want to take advantage of the TRIM command support, but there still are some restrictions:

1. Intel's Matrix Storage Manager drivers (last official v8.9.0.1023) do not support the TRIM command. The only available SATA drivers, which do fully support the TRIM command, are the Win7 generic MS IDE/AHCI drivers.

2. SSD's running in "RAID Mode" neither do support the TRIM command nor can be "cleaned" by Intel's new SSD Toolbox.

So here is my question:

Do or will the upcoming Intel AHCI/RAID drivers of the Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology (RST) support the TRIM command?

I ask this, because I am already running the brandnew and WHQL certified RST driver v9.5.0.1037 (available at Station-drivers since 13th October) with my 2x160 GB Intel Postville SSD RAID0 system and got a really amazing performance boost.

Thanks in advance!

Fernando

My system:

MB: Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R (P45 with Intel ICH10R Southbridge)

CPU: Intel Core2Duo E8400 (no OC)

HDD's: 2x160 GB Intel X25-M G2 as RAID0

RAM: 4x2 GB J.Skill PC2-8500

[idata]

@Fernando

Did you ever benchmark while in AHCI mode? I suspect the RST improvements were made in RAID mode only. I'm not seeing the gains you are - but I'm in AHCI vs. RAID (because I want TRIM).

[idata]

Hi guys

I finally made it and it seems, that after installation the only used driver is iaSTORV.sys ... and as drivers for the drive itself are only shown the disk.sys and partmgr.sys ... there is no msahci.sys anywhere, so you have to use the Toolkit or the updated RST someday...

BTW: Where can I find the old toolkit and the RST drivers ? The old toolkit had an issue with system restore, if I deactivate that feature, it should work I suspect ?

with regards

arcti

[DZand]

smoothmole schrieb:

@Fernando

Did you ever benchmark while in AHCI mode? I suspect the RST improvements were made in RAID mode only. I'm not seeing the gains you are - but I'm in AHCI vs. RAID (because I want TRIM).

You may be right, that the improvement performance induced by the RST driver is higher while running the SSD's in RAID mode.

Recently I ran my 2 Postville SSD's in AHCI mode, just to measure the speed differences between a RAID and a non-RAID configuration.

So I made a backup of my RAID partitions using TrueImage, broke the RAID, erased all datas with HDDErase and did a clean install of Win7 x64 onto one of my SSD's running in AHCI mode. To make the comparison as correct as possible, I installed exactly the same drivers inclusive the RST RAID driver v9.5.0.1037 (unfortunately I didn't compare the MSM and RST driver in AHCI mode).

Here are the results:

1. Single 160 GB Intel Postville SSD running in AHCI mode (ICH10R Southbridge with RST driver v9.5.0.1037):

2. Two 160 GB Intel Postville SSD's running as RAID0 (ICH10R Southbridge and RST driver v9.5.0.1037):

[DZand]

Arcticus schrieb:

Where can I find the old toolkit and the RST drivers ?

I do not recommend the old and withdrawn SSD Toolkit, because this tool was optimized for the "old" Firmware 02HA. Just wait some days until Intel will release a new SSD Toolkit version.

The Intel RST drivers v9.5.0.1037 inclusive the new RST Console software can be downloaded from here: http://www.station-drivers.com/page/intel%20raid.htm http://www.station-drivers.com/page/intel%20raid.htm. Just click onto the related DL button.

[idata]

I installed the RST drivers, but it's not that big of a deal

SSD before RST:

and after:

And finally my RAID0 drive before :

and after RST:

But the SSD scores are a little bit lower than your single SSD scores Fernando, but maybe it has something to do with the msahci.sys

---------------

BTW, I got some last questions Fernando:

1. Are your device manager looking similar to this or do you have this MS AHCI driver additionally installed:

2. Did you move the C:\Users dir to another drive (or I should say : did you hardlinked it to another drive) ? If it is the case, did you do it with a mklink junction or some other way ?

3. Did you place the pagefile on the SSD or some other drive ?

And finally: Am I done now or did I forget anything

best regards

arcti