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Win7 users with an Intel chipset mainboard and Intel X25-M 2G SSD's, who successfully have flashed the actually withdrawn Postville SSD Firmware, want to take advantage of the TRIM command support, but there still are some restrictions: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

[DZand]

Arcticus schrieb:

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 ?

1. Since I have just the 2 SSD's as RAID0 connected to the Intel ICH10R SATA ports 0 + 1 and the optical drive connected to the JMicron port running in "IDE" mode, the generic MS driver MSAHCI.SYS does not manage any of my drives.

My Device Manager looks like this:

2. No, I didn't move the Users directory to any other drive.

3. The pagefile is on my RAID, but I have done something special with it:

• It is not controlled automaticly by the system.
• I gave it a fixed size of 8 GB (the same size as my memory).
• The pagefile of the OS is outside the OS partition.
• It is on the active partition with the Bootloader (physically drive C), which usually has a size of 100 MB, but was enhanced by using the Acronis Disk Director Suite to a size of 8,5 GB.

Maybe my pagefile settings are the reason for my extremely good performance.

These were my thoughts:

• A pagefile with a fixed size will not be deleted and recreated all the time (which would be bad because of the lack of the Trim command)
• The pagefile of my system is within the RAID (optimal speeds), but doesn't have any impact on the OS partition (physically: drive D, named: drive C).

I hope, that these informations may be useful for you

Regards

Fernando

[idata]

It's funny to see, that you obviously have the same native language as I am and we both discuss in another one

Yeah I forgot to change the pagefile to a static one, but the idea with the active partition ( I found that 100 MB partition in the filesystem) is intriguing, I'll check that tomorrow

[idata]

@Fernando

"Yes, Intel's RST is the successor of the MSM."

Perhaps a stupid question, but would just like to make sure. So my mobo (P7P55D Pro) has the Intel P55 Chipset that supports Intel Matrix Storage Technology. Will the upcoming RST RAID drivers be compatable with this chipset (even though the specs only refer to Intel Matrix Technology)?

[DZand]

lostipod schrieb:

@Fernando

"Yes, Intel's RST is the successor of the MSM."

Perhaps a stupid question, but would just like to make sure. So my mobo (P7P55D Pro) has the Intel P55 Chipset that supports Intel Matrix Storage Technology. Will the upcoming RST RAID drivers be compatable with this chipset (even though the specs only refer to Intel Matrix Technology)?

The currently available 32/64bit RST RAID drivers do already support the Intel SATA RAID Controllers of your mainboard. So the upcoming official RST drivers will be usable for you too.

What we still don't know is, if the new RST drivers will fully support Trim even in RAID Mode. Maybe already the actual RST RAID driver v9.5.4.1001 is able to pass the Trim command, but this has no effect unless the RAID BIOS, which currently is still MSM related, will be replaced by an RST RAID BIOS version. So we probably will need an updated BIOS version from our mainboard manufacturer first.

[idata]

AS I have a similiar setup, running 1 X25-M G2 with 2 HDDs in Raid 0 in Raid Mode I installed the newest RST driver from the site that has been mentioned here. Now I do not know where to get the SSD Toolbox form as Intel pulled it from the site. What is the most recent version ?