RAID + TRIM Support. When? a month/year/never?

[idata]

I just put a new work system together and I decided to use two X25m 80GB drives in a RAID1 configuration for reliabilty. I am now thinking I should have just gone with a single 160 or 80GB drive and then just set up a weekly backup to my 1TB HDD. This way I would get the advantages of using TRIM support. I am using Windows 7 64-bit on an ASUS P7P55D-E Pro

Does anyone have any idea when RAID1 (or 0) will gain support for TRIM? I can certainly wait, but I would like to know the approximate time frame on this. Thanks

[idata]

Forgive my ignorance here, but correct me if I'm wrong...

In order for drives to receive a TRIM ATA command behind a hardware RAID controller, that RAID controller would have to support ATA passthrough.

Most RAID controllers do not support ATA passthrough, especially the ones built into motherboards.

If my assumption is correct, then I would bet that even their SSD toolbox program does not work for drives behind a RAID controller -- no firmware updates or anything...am I right?

If so -- Why would Intel be the ones to fix this problem?

The issue here would not be the drives or the firmware on the drives, but which ATA commands that the RAID controller is able to recognize and send to the drives.

If this is the issue, I would suggest finding a RAID controller that allows for ATA command passthrough prior to purchasing your drives.

I am betting this will become big enough of a problem that most RAID controllers from here on out, especially the 6gb sata\sas ones will have to support this.

I know that's not much help now, but I guess my whole assumption could be wrong here...?

After doing some research, it seems the RAID controller actually has to support TRIM, not just ATA passthrough.

It's very unlikely that existing RAID controllers will be updated to support this (what a surprise...).

Too bad windows can't boot from a software RAID 0 -- I never understood why MS didn't add that functionality in.

OS X can boot from software raid just fine.

Regardless...my initial assumption was right -- there's nothing Intel can do about this.

The RAID controller must support the TRIM command and pass it through appropriately to each disk.

Just to re-iterate -- if you are looking to purchase a new setup, definitely call or email the support for the RAID controller you're thinking of using and make sure they support this.

[idata]

This is an interesting question. Windows 7 Pro supports Software Raid 0 and Raid 1. And Windows 7 Home support Raid 0 software raid.

If one is using the AHCI controller on the motherboard and the standard Microsoft driver, one should be able to make a software Raid with an SSD.

I understand with newer CPUs and motherboards, RAID 0 and 1 have very little performance loss compared to "motherboard raid" solutions.

THE BIG QUESTION IS: --> Do software RAIDs controlled by windows 7 support TRIM??

Maybe this is the easy way to get trim support with RAID 0 or RAID 1 SSDs right now?

Why hasn't anyone tried this yet?

[idata]

I see no reason why trim would *not* work with Windows Dynamic Disk \ Software RAID.

Even if it didn't work, you can always TRIM the drives manually with the SSD Toolbox.

The problem is when you are using a hardware RAID controller, the OS has *no* idea how many actual disks and what kind of disks are being used to create that RAID...it's all virtualized....but with windows software RAID, it actually knows about the RAID members, and *should* be able to appropriately send the TRIM command to the drives.

Why hisn't this a viable solution? Simple, because you can't boot from a software RAID on windows, which makes this completely useless for most people looking to store their OS \ boot volume on the RAID0. If you're not using it to boot, then it should be fine.

Mac OS X is the only OS I know of that can boot from a Software RAID -- however (lol), Mac does not have native support for TRIM...although I haven't researched it enough, maybe there are utilities to manually trim the drive.

[idata]

I've been reading a bunch of stuff and apparently Windows 7 Pro/ Ultimate and Enterprise can do software Raid 1 on the boot drive.

The question then is does the Windows software Raid 1 speed up the read speeds in the same way a hardware raid does?

This would theoretically make it possible to create a Raid 1 array as the boot drive and have double the read speeds (probably much less but more than single drive) and the write speeds would be like a single drive. Also you would get the protection of the mirror. And it seems like TRIM would also be automatically be supported...

A couple people thought that software RAID 0 could be used for the boot drive but that doesn't seem realistic...

Here's the examples of people that got RAID 1 to work as the boot drive in Windows 7 Software RAID:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itprogeneral/thread/2b5e56b5-4725-4db3-add2-b4b507e6... http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itprogeneral/thread/2b5e56b5-4725-4db3-add2-b4b507e6...

Go to the 10th message written by shadow3081

Gday everyone,

Just to add my experience, I'm running win7 enterprise and have mirrored my boot volume onto a secondary harddrive with no issues (yep I know the original question was for non boot volumes but figured someone may find this post useful). Converted both disks to dynamic, right click on the boot C: partition in disk management, click 'add mirror' select your secondary harddisk to mirror onto and its good to go !

Also the 12th long message by gerwien50 seems to have gotten software raid 1 to work on Windows 7 fpr the Boot Drive.

Here's another success:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/767-63-convert-windows-boot-partition-dynamic-disk http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/767-63-convert-windows-boot-partition-dynamic-disk

Read posts 11 and 13 from "nopolite" - in post 13, he shows an image from disk manager with software Raid 1 on the boot partition.

So this is possible with Windows 7 pro / ultimate / enterprise. It seems Windows 7 home does not support this feature even though that difference is never mentioned on any of microsofts product comparison charts.

So it may be possible to get SSD TRIM Support with Software Raid 1 on the boot drive with windows 7 - right now. The question, as I said above, does windows software raid 1 give any "READ" performance benefit at all over single disk read performance??

As to the original poster of this thread, I think what you want to do may be possible if all you want is added protection.

If I get a chance, maybe I'll play with this a bit.