Dual SSD's NOT in Raid. One TRIMs the other does NOT. Help.

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Cheopis

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Aug 11, 2013
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I have just *mostly* finished a system rebuild and while going through and checking to be sure that TRIM was working on my second SSD, I found out that it is not. TRIM is working fine on the primary SSD. I then prepared to do (yet another) backup of the system onto the standard HD on the system in preparation for some playing around with configurations, etc., and noticed that the second SSD isn't being included in the backup set.

I had LOTS of fun with this system getting the SSD's to read, and resolving all the weird driver issues, and now I'm sitting here stuck with no clue what to do. At this point if I simply yank the second SSD out of the machine I think everything will be working perfectly. But I’d rather not do that, because that would be giving up. LOL.

System Info follows:

[EDIT] [Windows 7 Ultimate]

Mainboard: ASROCK Z68 Extreme 4 / 8GB / i7-2700 @3.5GHz

SSDs are both Kingston Hyper X 3K 120GB models - The drives are NOT configured in RAID. I have one I use for the operating system, and another I will use for games. Both are configured to allow Windows to use them for virtual memory.

Standard HD is a 2TB Seagate something or another that used to be my main drive.

The SSD's are located in SATA3 0 and SATA3 1 ports. The front case I/O panel, HD, and a DVD burner are on three of the other [EDIT] [NON-Marvell] SATA ports.

BIOS is the most updated BIOS available from ASROCK.

System Drivers are up to date per DriverNavigator with the exception of some strange Matrox PCI driver which cannot possibly have anything to do with my machine, as the GPU is a GTX560. Intel Smart Connect and Intel Display Audio drivers are not loaded into the machine at all, and are disabled in BIOS.

Kingston website provided tools detect both drives fine. The operating system detects them fine for reading and writing.

Nothing on this machine is overclocked. It’s all factory spec. CPU, RAM, GPU. Air cooled. Power is from an 850W Thermaltake that is roughly 1 year old. System is fed by a voltage regulating UPS, which is in turn protected by a high capacity surge suppressor with power conditioning.

As I mentioned above I thought all was well, but decided that just detecting if the TRIM service was running wasn't enough, I wanted to TEST it. So I did, using TRIMcheck. The SATA3 0 acting as the boot drive tests perfectly. The SATA3 1 supplemental drive will not TRIM at all. I have even gone as far as rebooting, and just checked again after roughly 1 hour total time has passed, about 50 minutes of which was uptime on the machine, and it still has not trimmed the drive.

Everything is talking. The Device Manager seems relatively content.

The only thing that pops into my head as a possibility is formatting? I did reformat both of the drives at one point to recover from a lovely blunder involving the wrong drivers for ASROCK mainboard hardware. Then when reinstalling the OS, after yet another driver issue (I'm NOT a fan of Asrock's driver documentation for this mobo) I am confident that Windows reformatted the C: drive again.

So before going into deep dive land, can someone verify if the format of an SSD can impact its ability to be trimmed, while not impacting its ability to read/write? Are some formats not supported by Windows Backup for SSD’s?
As I click to activate this post, I am starting yet another backup, in preparation for whatever mad !science! is proposed here.

[EDIT] [Changed post type from discussion to question]

[EDIT] [Performed a chkdsk / reboot and checked event viewer logs. Both drives are NTFS 4096, and neither drive generated errors during the chkdsk, so it doesn't seem to be a format-related issue? At this point I'm completely confused.]

[EDIT] [Noticed that all three of my hard drives are being picked up as USB devices that can be removed. I dug into that a bit in Google, and it seems to be considered a cosmetic issue by most responders, but could it be related?] If the drives are all being seen on the USB bus, maybe only one of the drives gets the TRIM commands from the operating system?]

[EDIT] [Fixed the weird USB borked recognition issue by defining the SATA ports 0-5 on my machine as non-removable media in the registry. No change to TRIM function on either drive. C: still trims fine. E: fails to trim.]
 

Cheopis

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Aug 11, 2013
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I might be able to get TRIM to work in a RAID configuration, but that would not do me any good, because I have no desire for a RAID array on this machine.

No warnings or failures in Device manager, and drivers are up to date.

I am, however, loading up crystaldisk to see what it has to say about the drives.

[Crystaldisk provides me with a 100% health status on all three system drives. The boot SSD, the storage SSD, and the 2TB bulk storage.]

Without any errors at all, I'm not sure what information might be interesting to you, Spooky, what info do you want?
 
You missed my point. I meant set your BIOS to RAID and install the RAID0 driver but do not configure the two SSD's as one drive. So far you are relying on a software trim option. Once in RAID0, you can set up a hardware trim function. I think I got that right?

 

Cheopis

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Aug 11, 2013
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Oh. Yes, I did miss your point. I have run across something else I am going to try first. I understand that Nvidia actually can install drivers to control some mainboard functions, so I'm going to d a clean uninstall and barebones driver install of the Nvidia card, then see what drivers the machine picks up for the mainboard and see if they work better.

After that though, if I can configure the BIOS in RAID mode, without having to configure the drives in a RAID configuration, that's definitely worth a shot. Thanks!!

Will report back in a while.
 

Cheopis

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OK, results of clean Nvidia driver test. When I went into the manual install option of the NVidia driver package I found that only the basic driver and Nvidia Audio were installed. Decided to do a clean uninstall and reinstall anyway, with only the drivers for video.

Then I checked the device manager after reboot, and I saw no complaints from Windows. But when I want to Windows Update, it wanted me to get a 3.9MB standalone update for Nvidia audio drivers.

After letting the machine sit idle a few minutes, I took a look at the TRIM test that has been sitting on the storage drive since yesterday, and in the last 24 hours, through a reboot, there has been no change to that data. The primary drive though, still TRIMS within 30 seconds when the machine is mostly idle.

So I went ahead and pleases the Windows Update gods and let them put the Nvidia Audio back on my machine. I am guessing this is probably for imbedded audio in streaming video playback or something. Not entirely sure why Device manager did not pick it up, since Windows Update did.

I'd be willing to play with that a bit more if people think this might be related in some way to commands passing to the SSD's.

As for the RAID configuration on the mainboard, but using the SSD's in non-RAID mode, I'll be performing a full system backup and disconnecting the mass storage drive before playing with that. Might not get to it today though, will want to poke around in manuals and online a bit before putting the board into RAID.
 

Cheopis

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While verifying my backup settings, I happened to note on my storage drive that Windows Backup is concerned about the fact that "This drive is on the same physical disk as my system drive" but, err, it's not. Unless Windows 7 can look inside the backup, and see the boot drive's data in there? Is this just Windows doing something weird?

This current 2TB storage drive WAS my primary boot drive before the SSD's were installed, but I used an external drive to offload the full image of the data on this drive, then formatted the drive before moving select data from the offline backup back onto the drive - none of which was from Windows directories.

Started a checkdsk on that drive, and it accepted the command from within Windows 7 without telling me I had to reboot, which means that the drive is not considered by the active OS to be a drive whose function is required for OS operation.

I'm not sure this has any impact at all on the problem with the SSD's, but it seems odd. With a chkdsk and error correction enabled on a 2TB HDD, I'm not going to get around to playing with RAID tonight, I don't think.
 

Cheopis

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I cannot recall with certainty if I have ever installed Windows 7 with both SSD's attached. Definitely have installed while the BIOS was in AHCI mode though - I had to fight with that due to this motherboard having Marvell-only SATA controllers which were confusing the crap out of me. At first I was trying to use the Marvell SATA ports, like I had with the old configuration.

I know I have never done a Windows Install with the storage drive attached though. That gets cables pulled whenever I play with BIOS or the OS in any significant way.
 

Cheopis

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If I'm understanding this right, this means that at any point in the future, if I want to install another SSD on the machine, I will have to physically connect the SSD, then perform a complete OS reimage with the new SSD connected?

I've heard of that problem with some of the earliest SSD hardware that was available to the public, and the very limited mainboard and OS support they had, but I thought those problems had been cleared up years ago?

If all I have been struggling against here was a giant cross-institutional Charlie Foxtrot, I'm going to be a bit irritated. Especially since the SSD's did not come with any sort of instruction indicating they had to be installed in conjunction with a full OS install in order to operate properly.

We shall see. I will try the "dual drive Win7 format and install" before trying the "RAID on mainboard with drives not in a raid configuration" setup.

It will likely be a tomorrow at the earliest before I have any results to show. Chkdsk on that 2TB storage drive is sitting at @30% now. Time to grab food, then a book.
 

Cheopis

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OK, removed the old 2TB drive from the system, did a clean two-drive Windows setup in AHCI and as far as I can tell, no change.

TRIM activates on the OS drive within 30 seconds, but no TRIM on the storage device. I'm letting the TRIM check sit on the storage drive overnight then will check it again. Time to get ready for work.

I am also not completely finished updating drivers, so this isn't necessarily a dead end yet.
 

Cheopis

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About to lose patience with SSD's and just go back to hard drives again until hardware and operating system designers decide to start working together to make products that actually work. I've installed Windows 7 about 50x in the last week or so, with no sign yet of working TRIM on non-OS drives. Even Garbage collection seems to be failing.

Installing on RAID was a nightmare as well, every time I turned around. I was never able to get all three drives to work simultaneously on the machine in RAID mode, without actually putting and drives in RAID.

Another discovery - no matter what version of Intel Rapid Storage I put on my machine, from the version that came with the mainboard, to the newest version, or anything in between, it causes windows to fail to boot, requiring restoration from backup or a complete Windows reinstall.

But if I just load up Windows and look the other way about TRIM on the second SSD, everything works perfectly. No event viewer messages, no strange behavior. Nothing. (as long as I don't try to install ANY version of Intel Rapid Storage)

<my next step will probably be to revert to an older BIOS for the mainboard and see if IRS works, and if TRIM activates.>

The fact that my refrigerator failed last night has nothing to do with my grumpiness. Really.
 

Cheopis

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After digging a bit more, I discovered that thee are differences in how Windows Home Premium and Windows Ultimate deal with storage devices.

I am installing using a Windows Home Premium disk, however after installing the LAN drivers and registering Home Premium, I then use my Windows Anytime Upgrade code to update my Windows to Ultimate.

Could this have some impact on what the drives are doing, somehow?
 
Just update to win professional and save some money. I think the only difference between ultimate & pro is that ultimate is for encryption and you need a special chip on the MB for it to work.

Have you looked at the articles about getting trim to work in RAID mode?
 

Cheopis

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I already have Ultimate. I'm not buying Professional too :)

I did look at RAID. None of them are useful if I can't get all three of my drives to recognize properly in RAID, if they are not in a RAID configuration. I'd rather avoid being required to reach around my elbow to scratch my chin.

As mentioned earlier, I think I'll try a rollback to an earlier BIOS version and see if anything changes.

The fact that garbage collection also fails on non-OS Kingston Hyperx 3k SSD's seems even weirder than TRIM failing - I've had a TRIMcheck test running for 26 hours now, have rebooted once, and there has been no zeroing or modification at all of the test data.

 

popatim

Titan
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The part where garbage collection doesnt seem to be working has me irked. GC is built into the firmware and shouldn't care what the drive is being used for or which OS its being used with. It used to be thats all us raid-runners had and still is for AMD raid. I'm leaning towards this being some odd kind of bug in trimcheck. I really can't beleive GC and Trim are both failing and only on the secondary SSD.

By any chance have you swapped ssd's to make sure its not somehow defective.
 

Cheopis

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I've swapped these drives back and forth about 10 times now. Both of them work perfectly when they are OS drives, no matter what ports I connect them to, or which is used to boot.

The problem happens when either of them is a non-OS drive. In that configuration, they do not garbage collect or TRIM.

Current configuration:

SSD Drive on SATA3 0 = OS drive. It has a 100MB subpartition generated by Windows. TRIM is fine. Primary = C: 100MB = D:

SSD Drive on SATA3 1 = storage drive. It has no subpartition. It will not TRIM or garbage collect. I now have TRIM data on the drive that is over 36 hours old and neither TRIM nor garbage collection has cleaned it. It is Drive E:

HDD is on SATA5 and is Drive F:
Is there a way to force Windows to see a drive as being a "boot" drive without actually installing an operating system on it?
 

Cheopis

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Well, something in the triangle between Windows 7, my board's most up to date BIOS, and the Kingston Hyperx 3K drives just isn't right.

For future reference:

1) On an Asrock Z68 Extreme 4 board
2) Using Windows 7
3) With Kingston Hyperx 3k NOT in RAID mode

Any Kingston Hyperx 3k SSD drive is required to have an operating system on it if you want it to actually properly maintain itself with either Garbage Collection OR TRIM.

I have just installed Win7 home premium on the storage drive, it's not updated, it's not even registered, it's just a straight off the disk copy.

Now both of my SSD's are performing TRIM just fine.

It makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. But it works now - all I had to do was waste @1/6 of the 120GB storage space on the storage SSD, just to make it TRIM properly.

At some point in the future, I might start incrementally deleting Windows install data from the second drive, and see if/when the drive stops trimming - but I've wasted enough time on this, and caused myself more than enough stress for the time being.
 
I have searched the internet and found several others with the same problem and with different manufacturer's ssd's, but I have yet to find a remedy until now. I bet most are oblivious to the fact that their second and third and so on ssd's are not being trimmed.
 

Cheopis

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If it helps identify a problem that seems to affect more than just my particular combination of hardware, that's a good thing.

I agree that most people are not aware that some of their SSD's might not be properly maintaining themselves.
 

TheColaKid

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ok so my very first post here so sorry if I’m not too good at this. i have some questions for you although this last thread was in august i don’t now if you have solved this issue or not but i do have some questions about your system. i have been doing heavy research into ssd’s for the past few weeks because I’m upgrading my system but i just happen to have the exact same motherboard that you said you have the Z68 extreme4. Now i don’t know if there are multiple rev of the board but i did notice you mentioned about there being a marvel controller on there. My board has a marvel controller BUT there is also an Intel controller on the board as well. There are also multiple ahci/ide and boot functions laid into the bios that need to be set right when working with it. Because there are 2 controllers on the board the marvel one actually has its own boot options section. I only came across it when I was messing with the ahci settings for the first time.after inspected my manual multiple times and just happen to look at the board with a magnifying glass one time. The serial connectors on the board are not only numbered but also lettered. My board has 4 white sata connectors and 4 blue ones. All 4 blue are sata2 BUT 2 of the white ones are marvel and only indicated with an M next to show its on the other controller. Also for reference M2 is linked with esata at least on my board. I don’t know if any of this is of any help but I figure after reading on here so much least I could do was maybe answer something with what little I know.
 

paulbrown

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Feb 15, 2015
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I had problem with TRIM on second SSD.
All you need to do is to set your second SSD as ACTIVE.

Go to (CONTROL PANEL / ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS / Computer Management /)
In (Computer Management) click on (DISK MANAGEMENT)
Find your second SSD
Right click on it and (MAKE IT ACTIVE)
Reboot windows
TEST with (trimcheck-0.7)

TRIM should work. It worked for me. I have Primary SSD OCZ and secondary KingFast

Cheers :)