SSD and no AHCI - problem?

[rogigor]

Hi,

I'm buying Crucial m4 ssd and I've read a lot of guides how to optimize system for the drive. One of the points is to turn the AHCI in the bios but... My Abit IP35-E (ICH9) does not have this option. Does it have a big impact on performance ? And how about TRIM - doesn't it have to have AHCI turned on ?

 

[blazorthon]

Not having TRIM on an M4 is a bad idea. TRIM needs AHCI, so if that's not an option, then you might have a problem. You could check if that simply means that AHCI is automatically enabled on your board.

As for performance, the effect isn't something that you notice quickly, but without TRIM, the Crucial M4's performance iwll falter over time quiet badly. Given almost a year or two, it will probably be having severe problems. If you haven't bought it already and your board doesn't support AHCI at all, then an Intel 330 SSD would be a better option because as a SandForce SSD, it has supreme garbage collection to a point where it doesn't need TRIM to stay working well. It's also probably one of the only SandForce SSDs that are highly reliable.

 

[Dereck47]

Yes, your drive will perform slower in IDE mode, but it will still be much, much faster than your current HDD.

Some SSDs pass TRIM in IDE mode, some do not. You have to contact Crucial's customer support and find out if the M4 accepts the TRIM command in IDE mode.

If it doesn't the drive still has Garbage Collection to maintain drive performance.
Just Log off (not Shut down) overnight once every couple of weeks or so to allow GC to do its thing.

 

[blazorthon]

Yes, your drive will perform slower in IDE mode, but it will still be much, much faster than your current HDD.

Some SSDs pass TRIM in IDE mode, some do not. You have to contact Crucial's customer support and find out if the M4 accepts the TRIM command in IDE mode.

If it doesn't the drive still has Garbage Collection to maintain drive performance.
Just Log off (not Shut down) overnight once every couple of weeks or so to allow GC to do its thing.

The problem with Marvell controllers is that their regular garbage collection is much worse than that of SandForce's garbage collection. I'm also quite sure that the M4 does not support TRIM if it is not in AHCI mode, but I won't guarantee that.

 

[Dereck47]

Thanks; didn't know that about the M4s. Definitely don't get an M4 then.

 

[rogigor]

Damn... In this topic http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/288213-14-crucial-kingston-choosing I got convinced to get the M4 over the Kingston V+200 (SF 2281) but now....

Well maybe it's time for upgrade to 1155 <sight>

 

[Dereck47]

Yeah, definitely need a mobo upgrade.

 

[rogigor]

Anyway I'll go with the M4 anyway, check how it works in IDE and do the upgrade later if needed. After all my q6600 still kicks ass 😛

Thanks guys.

P.S. - I have just emailed Crucial about TRIM in IDE - I'll let you know what is their answer.

 

[bryonhowley]

You can verifiy that your mainboard supports TRIM or not by running a command prompt with administrator and typing this command "fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify" with out quotes.
If DisableDeleteNotify=0 TRIM is Enabled.
If DisableDeleteNotify=1 TRIM is Disabled.

 

[rogigor]

Does it work on Vista X64 ? Cause when I type it all I can see is:



Edit: Ok - I've googled it - Vista does not support Trim. On the other hand I've found here - http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1537899 that one guy has an ssd and even though he could not turn AHCI in bios the TRIM worked fine.

 

[pjmelect]

In this case I would get either a Intel SSD which has a program that you can force garbage collection, or a Kingston that has built in garbage collection without TRIM.