The SSD Improv: Intel & Indilinx get TRIM, Kingston Brings Intel Down to $115
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 17, 2009 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Final Words
TRIM is a huge step forward in SSD maturity and readiness for the masses. There are only so many people who have the patience to listen to a NAND flash explanation to understand why their luxury storage device gets slower the more you use it. TRIM not only simplifies the problem but it makes SSDs work the way they should. When you delete a file TRIM ensures that the file is no longer tracked by the SSD. And it just works.
The driver limitations are a bit annoying, especially given Intel knew this was coming. Difficulty in coordinating schedules is one of the downsides of having such a huge organization.
It's also ridiculous that Intel has done nothing to take care of it's original X25-M G1 customers. Those who spent over $600 on Intel's first SSD deserve to be taken care of but instead they get no TRIM support and no SSD Optimizer. Both of these are things that Indilinx has offered it's customers before Intel. Vertex owners have had a wiper tool since before Intel ever announced intentions to enable TRIM on the G2.
The write speed improvement that the Intel firmware brings to 160GB drives is nice but ultimately highlights a bigger issue: Intel's write speed is unacceptable in today's market. Back when Indilinx first arrived there was no real threat, but today Intel is facing a much more mature group of competitors. Our heavy trace benchmark is a prime example of why this is an issue. I fully expect Intel to address it with the third gen drive next year but it makes buying a drive today unnecessarily complicated.
From a compatibility standpoint, Intel has the advantage. It's just a much larger company than Indilinx and has the ability to do more compatibility/reliability testing.
The performance side is a bit more difficult to break down. The more sequential writing you do to your drive the more you'll stand to benefit from Indilinx's higher write speeds. In nearly all other situations the two controllers perform similarly or Intel is in the lead. The fact that both controllers support TRIM makes it even more difficult.
The easiest way to decide continues to be to buy the largest drive you can afford. 64GB? Indilinx. 80GB? Intel? 128GB? Indilinx and 160GB Intel. If you're buying an Indilinx drive the rate of firmware releases pretty much dictates that you'll want to buy from OCZ or SuperTalent. None of the other Indilinx manufacturers have Windows 7 TRIM support yet (Crucial has now posted a firmware update with TRIM support). The additional testing and exclusive agreements that OCZ/ST have with Indilinx provide their customers a tangible advantage in this case.
Kingston's 40GB option is super interesting. Anyone who's sold on SSDs will probably opt for a bigger drive but if you're on the fence, the Kingston solution might be for you. The write speed is disappointing but for application launches and boot time it's got the speed. If Newegg can keep these things in stock at $85 after rebate it's a gold deal. I'd prefer the price without the rebate but these things are still selling at a premium unfortunately.
Next year SSDs will get even more interesting. I attended a couple of Intel's SSD tracks at IDF this year and got a glimpse into what Intel is working on. Through TRIM and other architectural enhancements Intel is expecting to deliver much higher consistent performance on its future SSDs, regardless of how full they are. We can also expect to see a decoupling of capacity from the number of channels the controller supports; right now Intel has a couple of oddball sizes compared to the competition, but future designs will allow Intel to more closely mimic HDD capacities regardless of controller configuration.
I still firmly believe that an SSD is the single best performance improvement you can buy for your system today. Would I recommend waiting until next year to buy? This is one of the rare cases where I'd have to answer no. I made the switch last year and I wouldn't go back, it really does change the way your PC behaves.
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Pandamonium - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
The 2nd gen X18-M isn't available as far as I can tell. It kind of shafts us tablet and ultraportable users out of the SSD market for another round =/Cavicchi - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
"You no longer have to boot to DOS and secure erase your SSD before installing Windows, just quick format the partition before installing Windows 7."I always thought the "quick format" doesn't wipe the entire drive as clean as a full/long format. Does the above mean we only need to do a quick format to wipe a drive clean to install Windows 7?
Also, I noticed Superfetch, Prefetch, and Ready Boost are enabled in Windows 7 x64 with my X25-M G2 160GB drive installed.
Voo - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Logically when a TRIM command is sent to the drive you lose all the data that was saved there.So, there's no difference between full/quick format or anything else as long as it triggers the TRIM command..
Beno - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
"SSDs are made up of millions of NAND flash cells. They can be written to in groups called pages (generally 4KB in size) but can only be erased in larger groups called blocks (generally 128 pages or 512KB). These stipulations are partially the source of many SSD performance issues."but isnt it possible to erase data in 4KB, the same way they are written?
krumme - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Where does speed matter most?Getting some sense into the g2 hype
Now you can have a job with a Dell and a hd with samsung controller without quitting the job
Thanx Anand for always improving your site and letting us learn
Thats whats move this boys-toy business forward
flynace - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
If you set up a software RAID-0 array within Windows 7 will it support TRIM?Or is TRIM not possible on any form of RAID (OS, BIOS, HW, etc.)?
And does aliging the partitions make any difference on these drives?
Voo - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Iirc Anand stated in some of his articles that there's no TRIM support for raid, because the controller had to forward the commands.But imho it sounds not like a unconquerable problem, so it's probably only a question of time.
flynace - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
Thanks. I assume Intel will update their drivers to support RAID TRIM eventually, but if you don't have an 'R' tybe Intel ICH, does Win7 support TRIM if you set up a software RAID array in the OS still using the MS AHCI drivers?Willardjuice - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Did Intel update their Windows 7 sata/raid drivers to also include TRIM support? Or do we have to use the drivers provided by Microsoft?DoveOfTheSouth - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Another great SSD article from Anand (thank you so much)!But I'm really disappointed that you have to use the Microsoft Win 7 disk driver to get TRIM. It has a huge problem.
Based on my experience, I would normally strongly recommend that the first thing you do when installing Win 7 is replace the Microsoft driver with the latest Intel Matrix Storage Manager.
The following link describes the problem (long periods of system non-responsiveness) you can get with the Microsoft driver and at least some PCs, and how to fix it:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1431&page=3&...">http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1431&page=3&...
I had exactly the same crippling problem on a Dell Dimension 9100 which baffled me until I replaced the Microsoft driver with IMSM - problem disappeared instantly.
Okay it was bit of an old PC but of the 3 I have been testing with Win 7 for the last couple of months, it was the only one that used the Microsoft driver instead of IMSM (it was an XP upgrade ie OS reinstall, the others upgrades from Vista). So I don't know how widespread the problem with the Microsoft driver is, it hit my only PC that was a candidate, but I'd be pretty wary.
Otherwise Win 7 has been great.
So it looks like you have a choice: IMSM with no TRIM or a buggy Microsoft driver with TRIM.