Raid0 and TRIM Support on Intel 11.5 OROM and Latest v11.5.0.1184 RST Drivers ?

[Fernando]

anyone know if X58 was finally included in letting TRIM pass-thru to RAID?

Only Intel 7-Series and X79 chipsets are natively supported by the TRIM in RAID0 feature.

or maybe even hacked drivers?

It aren't the drivers, but the Intel RAID ROM module, which prevents, that the TRIM command passes through the Intel ICH9R/ICH10R SATA RAID Controllers of X58 chipset RAID0 systems. TRIM in RAID0 is a no go for X58 chipset RAID0 arrays, not even a modified Intel RAID ROM will enable this feature.

[daedao]

I have :

- one Gigabyte UD5 motherboard running on the official F13 (latest) BIOS
- 2 Crucial m4 64gb running in AHCI mode
- I will have 2 Samsung 840 Pro 128gb in 2 days (they are shipping as I write this)


I downloaded from tweaktown:
- modded BIOS F13 with IRST 11.5.0.1347 orom
- modded BIOS F13 with IRST 11.1.0.1413 orom
- modded BIOS F13 with IRST 11.6.0.1702 orom


I want:
- to set the 2 Crucial ssds in RAID 0
- to set the 2 Samsung ssds in RAID 0

Can someone please advise on which modded BIOS should I use to get the best performance?

Can someone please advise also on which RST driver version should I install on W7x64?

The general rule of thumb is that x58 ICHR10 DOES NOT SUPPORT TRIM IN RAID 0.
Thank you very much Intel, you s.

But I'm betting the house on Crucial's and Samsung's Garbage Collection algorithms on the ssds firmware.

Am I stupid for all of the above?
Should I just forget about Raid 0 on x58?

Thank you for bearing with my long plea for an honest advice.

[Fernando]

Can someone please advise on which modded BIOS should I use to get the best performance?

If I were you, I would take the actual BIOS F13 with the Intel RAID ROM v11.6.0.1702.

Can someone please advise also on which RST driver version should I install on W7x64?

If you want the best performance, you should install the Intel RST driver v11.2.0.1006.

The general rule of thumb is that x58 ICHR10 DOES NOT SUPPORT TRIM IN RAID 0.

Yes, that is fact and may minimize the life time of your SSDs.

Should I just forget about Raid 0 on x58?

To be honest: I would not run the SSDs as RAID0 without having TRIM support.

[daedao]

To be honest: I would not run the SSDs as RAID0 without having TRIM support.

Not to dismiss you, since you are a legend with modded bioses, but wouldn't GC (garbage collectors) have the same effect as TRIM?
I know that passing the TRIM command to the controller is more elegant and rapid, but with GC you get the same results just not right after you delete a file.

Your SSD has to be in idle state for the GC to kick in.
At least with the Crucial drives. And I believe Samsung has something similar if not better than Crucial's implementation. Both I think are good at this.

SSDs have come a long way since 2007-2008 era when having TRIM functionality was a must have.
I believe that today's SSDs have better firmwares. Crucial and Samsung are probably the best right now.

I plan to use the raids for booting Windows, Linux, games and some virtual machines loading and java compiling, and since i'm on an "old" chipset (x58) I do not have sata 6gbps ports, so I want to make up for that by using SSDs in raid 0. So I won't be writing to the SSD all that much. Just initially when I setup my OS and restore my Steam collection and copy my VMs.
After that it will mostly be reading from the SSDs.

I'm not that rich to buy a new motherboard and processor just because Intel wants so and I plan to give my platform a few more years.
My UD5 coupled with my i7 980x and 24 GB ram rocks. I see no real reason to upgrade.