Tag: SSD

SSD Not Available During Windows 7 Setup

Intel X25-V SSD - Still Not Getting The Daily TRIM

Intel X25 SSD: Sometimes not showing up to the party

There’s a lot of people who have had issues with their SSD not showing up in the list of available hard drives when installing Windows 7, and today I got to be one of them. I wanted to do a fresh install of Windows 7 on an Intel X25-V SSD (40GB), but the disk just wouldn’t show up.

This particular disk was used as a swap disk in a different system, so I figured it might have some problems related to formatting. Changing from IDE mode to ACHI mode did not do anything. (For Intel SSDs, IDE mode is required for the Intel software to work).

After looking around for a solution on the interwebs, I found two possible solutions, listed by “ease of use”. The second one worked for me, as I happened to have a bootable USB with GParted on hand, but the first one should work too.

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Make Your Own TRIM for SSDs in RAID Mode

A driver that finally enables TRIM support for Intel SDDs in RAID mode?

Sadly, the news were too good to be true. The latest Intel driver was incorrectly reported (techPowerUp!) to enable TRIM for SSDs in all RAID modes except for RAID5. However, this was bogus information from Intel. The correction came shortly thereafter, that support is ONLY for single disks and not while in RAID arrays.

Intel X25-V SSD - Still not getting its daily TRIM

Intel X25-V SSD - no TRIM for you!

The truth is that the new driver allows single disks that are connected while running the storage controller in RAID mode to receive the TRIM command.

It seems passing the TRIM command to SSDs in a RAID array is not a simple case with current chipsets and drivers.

The recommended workaround:
Yes, there’s actually a workaround! Just leave some 15-20% free, unformatted, unallocated space when formatting your RAID array of SSDs, seen as a single disk during OS install. The SSD controller will use this as “scratch space”. Also, do note that the much talked about performance loss over time that occurs with SSDs – is much less of an issue when in a RAID.

But what if I already formatted and used my drives?
No worries! You can still perform a Secure Erase (ata.wiki.kernel.org) to bring them back to basics. The same procedure can also be performed every 1-2 years if you experience noticeable loss of performance. But by then, maybe they will have conjured up some magical new drivers? Only time will tell …

Oh, almost forgot; for those “I run my single disk SSDs while in RAID mode” kind of guys:

Click here to get the latest Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Driver for Intel Desktop Boards.
Select your OS, then “Driver”.