Intel G1 with no TRIM - Is there a workaround?

Hi there,

I'm looking to get a SSD drive 160-180gb, and am on a budget. There is a 160gb Intel G1 drive on offer at a good price, however I found that it does not support TRIM.

I'm not a power user, just looking for a little bit of added performance on my X200 laptop. I currently use a 320gb scorpio drive.

Should I consider the Intel G1 and perform a 'manual TRIM' every once in a while?

Thanks,

NC.

 

i use an intel g1 since years and never had a problem not having trim. the drive got designed without it, so it's no problem.

but if it would be, there are manual trim like ways, so no problem there.

just make sure it really is more cheap than the same ssd size in g2 version or even 320 version. if it is, it sure is worth it.

 

The Intel G1 has built in "garbage collection." Actually, almost all SSDs have it. Basically "Trim" is a way for Windows 7 (and other operating systems that support the command) to tell the drive "hey it is okay to do your garbage collection now." The drive may or may not do it right away. For instance Marvell based drives (Micron C3/C4, Intel 510) sometimes don't do it right away, while Kingston V+100 drives are VERY aggressive at it.

 

What is a 'good price' on the G1 160GB?

If it is not less than 30% (at least) of the best deal you can get on the much improved 320 Series 160GB model, you are not getting a good deal overall in my opinion. In other words: is it less than ~$210?

See:
http://www.canadapost.ca/shopper/items/7314789/Intel-SSD-320-Series-160GB-SSDSA2CW160G310

Good luck.

 

The SSD needs someone to tell it that the blocks are not in use anymore and it is OK to do the Garbage Collection. The SSD will never delete the block unless some process needs it, but then you will suffer a performance hit (delete, rewrite), hence why TRIM excist.

@OP: I don`t think you will get TRIM function to work with the G1s. Intel said there was some "technical difficulties" to make it work

 

doesn't work exactly like that, cloudfire. remember ssds don't write where you think they do. they write where they want and remember what's where. so they can prepare nice write-to cells, do mergers with existing ones, and all without you knowing.
yes, trim helps to inform them what's free. but they DO have freespace, and can write to that, and then relocate as needed. they CAN do a lot of tricks to make sure your writes will go to fast places (and then fix up everything to get new, fresh cleaned fast places).

a trim ssd is better, as it's great to have the os and the ssd team up and share everything they know. but even without that, ssds can work very well, if designed for that blind situation. which the g1 was made for. unlike modern ssds, which aren't.

so you don't need trim on a g1 ssd. you need it on a modern one.

but i agree with tiller: if it's a nice price, get it. else, invest in a fresh one.

 

There is no "tricks" the SSD can do. Garbage collection doesn`t happen unless someone tells it to do it.

And the whole "they write where they want" means that sometimes it will write on the blocks which you "deleted" with your delete button earlier but are still filled with data because nobody told the SSD to clean it entirely up. The operating system think the space is free and clean, but it is not really. Yes it can write on free unused blocks, but you will have a performance hit because it will have to rewrite blocks sometimes.

Atleast that is what I have read.

 

Actually there is, in the form of overprovisioning. Due to the 1024 vs 1000, all SSD has a natural OP of about 7%. Therefore, even without the help of TRIM, the SSD can always deduce that certain sector is no longer in use(to the SSD, when you rewrite a sector, it would write it to somewhere else physically and the original physical location is bound to be not in use and the SSD remembers it).

You are correct that some partial rewrite is needed(this applies to SSD with TRIM as well as the rewrite is due to 'holes', TRIM just reduce the extend of it).

In short for G1, more OP would reduce the need of TRIM though as mentioned above multiple times, unless the price is really good there isn't that much point in buying G1.

 

Yes, you are indeed right. Over provisioning reduce rewrites but it still happens, and that was my point

Probably that is what davepermen was talking about too. So you are right dave, there is some secret "tricks" that the SSD use

 

Thanks folks, very enlightening thread, and I appriciate your input! I'm not that fussed about rewrites hitting performance, so am fine with the "sacrifise". I just wanted to ensure these older drives are still fit for purpose. By the sound of it, they can still cut it!

As for cost, I'm looking at a 2nd hand drive which does cost around 35% less the cheapest new one could find. I'll make an offer and see how it goes!

Thanks again.

NC

 

2nd hand (SSD) drive? Not even worth 1/3 of a 'new' price.

 

Hmmm, okay. care to expand on that?

 

We are talking about 2nd hand G1's right?

Two year old+ drives, by now. Used.

What else is there to expand on?

 

On why you think it's not worth a 1/3 of a new...

 

Because even when they were new, they weren't worth it (HDD's were faster in my experience/usage scenario).

Now, two years later, with used/abused nand - an ancient controller (that was updated nicely on the 320 series, btw) and no TRIM support - what is worth more than ~$100 for these drives except for novelty value?

If you're putting one of these into a netbook or some other low end system - sure - it will be an upgrade of sorts. If you're putting this into a SNB system - you're crippling your performance of your 'latest and greatest' platform.

 

have to agree with tiller except the HDD were faster part

 

chimpanzee... 'for my usage scenario...'

 

Just run AS-Cleaner on your SSD that lacks trim support so it fills empty blocks with 0xFF (nulls). Then GC knows it can use those blocks. This is detailed as part of Tony Trim.

A X25M G2 didn't offer much performance improvement over the G1, though it did provide TRIM. Both are still capable drives offering significant improvements over a magnetic spinner.

 

they where ABSOLUTELY worth it when new. don't consider any of tillers statements to have ANY validity in terms of worth of ssds.

but yes, it's not new => not worth as much as a new ssd.

 

So a new SSD wasn't faster than a standard HDD?

Yes, Agree with this one!

 

it wasn't faster in SOME cases (in case of the intel gen1, it's write max speed was 70MB/s, while some hdds are faster in some cases). but it's faster in MOST cases that count. which tiller can not understand and agree on.

 

'Find all posts' is not working right now, but I don't want anyone to think I am ignoring the accusations here.

Last time:

Again, when I tested/compared from about 2 years ago - SSD's were not above HDD's overall for my usage scenario.

SSD's do not make a system faster - they make it more responsive and that may make the system faster overall, but this didn't happen form me until the Intel 320 Series (160GB and larger) and the Intel 510 Series (250GB model) came out.

I didn't say 'standard' HDD's. I've always upgraded to the fastest HDD available at the time.

The HDD's I used were capable of greater than 100MB/s (the way I set them up) and they could sustain those speeds indefinitely. Something you couldn't say about SSD's for a long time.

Anyways - davepermen thinks that I'm against SSD's. I'm not. I'm simply against the notion/idea that any SSD is superior to any HDD in any situation.

Hope my intent is now clear?

SSD's have come a long way in the two years I've been watching - soon, they will be the only choice for any usage scenario we can dream up. But, in 2009 when the G1's roamed the earth - this was not the case.


davepermen, 'most cases' is something I don't care about. I care about my case as that is the only one that can convince me to spend my money on new/better/faster 'tech'. To be more specific: I don't care about the little things (although I notice them... maybe too much...) - I care to see my work getting done faster and me being out of my studio earlier in the day/night than what I could achieve yesterday with my tech tools. That is where the old/ancient SSD's failed for me.

 

we're on a notebook forum here. no hdd i know of has 100MB/s of bigger troughput OVER ALL IT'S DISK RANGE. ever.

and a more responsive system is a faster system. when ever it responds slowly, it slows you down.

and most cases is all you should care about, tiller. nobody cares about your statements if they are not ment to be a general truth. you have your specific funky world in which you have only one purpose for your disk and there it might have been slower (debatable, you never proved to not have just failed to test properly).

so for ANY user out there, the chance of an ssd, even an old one, to improve the experience and performance is VERY HIGH.

you are the ONLY one who had such an issue.

as said, nobody should listen to you when you talk about your hdds that beat ssds.

 

I think you are right. I didn't understand it from your short description, but I re-read Anand's SSD Anthology.

 

davepermen,

your stance against me is really getting old.

First, you ignore/do not read what I write - and you seemingly do not comprehend fully the parts that you do read (simply to attack me with).

If you can read the following link fully, it plainly shows that an SSD is not the first thing a photographer (like myself) should be 'upgrading' to get a real and not imagined performance boost. While the link is focusing on LR performance - many of my image editing programs respond the very same way (and hence, my whole workflow).

I know, I said that I wouldn't respond to your childish rants beyond my post (above), but hopefully this link will show you objectively that my workflow is not enhanced by using an SSD.

As to 100MB/s HDD speeds (in which you added 'OVER ALL IT'S DISK RANGE') - you know very well how I always partition my systems (even my current SSD's, btw...) - so stop spewing garbage about how uninformed I am (the partitioned space easily hits 100MB/s...).

Finally, as I've asked you multiple times before (since 2009), please stop attacking me personally and try to stay on topic.


See:
Will an SSD Improve Adobe Lightroom Performance? | Computer Darkroom


A storage subsystem has been effectively 'invisible' for a long time now - I stopped using RAID0 setups for precisely this reason - 'invisible' in the sense that it does not measurably slow down the task the system is used for.

This is not to say that SSD's do not lower boot times and increase the responsiveness of the O/S - but as I keep saying and you just don't get: O/S responsiveness is not throughput in my workflow.

As the article linked clearly shows: the work is done by the CPU and the RAM - other subsystems are just in a supporting role. And in this case (my case) a properly setup HDD is just as fast as an SSD.

 

100GB/s ? that sounds fast even for SSD

seriously, I just want to clarify that your > 100MB/s only applies to sequential access which is what your workflow requires(read a bulk load of RAW then process it for minutes then save). No HDD can sustain that for a random access pattern(where in most notebook usage is kind of some where between totally random to totally seq).

 

chimpanzee, thanks for catching that.

(I edited my post).

Yeah, sequential access, of course. Not much random access happens with images (but the database that LR3 utilizes does respond better on an SSD - mostly in Library mode - which I rarely use).