Intel Releases TRIM-Supporting RAID Drivers

[Rob Williams]

The advantages of SSDs over traditional hard drives are widely known. Enthusiasts searching for higher levels of performance have long favored combining several slow platter-based drives together in a RAID array to better mask the latency issues, even while increasing overall rear and write throughput rates. Extreme users would frequently go as far as to RAID a pair of Western Digital's Raptor's series drives together for the best performance available at the time.

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You can read the rest of our post here.

 

[Tech-Daddy]

" even while increasing overall rear and write throughput rates. " - I dont wanna know about rear throughput... this is a technical site, Rob!

 

[Rob Williams]

How in the heck could I miss that?! Thanks bro ;-)

 

[Optix]

" even while increasing overall rear and write throughput rates. " - I dont wanna know about rear throughput... this is a technical site, Rob!

I know a greasy spoon here in my home town that would give more rear throughput than any drives in RAID ever could.

Nice catch, Tech-Daddy. Hehehe.

 

[thehailo]

DAMN that for being inaccurate. I was very excited at the idea of SSD/RAID. I do a ton of work from home, so I've always minimized downtime by going with RAID1. One drive fails; I just hop on Newegg to order a replacement and never worry about it. The increased read performance is of course a nice side effect.

So, now the question remains: is this something that has to be implemented in the RAID firmware, meaning a software update is unlikely, or can it be implemented at the driver level? For mobo/Windows software RAID, does it matter to begin with?

 

[Kougar]

DAMN that for being inaccurate. I was very excited at the idea of SSD/RAID. I do a ton of work from home, so I've always minimized downtime by going with RAID1. One drive fails; I just hop on Newegg to order a replacement and never worry about it. The increased read performance is of course a nice side effect.

I hear ya. Apparently is was worded incorrectly in the release notes, but Intel fixed the mistake. The feature is supposed to refer to using a standalone SSD when the chipset is configured in RAID mode only... so you can have your hard disk drives in RAID, but still use TRIM on your standalone SSD.

So, now the question remains: is this something that has to be implemented in the RAID firmware, meaning a software update is unlikely, or can it be implemented at the driver level? For mobo/Windows software RAID, does it matter to begin with?

Either the RAID firmware, or the RAID driver, or both. The drive and the OS both support TRIM, but the drivers don't pass the TRIM command on. It sounds like all it needs is a quick fix, but for whatever reason it hasn't been one. You might be right in that it requires a firmware update. Even the "software" RAID in Intel's chipset uses the controller firmware to enable RAID.