SF2281 TRIM support firmware by Sandisk that actually works? When?

@cvmmcg2 wrote:

nightcap,

So true. In my 25 years of buying Electronics I have never experienced anything so despicable as the way Sandisk is treating Customers in this situation.

So, I guess you don’t exaggerate much, do you?

I guess you missed the huge problems of the early 2000’s where huge numbers of motherboards died after a couple of years due to capacitor failure.

Then there was the same problem with PSUs regularly dieing due to crappy capacitors.

And on PSUs, I guess it isn’t dispicable at all how chinese companies regularly lie about the performance and capablilities of their cheap power supplies.

As for CPUs, I guess it wasn’t dispicable how intel used to really bend the truth of what TDP meant on their Pentium 4 processors.

And more recently, how AMD allowed previews for the GPU in its new trinity based APUs, but not for the CPU.

That is just what I can remember right now … of course, none of that pales in comparison to how badly sandisk is treating us by being a bit slow with the release of firmware. *smirk*

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… or how the so called SATA III controllers supplied by “third party” vendors do not perform anywhere near the speeds they should, since they are can only be connected to one PCIe lane at 5Gb/s, while the SATA III spec is 6Gb/s.

Or how Nvidia will not support their SATA chipsets with drivers that will allow SATA III SSDs to run at SATA II speeds, instead of switching them to SATA I speeds. Or the manufactures that used those Nvidia chips that also won’t supply driver updates for their products.

I agree that SanDisk should announce officially that they will provide a firmware update for the affected SSDs. We know that would be a positive thing for themselves, as well as current owners. If they don’t, their name will find a place in PC hardware history along with the others we’ve mentioned.

But who knows what is going on behind the scenes? Imagine if (_ purely speculation on my part!! _) SanDisk was taking legal action against LSI/SandForce over this issue. They might be legally required to do nothing until things are settled. That would be bad, since it would take years, knowing our legal system.

Or, perhaps SanDisk does not want to be part of the “Firmware of the Month Club”, as some SSD manufactures seem to be. They want it done once,and done right. The other companies that pumped out the new firmware obviously did not test it, or test it appropriately. Most of those do little or nothing to the firmware on their own. SanDisk may actually modify it to a significant degree, which slows the process.

Corporations seem strange when it comes to things like this, it seems in their eyes the less said the better. For example, Intel had TRIM in RAID 0 working with some of their chipsets and drivers, but never made an official announcement. Only after reviewers kept asking about it did they issue a statement, which they have never posted on their own website. Figure that one out.

With November, Xmas and the New Year just around the corner, still no sign of remedial action or product support advice from Sandisk. Not even a whisper.

Their lights are on but there’s nobody home. Completely comatose? Gone on vacation? Or simply flicked Sandforce TRIM in the “too-hard” basket? Maybe a certain manager has transferred the SF2281 TRIM file from the IN tray to the PENDING tray before it finally lands in the OUT tray? Then that file goes to legal section before being actioned?

This situation is strange if you look at the short history of the SanDisk Extreme SSD. It was released in February of 2012, and had its one and only firmware update in May, 2012. The firmware update tool was fairly simple to use, and created the bootable USB flash drive used to perform the update just by running a program. The update ran fine in my experience, perfectly. My point is this was not some last minute, rush job that made the user jump through hoops, it was obviously done well.

Given the current situation, nothing happening (yet), there must be something going on that is causing this delay. I don’t mean SanDisk sitting on their hands either. We may never know what happened to cause the delay, but I would bet that this is not simply SanDisk blowing off their customers (although it may seem like that to you), something is behind this.

Just an FYI, the following is what another SSD manufacture posted in their forum as the “Change Log” for the 5.03 firmware:

Here is the 5.03 firmware update for 22** series SandForce based drives…

CHANGE LOG

1. Restored a minor TRIM performance variation from a previous release

2. Fixed a power management condition where the device failed to respond to COMWAKE, which might have resulted in the SSD not responding without being reset by the host

I suppose we could not expect more than that, but yet another example of saying as little as possible. The source of this statement is unknown, could be SandForce, the SSD manufacture, someone else, who knows?

This one really surprised me, from a tech support person in that manufacturer’s forum:

TRIM does not function properly with any SF 5.** series firmware prior to 5.03 according to this site:

http://www.rwlabs.com/article.php?id=692

They have done testing to prove this.

 

That was the entire post, verbatim. Notice they never say themselves it was an issue, someone else said the problem existed. But it was proved by testing… again, not the manufacture, the third party. No statement was issued that the manufacture verified the problem existed or was fixed.

This must be done for legal reasons. If you admit it, you are then responsible, if you don’t, you’re not, and fine.

Remember early in 2011 when Intel had the problem in the 6 series chipsets, that some of the SATA ports could fail over time with normal use? They announced (admitted) it, recalled and replaced boards and compensated manufactures, etc. I think it cost them about one billion dollars. See the difference?

If you’re waiting for SanDisk or any other company to “admit” this issue exists, you’ll be waiting forever.

R211 firmware update has just been released? Where is the announcement right here on this official Sandisk forum? Does this completely and permanently fix TRIM? Are all platforms catered for in this R211 update, viz, Windoze, Mac and Linux? C’mon Sandisk moderators, where the heck are you hiding?  :confounded:

The new firmware works and TRIM is fixed. I’m still running some of my tests on the 480GB  but I’m past the TRIM test. It works!

I went through and read this entire thread while testing the drive tonight. There seems to be some bad blood between a lot of you and SanDisk. SanDisk has been all over the issue behind the scenes and worked very hard to get a proper release as fast as possible. They might not of been the first to release a TRIM fixing firmware but they were the most cautious.

You guys don’t want to get firmware as fast as I do for testing. I’m testing a beta release now for another company (non-SandForce) and the drive just disappeared while running some random write tests. Everytime I run this test the drive disappears. You don’t want that kind of thing on your “in use” SSD.

Most likely they will put out a press release today. They can’t pur a press release until the server is loaded with the files. You guys are just ahead of the curve.

To run the update load the Toolkit in Windows, have an empty thumb drive handy and it will put the software on the thumbdrive. Reboot your computer and boot from the thumb drive. It will take off and do everything for you.

“They” know who they are. Sandisk have been conspicuous by their total absence here all along. It takes a corporation but a few seconds to load files on a server, not days, weeks or months. Press releases are of no interest to most folks who’ve purchased unsupported TRIM-bereft Sandisk SSDs. From the start Sandisk end-users had a legal right to expect ample communication and tech support, not to be left in the lurch. Contractual obligation (warranty) should not be open to flagrant disregard.

Mr Ramseyer, you obviously are well-connected to Sandisk. Are you also paid by them to act as an apologist/publicist? Or do you receive (undeclared) freebies or other considerations? And I quote from your other recent posting in another related thread:

@chrisram wrote:

Now, for everyone who raised so much hell, it’s time to go out and buy a new motherboard and another SanDisk Extreme SSD.

 

 

Really? After all this? Weren’t you also a “tester” who alerted the world to Sandisk Extreme SSD TRIM failure?

PS: BTW if you intend to be a formidable, let alone credible, tech journalist may I suggest you revise your usage of past participle compound verbs in written English? “Of” is not used in compound verbs. “Have” or “had” are correct usage. For example, “Chris Ramseyer must *have* obtained inside knowledge.” Rather than, for example, “They might not *of* been the first to release a TRIM fixing firmware.” Sandisk might well *have* been the last! Trust that helps.

The biggest problem I see here is that Sandisk released a firmware which broke TRIM and then offered no downgrade path back to the previous firmware. Some manufacturers cought this and did not release any firmware until TRIM was fixed. Sandisk should have cought this. Hopefully they have learned from their mistakes and will be more careful in the future. Hopefully, if they do make a mistake, they will offer a downgrade path next time.

Additionally, I would like to point out that every tech company I have ever delt with does a “dry-run” on updates before they go full publication on them. People who are active on the respective forums usually get such updates a couple of days before the general public. It is a common practice.

I think we can let my English slide at 8AM. I didn’t just wake up, I was testing for over 24 hours before the post. 

I’m not paid by SanDisk and I don’t recieve any undeclared goodies or whatever you called them. I just think some people on this thread went a bit too far. The same thing happened over at C*rsair, no persons data was in jeopardy, you just lost 100 to 200MB/s of performance for a couple of months. There are people on this planet starving, others working for 25 cents a day in factories or in fields. Cry me a river about your SSD not working perfect right out of the box. 

I wasn’t a tester who alerted the world about the TRIM issue I was the reviewer who did my job and wrote what was right. As far as I can tell I’m also the only reviewer in this thread or for that matter advocating for end users so cut me a little slack.

There wasn’t a downgrade path. 5-Series firmware was needed for 24nm Toggle flash to work. 

SanDisk did the right thing, they validated the firmware before kicking it out to end users. Like I said, no persons data was at risk.


@chrisram wrote:

 

There are people on this planet starving, others working for 25 cents a day in factories or in fields. Cry me a river about your SSD not working perfect right out of the box. 

 


 

@Like the ones in China working @ Foxconn 80 hours a week making all the iPhone, iPads, and half the other electronic gizmos and gadgets sold around the world? :stuck_out_tongue:

Doesn’t that make all the Apple sheep enthusiasts proud that they support such a benevolent ‘American’ company?

:neutral_face:

@chrisram wrote:

Cry me a river about your SSD not working perfect right out of the box. 

 

That’s minimizing the issue a bit too much. The complaint that most of us here had is:

  1. SanDisk sold a defective product, and they continued to sell the product long after they knew that it did not meet specifications in a very significant way, and they just kept quiet about it.
  1. After they were called out by Tweaktown, they stonewalled on the issue, admitting nothing and saying nothing to customers. And they continued to sell the product to unsuspecting customers.
  1. They have not offered any apology, explanation or compensation to customers, as other more responsible companies (e.g., Intel, OCZ) have in the same circumstances.

SanDisk failed to meet the minimal standards that customers should expect of them. Personally, I won’t buy another SanDisk product.

@dvmarsh wrote:


@chrisram wrote:

Cry me a river about your SSD not working perfect right out of the box. 

 

That’s minimizing the issue a bit too much.  

Understatement of the year. Corporate neglect on a grand scale. No more, no less. Totally unacceptable.

I’ve downloaded, burned ISO to CDR and updated two Extreme SSDs to R211 firmware. So far, so good. Will monitor performance.

In the meantime, various doubts arise:

  1. After 6 months usage with broken TRIM how is overall drive longevity (NAND cycles) affected? Were we beta tester guinea pigs?

  2. Is firmware R211 guaranteed to provide a permanent remedy that does not negatively affect other performance parameters of the SSD? (Another Sandisk Extreme user elsewhere reports read rates are down and write rates are up following his initial firmware update.)

  3. Will any Sandisk executive finally come forward and do the honourable thing by providing a full explanation of events that led to broken TRIM, and how Sandisk went about fixing it? If not, are end-users to learn facts third-hand from distant cyber-forums? What then, is the purpose of Sandisk hosting this forum?

It is quite funny that some people are still not happy.

Quite honestly, none of the SSD makers (or hard drive makers) would live up to the expectations some of you have. Sandisk could have been better with communication, but their implementations for ssd updates are the best/simplest I’ve seen.

Given they are also suppling updates specificly to resolve Mac Issues (poor negotiation between nvidia SATA and sandforce controller), it is clear that sandisk are not leaving their users in the cold.

@nightcap wrote:


Understatement of the year. Corporate neglect on a grand scale. No more, no less. Totally unacceptable.

 

I’ve downloaded, burned ISO to CDR and updated two Extreme SSDs to R211 firmware. So far, so good. Will monitor performance.

 

In the meantime, various doubts arise:

  1. After 6 months usage with broken TRIM how is overall drive longevity (NAND cycles) affected? Were we beta tester guinea pigs?
  1. Is firmware R211 guaranteed to provide a permanent remedy that does not negatively affect other performance parameters of the SSD? (Another Sandisk Extreme user elsewhere reports read rates are down and write rates are up following his initial firmware update.)
  1. Will any Sandisk executive finally come forward and do the honourable thing by providing a full explanation of events that led to broken TRIM, and how Sandisk went about fixing it? If not, are end-users to learn facts third-hand from distant cyber-forums? What then, is the purpose of Sandisk hosting this forum?
  1. No, I’ve run an endurance test on one of these drive based on the on old firmware, and got close to 1PiB total writes before drive death, which is a bit over twice the specified life for the NAND, and fairly typical for a sandforce drive.

  2. There are no guarantees in life. In the case of the other user, the reduced read performance of about 3% is well within error  margins for these kinds of benchmarks.

  3. I wouldn’t hold my breath … every other company has been relatively hush hush on this whole TRIM buisness. What probably happened was that they implemented a new algorithm for TRIM/garbage collection for the 5 series firmware and it simply didn’t work well (there is evidence that TRIM did work, just plenty that it wasn’t working well).

* 5.0.3 reverted to the older algorithm (found in series 3 firmware)

* 5.0.4 was implemented with fixes that allowed WHQL certification to pass.

* Sandisk, being the huge slow moving company it is, applied updated to disable 6gbit SATA for macs, then took several weeks intergrating and testing it on its update system. Too long you say … maybe, but you were not the engineers tasked with making sure this random update didn’t brick half the drives it came in contact with. 

@canthearu wrote:

 

…Sandisk could have been better with communication, but their implementations for ssd updates are the best/simplest I’ve seen. …Given they are also suppling updates specificly to resolve Mac Issues (poor negotiation between nvidia SATA and sandforce controller), it is clear that sandisk are not leaving their users in the cold.

Agreed. Both seem fair comments.

canthearu continued to write:

  1. No, I’ve run an endurance test on one of these drive based on the on old firmware, and got close to 1PiB total writes before drive death, which is a bit over twice the specified life for the NAND, and fairly typical for a sandforce drive.

So you’ll guarantee that no damage was done? Or that there is little relative damage? Or the damage was worth rushing an immature product to market?

  1. There are no guarantees in life. In the case of the other user, the reduced read performance of about 3% is well within error margins for these kinds of benchmarks.

Incomplete and incorrect. Further data indicate an approx. 14% decrease in 512kb reads. Statistically significant?

  1. I wouldn’t hold my breath … every other company has been relatively hush hush on this whole TRIM buisness. What probably happened was that they implemented a new algorithm for TRIM/garbage collection for the 5 series firmware and it simply didn’t work well (there is evidence that TRIM did work, just plenty that it wasn’t working well).
    * 5.0.3 reverted to the older algorithm (found in series 3 firmware)
    * 5.0.4 was implemented with fixes that allowed WHQL certification to pass.
    * Sandisk, being the huge slow moving company it is, applied updated to disable 6gbit SATA for macs, then took several weeks intergrating and testing it on its update system. Too long you say … maybe, but you were not the engineers tasked with making sure this random update didn’t brick half the drives it came in contact with.

Non-brick is good. And many here have witnessed DOA or lame-duck SSDs at close quarters. Most failures involved Sandforce controllers, if I’m not mistaken. Do you notice any pattern emerging?

You all keep thinking TRIM was not working, but it was, but the controller was too slow to clean the trimmed cells before you do another benchmark. If you have let idle time, you would have gotten the same performance.

Stop telling the product was immature. You can say that for OCZ because they are first to rush a new product to market, but not Sandisk.

“You all keep thinking TRIM was not working, but it was, but the controller was too slow to clean the trimmed cells before you do another benchmark. If you have let idle time, you would have gotten the same performance.”

Do you have proof of that? You might want to read the white papers on SandForce’s site that talk about garbage collection and write amplification.