Solve manual TRIM immediately

Hello there, 

I’ve purchased one of your SSD over concurrent product because you were suppose to support manual TRIM feature. It is upgrade drive for Vista machine and I copied data to whole drive (so it thinks it is full), so it is a must. Just after delivery I tried to install SSD Dashboard and found out that you are not telling thruth in your manual and the manual TRIM is not supported. I saw other discussion and reasoning behind removing manual TRIM. So these are my questions:

  • What damage can manual TRIM in previous versions of Dashboard cause?

  • When you will start support manual TRIM for Vista again? (It is 32 bit version.)

  • What third party software, free or paid by you, do you recommend to issue manual TRIM on your Ultra Plus drive?

I understand why you disabled it but when you will not make it available soon enough it is definitely at least false advertising. I need to resolve this quickly because it is client’s computer.

Thanks for quick response.

I am now in the same boat as you. I bought two SanDisk SSD’s for Vista upgrades as Holiday performance gifts. Too bad it’s a Ticking time bomb and they need new laptops now anyway.

Thanks a ton SanDisk! I read your previous post pointing to a MS FORM POST as the specific reason why it’s not supported. That is so ridiculous!

Do not give a proper lonk to a proper statement. Do not even update your software documentation published as I am looking at a GUI screen in your own PDF for the Dashboard showing me options no longer available.

Now I am stuck trying to use SAMSUNG and INTELS SSD trim command software on your branded drive. This is exactly how you lose market share and I am seeing more of why your drives were so cheap this past Black Friday,

Annnnd there is nothing  (other manufacturers only allow for their drives) short of buying a terrible third party software called ssd dr that only allows 5 uses of the program… Or upgrade to windows 7/8.1… I am so dissapointed in SanDisk.

The closest thing I have come across is I will need to side load/boot a win8.1 environment that has TRIM and force run trim on all drives. It will than tell the SanDisk SSD Firmware that yes the data is deleted and not still there. The Garbage collection software won’t pick up this slack.

*Edit*

OK Please fix the pdf documentation to remove the manual trim picture and show the current check trim part…

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2156820

This says that there should be garbage collection in these modern SSD’s that will do the job of TRIM but slower. I have no idea how to test this besides benchmarking.

To the OP run HDtune free and run a benchmark. Than as the op in the link above tried run ccCleaner to securely erase all unused blocks of data. Run the hdtune test againa nd see if you have different results. Based on what I have read you would 0 out the free space and leave it idle for only SanDisk knows how long and the garbage collection on the controller, controlled by firmware, should take care of the rest.

I did a fresh install and just cleaned 20GB of updates/restore point copies from updates so I don’t expect to see a performance hit until the fresh/free data gets all modified.

I will definately be running a hdtune check in the future to see if performance is an issue for any problems I have to check going forward. Once performance drops to Mechanical speeds I will have to start taking action, and it seems time consuming. Only time will tell.

SanDisk - Provide documentation to how your garbage collecting works and best practices to help it run on it’s own.

Funny that people with very old machines/OS’s have this concern and people RAIDing the top performance drives have this concern as well. The latter can’t do anything but rely on the garbage collector though as TRIM does not work in RAID at all.

And there are n o specs available confirming this has garbage collection. I also love the fact the

128GB - SDSSDP-128G-G25

is rated at way over 450MB read and 380MB write but gets stuck like everyone else’s at 199.99MB max read or write but will definitely be as low as 150MB at times. I thought it was vista at first so I checked benchmarks and found others posting the same results in win7 and higher. I know it’s “Up to” but I expect to see something close to the advertisement for a second and the average be lower. Not to get stuck at less than half the read speed. Than I noticed the newegg website said ‘various models’ what a joke, I am looking at a 128GB, I don’t want to know what the non existent 256GB model could do, or another pro drive etc. Sam complaints at amazon.

If the second drive in a new win .1 machine is the same bad reviews on every website I can find and ask anand tech to review this thing again.

I personally bought what seemed to be a no name brand Silicone Power S60 120GB SSD from newegg the week before and installed in a win7 desktop. They state 550MB read and 500MB write. I got close to 400MB. It was a shell shocker for $50 and 5 year warranty. Same price, lower speeds and less warranty from SanDisk here.

Also no specs on Garbage Collection is unprofessional.

I have Lived I have Learned. The only chance they can turn me around is by providing me with the secret garbage collection info on their controller that I think does not exist since they won’t publicly post it on their misleading spec sheet.

I am using hdtune free to test. I was mistaken and the SP drive gets closer to 300MB average but it did burst up higher and closer to advertised speed. It also states right in the specs supports garbage collection.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=0D9-0021-00005&cm_re=siliconepower_120gb-_-0D9-0021-00005-_-Product

The Sandisk was at 199MB yesterday and now today it is showing as average 138MB (I am near mechanical speeds). SO no garbage collection. I have been reading around and there are a few drives specifically touting they work perfect without trim due to garbage collection and reduce wear because of it etc.

I used trim check

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=0D9-0021-00005&cm_re=siliconepower_120gb-_-0D9-0021-00005-_-Product

I ran the trimcheck utility. Let it sit for 30 seconds with active av off. said trim not working. It would report it was working if the file block was addressed by the garbage collection utility. It did not. I rebooted and ran said still not working. I waited more and than it said the test block was written to so it was not sure if trim is working at all. At least its working like a normal HD?

I ran again and waited a few minutes. In the mean time confirmed trim works on the SP with win 7. Less than 5 seconds shows trimmed. 5 minutes passed bad result trim not working therefore no garbage collection and performance is degrading fast. 30 minutes later and a few reboots still same data that should have been trimmed/freed by the garbage collection utility so windows knows to write without issue.

I found the old utility… But the trim now button is just activating the WIndows 7 and higher trim command nothing else…

http://sandisk-ssd-dashboard.software.informer.com/1.1/

It does nothing and never did as far as I can tell. This stinks, I am looking into boot loading a windows 8 recovery environment, or something, from a flash disk now.

To make this ssd perform right I will spend 200 more dollars on a new copy of windows and hope the equipment works right? Might as well spend more on a new machine and install the ssd because I am stuck with it. restocking fees and shipping will be 25% of the cost at least.

I will update if I get a solution that shows the trim test working and performance increases. Or if I get an update stating this thing has garbage collection. hopefully yours being a performance drive works better garbage collection wise than the basic one I got for my basic family members.

OK thats it I am done.

I have a spare drive now that will be available for a fdisk wipe via the ssd dashboard software once I get complaints of freezing and slowness. I will be looking for a tiny 60GB intel or samsung drive to replace this sandisk as I can’t get it to trigger any form of manual garbage collection at all.

Samsung and Intel have a real utility that goes over the free blocks and makes sure the garbage collector collects them. OCZ seems to have one that is touted to not need trim at all so they are a contender but I will be researching the heck out of the drive to avoid the issue we have here.

Saving my bad reviews/exp for when I benchmark this stuff on an 8.1 machine coming this next week.

P.S. Side boot loading windows 8 may work, but attaching the ssd to an external usb 3.0 and doing the ‘optimization’ just made the drive show as an HDD on my windows 8 tablet. If you optimize it here it is treated as an HDD and defragmented as it does not think HDD’s support trim. the command in 8.1 is as follows from an administrator cmd

defrag.exe X: -l -h

Where X: is the letter of the SSD shown in my computer.

This will only do trim optimization and not mess up your ssd by defragmenting which should be turned off if in vista.

This will be my last post unless support informs me how to activate garbage collection on the drive in idle state. I don’t think it will work at all without trim. They told me it should actively work and keep the drive fast without trim but is best with trim of course.

Anyway installed second sandisk ssd on win 8.1 2 in 1 dell inspiron 11-3147. I was previously using hdtune but was told as ssd is better bench (also hdtune free only does read tests which makes the whole vista trim stuff questionable on why I would have slower reads over time since the slowdown should have been with writing/changing data but w/e at this point). I ran that and compared to the silicone power. I found sandisk ssd is 200 read and write is 180. I than ran the test on my SP drive, windows 7 laptop second gen i5 6GB ram. it rated 380+ read and about 100 write. I was miffed at the sp ssd until I checked their spec sheet. they noted three different benchmark tests used and the as ssd was spot on, so my lack of research here on that drive. I tried finding what bench sandisk used and could not find it.

I think reading is more important for boot times and loading apps but the drive appears to be better rounded I suppose.

If anyone cares and is not going for the lowest price point than the best solution is simply to check reviews from reputable tech sites and let them do all the benchmarks for you. I am never trusting another mfg bench again now is the short of it all.

There is nothing to Solve!

Trim is something all modern and major OS support as part of the OS, trim is something all modern SSDs support in firmware.

The Trim Ecosystem is TRIM at the OS working harmoniously with TRIM on the SSD.

It should not be the responsibility of  [Vendor X] SSD Utility to turn Trim on or off.

If you want to manually TRIM, then issue the command from the OS,  which is a feature the OS should support NOT [Vendor X] SSD Utility.

Thats a little short sighted to be honest.  We all know that XP and Vista still have a following and there is plenty of use left in these OS’.  Micro$oft will not be implementing TRIM as they consider these OS to be end of life.

So It really is up to the drive manufacture or a 3rd party to develop the trim support.  There is little incentive for a 3rd party developer to do this, however the drive manufacturer could and should.  Might even increase sales - after all they have produced the useless ‘dashboard software’.  They could recover the cost by simply increasing the cost of the drive and marketing it as XP and Vista compatible.

There is no good resolution here. IMO the best option is using a SSD that can handle the wear leveling tasks without TRIM.

SanDisk, and just about every other maker, will almost certainly not be developing their software for XP or Vista, and much of their technical support staff may not even be able to provide reasonably good service. They may not even be testing their software with those OS’, and you cannot fault them for this given software compatibility development for OS’ that have passed both mainstream and extended support generally means massive investments, limited success, financial loss, potential liability, and modifying software to work better on older operating systems can complicate progressive quality improvement for current OSs. Newer versions of SSD Dashboard may very well play regressively and regressively worse with these OS’ as they are progressively updated to work better with modern OS’. Further, SSD development is rapidly moving away from BIOS, FAT, and Master Boot Records, in favor of modern equivelents that legacy OSs have limited support for. What that all equates to is something most companies don’t want to say outright, but getting good support will be an increasing problem and the individual may wind up having to make a much larger time & monetary investment.

If the user does not want to upgrade to a newer operating system (which there are certainly many reasons to use an older OS), the best they can do is to purchase a SSD that uses a controller known for being able to handle garbage collection without TRIM. XP & Vista and TRIM have never been very good friends. In the case of many of the Micron SSDs using Marvell controllers, the SSDs handle garbage collection both on-the-fly AND especially when the computer saw prolonged downtime…simply configuring the computer to not go to sleep and instead just turn off the display to leave the computer sitting idle for hours allowed the SSD’s controller to handle the garbage collection and keep the speeds running fast. If the only time the computer is powered on is when the SSD is performing reads and writes under normal use, without TRIM, the SSD’s controller may not have the time needed to handle this garbage collection and the speeds will progressively drop.

Another option is physically removing the SSD from the computer, plugging it into a SATA port with power BUT NOT DATA, and letting it sit for 24+ hours will allow the controller to handle cleanup.

With XP, I’ve used CCleaner as a hail mary of simulated manual TRIM using secure delete and it has worked OK. But if you are using a SSD with a Marvell controller, the best solution IMO is allowing it to sit idle as described. SandForce, Samsung, and Silicon Motion controllers, in my experience, do not do this nearly as well. I am not sure about Phison controllers.

TLDR;

Another user - talking on behalf of companies he has no control over, over other users wish to use SSD more efficiently on old but still usable operating systems.

I don’t know who you think you are, but I know WHAT YOU ARE.

@umpa2016 wrote:

TLDR;

 

Another user - talking on behalf of companies he has no control over, over other users wish to use SSD more efficiently on old but still usable operating systems.

 

I don’t know who you think you are, but I know WHAT YOU ARE.

If you did not read the post, how could you know any of this? Are you psychic? Do you know me personally? Are you in a minivan outside of my house monitoring a wire tap? I hope not as that would be a little creepy.

I apologize if the length of the post is beyond your reading/tech comprehension, but it considers future challenges, and discusses potential alternatives to maintain performance in the long run with what is currently available.

If you magically know so much about me, you must have a ton of knowledge on managing a SSD when TRIM really isn’t a current option???

ZapNZs wrote: 

If the user does not want to upgrade to a newer operating system (which there are certainly many reasons to use an older OS)

Reading is what puts us apart from monkeys. And monkeys through feces at each other. I don’t like having dung hurled in my general direction, so I am going to opt for reading. YMMV.

I think giving the SSD ample downtime is going to be the easiest solution with a good chance of success. I have verified that Crucial SSDs using Marvell controllers do well handling the garbage collection even when TRIM is unavailable. I believe several SanDisk SSDs use these controllers as well. Provided the firmware code is not dramatically different, I think SanDisk SSDs should be able to self-clean reasonably well when given enough downtime. If nothing else, it’s worth a try?

I think the easiest way to set this up is to go into power settings, disabling automatic sleep, configuring the monitor to turn off after 10 minutes of activity or so, and then allow the computer to sit overnight with the screen powered off but the computer powered on and at idle, so the SSD CPU can do some upkeep tasks. If it is not already disabled, disable a power-saving feature that puts hard disks to sleep after a certain period of inactivity.

I know a few people using the OWC Electra Pro as a main drive without TRIM support, and they seem very satisfied with its performance over time. As this was in regards to earlier versions of OS X, plus how the Electra uses a SandForce controller, I’m not sure how much that helps.

Hi,
I feel also not pleased, the Sandisk Dashboard PDf suggests that there is a manuel Trim, but once you install this useless Dashboard you have to realize that there is just no manual trim option.

The Sandisk customer service is also not that good, -they do not help and will still tell you, there is just no solution to get Trim working in XP, Vista and so on. Certainly thats wrong:
So, if you want to Trim yours Sandisk (or any other SSD) under XP/Vista –> you can do this with Acronis True Image 2014.
(dont buy a newer version, they do not support anymore SSD Trim)

http://img5.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/untitled1ew8nk0v5hu.jpg
I tried it with my Sandisk Plus under XP , the manual trim works. :slight_smile:

Triming yours SSD under XP/Vista, may also work for free with the older Seagate Discwizard Build 16.0.5861.
This older Build should imo also be based on Acronis True Image 2014, but I guess you need to have a  Seagate, Maxtor or WD HDD (or USB drive) in yours system.

EDIT: I also tried now the free Seagate Discwizard version, unfortunatly the trim feature didnt work there.

The manual trim feature still works in the Acronis 2014 Fullversion.
Here is the trimcheck Report  - this proofs the trimming works under Win XP32bit :
http://img5.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/trim1jiauqvnf79.jpg