I ran the firmware update in the toolbox today October 17, and it stated firmware R211 is available. Have any of you brave souls tried it yet? I haven’t found any information about what bug fixes it is supposed to repair.
Just flashed onto my 128gb Sandisk Extreme. Process went just fine with no trouble. Cant tell any difference right off not that I was expecting to or anything.
Ran the update, got back into windows. And this is what I get in CrystalDiskMark. ( Note this is not an empty drive or anything and there hasnt been sufficient time for any kind of Trim to run on the drive since starting windows after the update )
It looks like I have a lot of drives to test over the next couple of days. This firmware release is more than likely built on 503, 504 or 505 and it should fix TRIM.
When you guys update the drive I would suggest backing up your data with Acronis to another drive. Then secure erase the drive, reboot, flash the drive with the update and finally using Acronis to put your data back on.
If you don’t do it this way then you won’t see a performance increase right away. Over time your drive will clean itself and your performance should pick up.
Another option, one that I haven’t really tried, is to update the drive and use Anvil’s Storage Utility. Anvil included a nice little tool in the software that is supposed to TRIM the free area of your drive. When doing this you won’t TRIM your spare area but you’ll get a majority of the flash cleaned up.
I’m in the middle of my tests with the new firmware and the 480GB Extreme SSD. TRIM is working now.
Chris Ramseyer -TweakTown SSD / RWLabs.com Owner
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Funny enough, I have also updated a 480gig sandisk extreme just a short while ago.
It is hard to tell on this old e350 based netbook, but it seems to be doing better (when I first copied across the old hard drive, it would stall for 30 seconds or more regularly, but I can’t reproduce it now after updating firmware)
I’m excited about testing RAID 0 on a Z77 platform with TRIM working on the array.
Now, for everyone who raised so much hell, it’s time to go out and buy a new motherboard and another SanDisk Extreme SSD 
Good news… Now if it fixes the nVidia issues for Mac users, we are all set to go…!
Chris, my laptop has the Intel HM77 Panther Point Chipset… Any idea if it supports TRIM in raid?
It would appear on the face of it that TRIM is working, after testing my drive this morning with ASSD the drive scored 452 in the benchmark, leaving my PC idle all day I tested again with no reboots or any other changes to the machine it scored 498.
Does anybody have the stand alone firmware updater? I don’t really want to install Windows on my Mac just to get the update installed.
@cheezwiz wrote:
Good news… Now if it fixes the nVidia issues for Mac users, we are all set to go…!
Chris, my laptop has the Intel HM77 Panther Point Chipset… Any idea if it supports TRIM in raid?
How did you instelled it on the Mac?
@thinkdiff wrote:
Does anybody have the stand alone firmware updater? I don’t really want to install Windows on my Mac just to get the update installed.
By standalone you mean an .iso or bootable USB stick?
If that’s what you mean it won’t work. I tried it. It appears the Toolkit creates an .iso/bootable USB unique to the SanDisk SSD(s) on that machine. On the 2nd machine it said “no update to apply” (to the SSD on that machine).
Updated OK with a bootable USB stick created on that machine.
Harry
I do not have a Mac, but I think BootCamp works…?
If you know anyone with a dell laptop, most models have easy to remove and replace the hard disks…
Hopefully they will have the Mac folks taken care of in a few days…
@hjacobson wrote:
@thinkdiff wrote:
Does anybody have the stand alone firmware updater? I don’t really want to install Windows on my Mac just to get the update installed.
By standalone you mean an .iso or bootable USB stick?
If that’s what you mean it won’t work. I tried it. It appears the Toolkit creates an .iso/bootable USB unique to the SanDisk SSD(s) on that machine. On the 2nd machine it said “no update to apply” (to the SSD on that machine).
Updated OK with a bootable USB stick created on that machine.
Harry
I’d be fine with either. Perhaps I can pass the SSD through to Windows XP in a Virtual Machine and trick it into creating the USB boot drive for me. Wonder why they lock it down to a specific drive.
they are posted now.
So prior to R211 TRIM was not effective for SanDisk Extreme SSDs and with R211 TRIM works.
Just to be clear "During a delete operation the OS will not only mark the sectors as free for new data, but it will also send a TRIM command to the SSD with the associated LBAs to be marked as no longer valid. After that point the SSD knows not to relocate the data from those LBAs during garbage collection. This will result in fewer writes to the flash, reducing write amplification and increasing drive life “ - wikipedia
I’ve a SanDisk Extreme 120GB SSD as Windows 7 OS drive since May, 2012. What effect all those failed TRIM operations these past six months have on the SSD subsequent to R211 update? Will their effect go away?
Thank you,
Harry
yes it resolve the issue
I’ll have to get back to you on that. Part of the RAID 0 TRIM deal is a special OROM. I only have 20 minutes of experience with H77 and that was today. My new Lenovo W530 arrived. I’m cloning the drive that shipped in the W530 now and when that’s finished I’ll get a few hours to play around with it before converting the notebook into a test system for measureing SSD power usage in a real world enviroment.
Hit me up on Facebook or via email tomorrow and I’ll let you know if I managed to get RAID 0 TRIM working on H77. I know a guy who can add the correct OROM to OEM BIOS files. The new 11.6 OROM is going around too and I want to try it myself.
I have 2 x 240gb in RAID0. This is my 201 vs 211 test
P8Z77-V Deluxe running 1504 BIOS with 11.6.1702 OROM and IRST 11.6.0.1030
In my case anyway, all the READs are down and all the WRITEs are way up.
201
211
211 0Fill for fun
UPDATE
Things dont look so good when I filled the array to 61% of capacity
0 Fill @ 61% Appear to have lost 100MB/s write since 60%
I just installed the update and everything looks like it’s working fine.
Thank you unknown Sandisk engineers, I don’t know the reason(s) why it took so long, but I’m glad it’s finally here.
I hope Sandisk do a better job of supporting their customers and keeping them informed in the future.
@brimur wrote:
I have 2 x 240gb in RAID0. This is my 201 vs 211 test
P8Z77-V Deluxe running 1504 BIOS with 11.6.1702 OROM and IRST 11.6.0.1030
In my case anyway, all the READs are down and all the WRITEs are way up.
Why are all these measurements done on different capacities and different data fill levels.
You would get different results each time just from that.
