Hi,
After last (actually pre-last) update of SanDisk Dashboard, TRIM feature is not working for my Zenbook UX31E running Windows 7 x64.
Could you please provide me with a link where can I download an older version of SanDisk Dashboard?
Thank you.
The TRIM option is being changed for the next version of Dashboard (1.2.0). It will be released very soon. Thanks
Just updated to 1.2.0, it didn’t solve my issue. Could you please provide an older version to me?
I suspect what ecartman is saying is that the ability to manually initiate TRIM is gone from dashboard 1.2.0. There is a check box to enable/disable TRIM in the Windows Scheduler, but there is no longer a button to immediately initiate a TRIM as there was in the previous version of the dashboard. I thought this omission was kind of odd also - why shouldn’t we have the ability to initiate a TRIM on command?
There is still manual TRIM available on Windows 8 and above. In other versions of Windows, we found out that TRIM could corrupt some user data, so it was disabled.
Well I’m on Windows 7, so I get no manual TRIM. I find your statement confusing - how could a manual TRIM corrupt data, and if true, why did you leave the option to have the Windows Scheduler execute a TRIM?
Sorry for the confusion. In windows 7, there is no manual TRIM and no scheduled TRIM. The checkbox to enable/disable TRIM is referring to Windows TRIM. If you enable this checkbox, you give Windows OS permission to TRIM your drive.
Yes I am talking about manual TRIM feature. It was removed in 1.2, but in 1.1 it didn’t work on my laptop, while the older 1.0.* version did work. I could see a huge performance improvement after manual TRIM if my ssd drive was 80-90% full. For some reason, automatic windows 7 TRIM is either not working or working poorly (yes, it’s enabled).
PS: I am a software engineer myself, I understand how hard it is to fix a bug on a system that you don’t have access to. Please, just give me an older version 
Unfortunatly we cannot provide a custom TRIM solution. As per Microsoft, if you use any third-party app to do TRIM on Windows 7, then you are risking the possibility of corrupting your drive. Please see the following post:
@georgealon wrote:
As per Microsoft, if you use any third-party app to do TRIM on Windows 7, then you are risking the possibility of corrupting your drive. Please see the following post (…)
Well, that thread (at answers.microsoft) says nothing about the possibility of corrupting a drive with TRIM. It only says that a third-party tool cannot provide TRIM support, without any explanation:
“TRIM support has to come from within the Operating system itself; a driver or any other application alone won’t get you anything.”
That said, the risk of corrupting the drive does exist indeed. When a third-party tool wants to perform a TRIM, it has to go through the following steps:
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reading the filesystem to see which allocation units are in use;
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identifying that an allocation unit is not (or no longer) in use;
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sending a TRIM command about that allocation unit, to tell the SSD that it can be erased (or remapped).
Obviously, if at some point between the first and the last step, some other software adds some data to the drive, there is a possibility for the SSD to receive a TRIM command about an allocation unit that is actually in use (just written to). Which is bad.
To prevent this, a third-party tool performing a TRIM would have to lock the entire drive, which could be difficult for the system drive (easier for a secondary or external drive).
@georgealon wrote:
Unfortunatly we cannot provide a custom TRIM solution.
Well, you did up to version 1.1.1, and most of the time it worked really well. I am sorry to learn that it was not 100% safe for the data. I hope the problem can be fixed. As a last resort, you could provide a safe TRIM through the same means than firmware updates:
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directly from Dashboard for secondary or external drives;
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through a reboot for the system drive.
Why can’t you just provide a link to a 1.0.* version? It was avalable, people used it, some people may still have it.
@moonart wrote:
As a last resort, you could provide a safe TRIM through the same means than firmware updates:
- directly from Dashboard for secondary or external drives;
- through a reboot for the system drive.
IIRC TRIM commands require a SATA AHCI connection so I am not sure even if TRIM was sent by the dashboard, it would make it to a external drive connected via USB. Possibly eSATA but I am not sure eSATA has AHCI support. which I think would be required for TRIM commands to make it to the SSD
@ecartman wrote:
Why can’t you just provide a link to a 1.0.* version?
Unfortunately it really does not work that way with a large company. It seems they have knowledge of a potential issue with the manual TRIM feature that was present in previous version of the software. This issue apparently could result in user data loss. No matter how small that chance they would not likely feel comfortable taking on the risk of liability by including this feature. I don’t see sandisk ever providing an official download of a previous version of one of their applications that is known to have a potential data loss issue.
That said it would still be possible for sandisk to find a way to make manual TRIM work safely. we can hope for an update that will bring this popular function back but honestly they are in no way obligated to do it.
@ecartman wrote:
It was avalable, people used it, some people may still have it.
The Dashboard has a auto update notification feature and they have posted recommending all users update to the latest version. Since the update notification is pushed to the software anyone using the older version is likely using the software at their own risk and legally sandisk would not likely be liable for any potential data loss caused by the manual TRIM issue.
@drlucky wrote:
IIRC TRIM commands require a SATA AHCI connection so I am not sure even if TRIM was sent by the dashboard, it would make it to a external drive connected via USB.
I did some tests using an external (connected via USB) Sandisk Ultra Plus SSD and the TRIMcheck tool. Indeed, TRIM commands sent by Windows 7 had no effect to the drive. However, TRIM commands sent by Dashboard 1.1.1 were perfectly efficient. So Dashboard can use a more direct path to the drive than Windows.
Another evidence is that under Windows 8+, the TRIM feature of Dashboard 1.1.1 (which was grayed out in the GUI but could still be triggered via command line) was perfectly efficient on my external drive.
In the new Dashboard 1.2.0, Sandisk’s TRIM routine has been removed from the tool. Oddly enough, the TRIM button is back under Windows 8+. However, it only triggers the SSD optimization (whole filesystem TRIM) built in Windows 8+, which does not work on my external drive. Under Windows 7, the TRIM button is gone, since that OS cannot perform a whole filesystem TRIM.
Interesting that TRIM can actually make it to the drive over USB. Hopefully sandisk will find a way to provide TRIM safely and release the feature in a future release.
I would like to add some insight to this whole TRIM feature topic.
I have a SanDisk Extreme 64 GB USB 3.0 key and i was very worried whether TRIM could be done on this drive, as we know in order for TRIM to work drives typically have to be connected via SATA connection. I know that since this drive is connecting to a USB 3.0 connection Windows TRIM will not work.
I also had the same issue as others with the TRIM command being grayed out in the 1.1 version of the SanDisk Dashboard (on Windows 8.1), not too long ago once the version 1.2 was released I now had access to the SanDisk TRIM command. I was still doubtful that TRIM would actually work via USB but after some heavy deleting on the drive I ran the TRIM button on the software and it started working! I’m very happy to know that i dont have to worry about performance degregation because this SSD is only able to connect via USB.
One issue i faced is that i’m using this Extreme USB key as an OS for Windows To Go (because it works beautifully) and when i install the SanDisk Dashboard onto it the TRIM button is clickable however doesn’t seem to be doing anything. When i have the USB connected to another computer running Windows 8.1 with Dashboard installed TRIM runs and can take some time to complete, but when I try to run TRIM from inside Windows to Go, it seems to not actually do anything.
I hope there is a way to fix this issue in another Dashboard release. It would be nice to run the TRIM command from the Dashboard within an OS on the USB key. Saves me from installing Dashboard on multiple computers just to TRIM.
The SSD Dashboard version 1.40 has the manual TRIM back and working, even with Windows 8.1. The TRIM scheduler feature is also now available.
TRIM with USB flash drives is something that is unheard of, and in a sense overlooked. I have never seen a discussion of TRIM related to USB flash drives anywhere, or a USB flash drive that mentions TRIM in its specifications.
When a USB flash drive is connected to a Windows 8.1 desktop PC installation, and the Windows Optimize (manual TRIM for SSDs) feature is opened, the Optimize feature is listed as Not Available for the USB flash drive.
I inserted a SanDisk Cruzer USB flash drive into the same Windows 8.1 PC I mentioned above, and started the SSD Dashboard version 1.4.0 software. The SanDisk USB flash drive was not listed as a “SSD” recognized by this software, nor did I expect it to be.
TRIM is an instruction defined in a SATA specification, and is part of the SATA protocol. USB flash drives are ATAPI devices that use a packet interface, completely unrelated to SATA. TRIM instructions are not preserved in the translation from SATA to ATAPI, just as other SATA features like NCQ are lost in the translation from SATA to ATAPI.
TRIM, or an equivalent, may have been swept under the rug with USB flash drives, but I’m sure there are basic technical reasons why USB flash drives don’t seem to have anything like TRIM. Their firmware may be able to make up for it, given the different file systems they use.
Perhaps now that USB 3.1 is starting to appear, and users begin to wonder why the great write speeds they should be seeing are not there, we will learn more about the limitations of USB flash storage.
