SSD / Win 7 / IDE mode (not AHCI): Does TRIM work?

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RedShark

[H]ard|Gawd
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Aug 8, 2003
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Question is basically in the title.

My parents have an older E1705 laptop that they're getting an Intel G2 SSD for. The laptop is SATA-150, but the BIOS only supports IDE mode. No AHCI. There are no BIOS updates that add this feature. I plan to install Windows 7, 32-bit on the new drive. The result is that this drive will definitely run in IDE/legacy mode.

Will TRIM pass through work, or do I need to run Intel's toolbox hack to get it to "trim?"

Rant: The southbridge in the machine actually supports AHCI, but Dell chose not to add support for that feature in the BIOS. The next generation successor to this laptop does include AHCI support in the BIOS. A great reason why I like my home-built desktops more than pre-built machines :)

Thanks.

Edit: For reference: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=15. This link says that the Win7 IDE driver works too, but I'd like someone else to tell me that since there is a lot of contention on the Internetz about this issue :) From the link: "Under Windows 7 that means you have to use a Microsoft made IDE or AHCI driver (you can't install chipset drivers from anyone else)."
 
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So, your question is whether Intel G2 Trim under Win7 works in IDE mode?
 
Thanks for your reply. Do you happen to have any other source besides anandtech? Just so everyone knows why I'm confused:

http://communities.intel.com/thread/8934

This thread has a mix of responses, and some suggest that TRIM only works in Win7 with the AHCI driver. I understand AHCI mode provides better performance anyway, because of NCQ, but I'm concerned with TRIM specifically. I'd just like to get this issue nailed down so I know whether to set up the toolbox or not to run the "manual trim" periodically.
 
My motherboard doesn't support AHCI, and TRIM works just fine. 80g G2 drive here.
 
Excellent, that's what I wanted to hear. Just out of curiosity, is there any way to know it's working? E.g. is there some place that says "TRIM is enabled and working?" The only approach I know of for sure is: if your disk speed falls off a cliff after you write to it all once, then TRIM may not be enabled.
 
mattsaccount said:
Excellent, that's what I wanted to hear. Just out of curiosity, is there any way to know it's working? E.g. is there some place that says "TRIM is enabled and working?" The only approach I know of for sure is: if your disk speed falls off a cliff after you write to it all once, then TRIM may not be enabled.
Click to expand...

There is only a way to find out if its enabled, but not if its working..
 
Well knowing it's enabled is at least half the battle--what's the trick? Crystal Disk Info?
 
mattsaccount said:
Well knowing it's enabled is at least half the battle--what's the trick? Crystal Disk Info?
Click to expand...

Well the AS SSD benchmark was holding steady at ~170 before the TRIM firmware. Shortly after I scored ~180, I ran it this morning and got 215. Haven't done any manual TRIM, so speed increases are purely due to day-to-day writes. The drive was definitely saturated before the firmware update, so I'm pretty sure TRIM is working as intended.
 
Sounds good. I'm probably dwelling on this too much. I'll be installing the drive in their machine later this month, like the 23rd, and it sounds like TRIM will work as intended despite no AHCI support.

Thanks for your help everyone!
 
mattsaccount said:
Sounds good. I'm probably dwelling on this too much. I'll be installing the drive in their machine later this month, like the 23rd, and it sounds like TRIM will work as intended despite no AHCI support.

Thanks for your help everyone!
Click to expand...

It should definitely work. Biggest hassle for me was to get a bootable usb working..
 
Impulse said:
For flashing the SSD or for installing Win7?
Click to expand...

Win7 was cake, there are tons of good step by step guides. Flashing the SSD was a huge pain- maybe its just my combination of hardware, but an external USB drive didn't work; had to try several different methods.
 
When I had to flash my Intel G2 I had to change the controller from AHCI to IDE so Intel's flashing utility would recognize the SSD and flash it. Afterwords I just turned AHCI back on and it worked fine.
 
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