TRIM Support in RAID 0 - Intel RST 11.5 WHQL released

I would not recommend installing 11.5. Intel temporarily removed it from their site due to a memory leak in one of the services (supposed can cause data corruption).
 
Snowknight26 said:
I would not recommend installing 11.5. Intel temporarily removed it from their site due to a memory leak in one of the services (supposed can cause data corruption).
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I noticed this too, they removed the driver. I'm still using it on two machines, one with a crucial M4 and another one with an Intel 520, so far no problems
 
Snowknight26 said:
I would not recommend installing 11.5. Intel temporarily removed it from their site due to a memory leak in one of the services (supposed can cause data corruption).
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Oh thank you for letting us know. I just reverted back to the old 11.0.0.1032.
 
mephistopoa said:
I noticed this too, they removed the driver. I'm still using it on two machines, one with a crucial M4 and another one with an Intel 520, so far no problems
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unfortunately if corruption has taken place you wouldn't know for sure without having checksummed all your files beforehand and comparing checksums after having run this suspect driver I would give Intel a little more time to iron all this out before trusting data to it. Because even if you are backing up, you could be backing up corrupted files and not know it.
 
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Here is the official statement dated 08/16/2012 done by Dan Snyder, PR Manager of the Intel Corporation, regarding the topic of this thread:
Intel Corporation said:
Trim on RAID 0 for SSDs is supported in the Intel RST driver versions 11.0 and newer. Currently available for the general public on Intel’s downloads site is RST driver version 11.2 which offers TRIM support on RAID 0 compatible with MS Windows 7 OS on Intel 7 series chipsets (earlier chipsets NOT supported). Intel is also working on a future release providing support for TRIM on RAID 0 on Microsoft Windows 8 OS for Intel 7 series chipsets.
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For further details you may look here: >here< and >here<.

@ Blue Falcon, Old Hippie and mwroobel:
Please reread what you have written within this thread and think about it!

@ [H]ard|Forum:
Good luck with such extremely competent Forum members!
 
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Not trying to be confrontational, but I'm not able to find that quote on an Intel site yet. Still looking...
 
Fernando 1 said:
Here is the official statement dated 08/16/2012 done by Dan Snyder, PR Manager of the Intel Corporation, regarding the topic of this thread: For further details you may look here: >here< and >here<.

@ Blue Falcon, Old Hippie and mwroobel:
Please reread what you have written within this thread and think about it!

@ {HH]ard|Forum:
Good luck with such extremely competent Forum members!
Click to expand...

Fernando..... Well, lets see.. some PR guy says something, must be true.... Obama said he wouldn't raise taxes on the middle class. As for re-reading what I said, (and lets keep in mind what is known and when it was known! here goes:

There is nothing in the release notes that mentions TRIM support in RAID. It would be nice if it does, but if this were the first driver to fully support it I would expect Intel to mention SOMETHING on the driver page. Also, this is not a general release, it is listed for just a selection of the latest Intel boards, if you check (as of now) for the general chipset driver it is still 10.8.x.
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True at the time.

The musings of an anonymous German user running a hacked beta OROM with a narrow-release driver are generally less than I would accept to put any of my data at risk. When Intel releases a chipset-level release driver with less ambiguous text as to what it does and does not do, then we can look to testing the stability of the driver.
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Again, nothing would have changed based on that statement.

Please, inform me what I need to re-read that I have posted in this thread? Your back-handed slap regarding our competency not withstanding..... Would you just entrust your data to a storage device driver, which has not seen wide release for the relevant PCH/ICH and a hacked OROM that some guy on a forum posted? Again, this thread started more than 3 weeks ago, different things have come forth in testing but again, I'll wait until an official Intel release with confirmation in the release notes rather than take the word of some PR guy from some forum.
 
vr. said:
Not trying to be confrontational, but I'm not able to find that quote on an Intel site yet. Still looking...
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Do you really believe, that Intel will publish it anywhere for the public, that the "Trim in RAID0" feature, which they proudly announced in August last year, only works with Z77 chipset boards?
Not even users, who recently bought a very expensive X79 system for professional RAID usage, get benefit of the "Trim in RAID0" feature.
Our test results, we had published in July in several international Forums (Z77: Trim works, Z68: no Trim), may have prompted the Intel PR Manager to send his statement and confirmation. Look >here< about this speculation.
 
mwroobel said:
Fernando..... Well, lets see.. some PR guy says something, must be true....
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This was not any "PR guy", who said something, it was an Intel employee, who is authorized to give official statements for the Company Intel.
mwroobel said:
There is nothing in the release notes that mentions TRIM support in RAID.
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That is not true:
  • The release notes of the RST drivers v11.5.0.1109 Alpha dated 08/05/2011 contains the following announcement:
    Intel said:
    This release will not enable the TRIM on RAID0 feature, but it will be added in the next RST 11.5 release.
    Click to expand...
  • The "Help" > "Getting started" section of all Intel RST Console GUIs of the v11.x.x.xxxx branch contain a chapter "TRIM" with the following sentence:
    Intel said:
    Also, support is provided for SSDs that are part of a RAID 0 array.
    Click to expand...
    Now we know, that this declaration was only valid for users with a Z77 RAID0 system.
mwroobel said:
The musings of an anonymous German user running a hacked beta OROM with a narrow-release driver are generally less than I would accept to put any of my data at risk.
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It was the "dreaming anonymous German", who was the first, who detected aready in July, that only Z77 chipsets are supported by the "Trim in RAID0" feature of Intel's RST RAID drivers v11.x.x.xxxx.
By the way: Nobody of us testers used any "hacked" OROM.
 
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Fernando 1 said:
This was not any "PR guy", who said something, it was an Intel employee, who is authorized to give official statements for the Company Intel.
That is not true:
  • The release notes of the RST drivers v11.5.0.1109 Alpha dated 08/05/2011 contains the following announcement:
  • The "Help" > "Getting started" section of all Intel RST Console GUIs of the v11.x.x.xxxx branch contain a chapter "TRIM" with the following sentence:Now we know, that this declaration was only valid for users with a Z77 RAID0 system.
It was the "dreaming anonymous German", who was the first, who detected aready in July, that only Z77 chipsets are supported by the "Trim in RAID0" feature of Intel's RST RAID drivers v11.x.x.xxxx.
By the way: Nobody of us testers used any "hacked" OROM.
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Again, going by what was known at the times it was known, I wouldn't change any of my comments, most of all the fact that it is a narrow release driver. Most of the RST/ICH drivers until now have not only supported the current PCH, many have supported PCH's up to 4 releases ago. There are also people on the intel communities site complaining that the fact that they aren't even supporting it in their top of the line current "enthusiast" chipset (X79) makes no sense. How about we wait for a formal release, with something in the release notes and not just some post quoting an unnamed PR person from Intel as to what is/will be supported and what won't be.
 
mwroobel said:
How about we wait for a formal release, with something in the release notes and not just some post quoting an unnamed PR person from Intel as to what is/will be supported and what won't be.
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He was named. Dan Snyder, on this site. While it might not be the best way to present such a statement there would be huge percussions if it was false.

I agree using unofficial drivers is a big risk on critical systems, for my own usage it's not critical, I have a backup if things go awry but even then official drivers can have their problems but at least you should get some support in that case.

Not sure how long the 11.2 driver has been out but Fernando has shown that to work with 11.0 OROM as well IIRC, only on Z77 for RAID0 trim so far.

IMHO Fernando's testing has lead to a much better understanding of what has been/is going on with RAID0 trim support so please at least consider some appreciation of his efforts.
 
mwroobel said:
I'll wait until an official Intel release with confirmation in the release notes rather than take the word of some PR guy from some forum.
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Here we are (important is the last sentence):
o3halvvf45n.png


You will find the text on page 102 of a PDF file named "OEM Technical Guide 11.5.rev0.82.pdf", which is part of Intel's officially released RST package 11.5.0.1207. The package is still downloadable from >here<.
 
That is great! All I said all along was that I wanted some official recognition on paper of what was supported officially before I test it against some systems. I have both z77 and z79 boxes to test it against, I (among others I am sure) am a little miffed that the RST driver which in general supports z68 doesn't support R0 Trim on Z68
 
Old Hippiel:
Please reread what you have written within this thread and think about it!
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After reading Anand's report I do believe they have it working.
 
so i assume i am out of luck running the abit P-35pro 775 socket mobo in my signature for this to work for me ?
 
I'm almost tempted to replace my Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3 with a Z77 board, but I have a hard time doing it because I know that the 7-series chipset TRIM thing is probably just all in software. Like I said, Intel's software RAID and the hardware that drives it hasn't changed in years. Guess they really want to spur people to buy newer boards, heh.
 
Blue Falcon said:
I'm almost tempted to replace my Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3 with a Z77 board, but I have a hard time doing it because I know that the 7-series chipset TRIM thing is probably just all in software. Like I said, Intel's software RAID and the hardware that drives it hasn't changed in years. Guess they really want to spur people to buy newer boards, heh.
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I ran RAID0 for a while pre-TRIM with some OCZ (cough) V3 MIOPs and quite honestly was unimpressed with the real life differential vs using a single drive. With hard drives you got a significant pop in both benchmark numbers and real life use, but much less so a noticeable real life difference with the SSDs. YMMV but unless you have a particular reason to upgrade (or enough disposable cash) the upgrade IMHO from your Z68 (other than getting away from the Realtek LAN chip) isn't really worth it.
 
IIRC it's confirmed those drivers bring trim in RAID0 for Z77/X79, but those drivers still are buggy and have been removed by Intel.

Old Hippie said:
I thought it was great that it's avaliable for W7.

A 775 socket is wayyyyyy outta line.
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SSDs are much older than windows 7, just because Intel took so long doesn't mean it was that difficult, I'm sure they could make it work with far older hardware and software.
 
Aesma said:
IIRC it's confirmed those drivers bring trim in RAID0 for Z77/X79, but those drivers still are buggy and have been removed by Intel.



SSDs are much older than windows 7, just because Intel took so long doesn't mean it was that difficult, I'm sure they could make it work with far older hardware and software.
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Your IIRC may be a little off. Every article I have read on the subject showed that X79 was NOT getting supported with this release and will come at some future later date after the Enterprise side of LGA2011 is taken care of.
 
mwroobel said:
I ran RAID0 for a while pre-TRIM with some OCZ (cough) V3 MIOPs and quite honestly was unimpressed with the real life differential vs using a single drive. With hard drives you got a significant pop in both benchmark numbers and real life use, but much less so a noticeable real life difference with the SSDs. YMMV but unless you have a particular reason to upgrade (or enough disposable cash) the upgrade IMHO from your Z68 (other than getting away from the Realtek LAN chip) isn't really worth it.
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See I've had exactly the opposite experience in every single instance I've tried SSDs in RAID0.

Back when the Intel G2 drives first came out I RAIDed two of the 80GB drives and the difference from a single drive was noticeable in almost every single 'real use' scenerio I could think of trying.

With two OCZ Vertex 3s again I had positive results with a two-drive stripe versus a single drive.

And now finally with my two Crucial M4 256GB SSDs in RAID0 I have had positive results. I will say that as SSDs are getting faster and we transition to SATA3 (6GB/s) the difference is getting LESS noticable, but it's still there. Perhaps the biggest difference is in boot time - with Windows 7 and the Crucial M4 drives noted above I see a consistent 2 to 3 second improvement in POST-to-Desktop - completely repeatable.

You'll also notice improvement in loading apps like Sony Vegas Pro 10/11, Photoshop CS5, and some of the huge games out today. Again the difference between a single SSD and two of them in RAID0 is nowhere near as huge and breathtaking as the difference between a mechanical drive and an SSD... but it's there for those of us who want to brave the adventure.
 
Blue Falcon said:
And now finally with my two Crucial M4 256GB SSDs in RAID0 I have had positive results. I will say that as SSDs are getting faster and we transition to SATA3 (6GB/s) the difference is getting LESS noticable, but it's still there. Perhaps the biggest difference is in boot time - with Windows 7 and the Crucial M4 drives noted above I see a consistent 2 to 3 second improvement in POST-to-Desktop - completely repeatable.
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I agree completely, that is about what I saw as well. But to me, the extra 3 seconds was not enough of a real world differential to me to run the R0. Dropping from 45 seconds with R0 Vraptors to 16 seconds with a single SSD was a huge benefit, but R0 of the SSD's hits a point of diminishing returns (as a general OS array) in a desktop box. I have boxes at work with 16 SLC SSD's in R6 and 8 SSD's in R0 (Read-only SQL database ~1.2TB in size) where it makes a tremendous difference.
 
Aesma said:
SSDs are much older than windows 7, just because Intel took so long doesn't mean it was that difficult, I'm sure they could make it work with far older hardware and software.
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They could make it work on older hardware for sure. Other OS's support raid + trim with no hardware restrictions. Linux has it and it works on pretty much any sata controller. However, Intel would like everyone to upgrade to a shiny new Z77 board.
 
Fernando 1 said:
Here is the official statement dated 08/16/2012 done by Dan Snyder, PR Manager of the Intel Corporation, regarding the topic of this thread: For further details you may look here: >here< and >here<.

@ Blue Falcon, Old Hippie and mwroobel:
Please reread what you have written within this thread and think about it!

@ [H]ard|Forum:
Good luck with such extremely competent Forum members!
Click to expand...

fwiw, I appreciate your contributions to this thread.

It is quite disappointing that Intel isn't supporting their z68 chipset or p67. Those boards are only 1-2 years old.
 
But to me, the extra 3 seconds was not enough of a real world differential to me to run the R0.
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This is why is so difficult to answer the Zillion asked question of "Is it worth it".

To me it's worth it and to others it's not and that's what makes it impossible to answer.
 
Teenyman45 said:
Your IIRC may be a little off. Every article I have read on the subject showed that X79 was NOT getting supported with this release and will come at some future later date after the Enterprise side of LGA2011 is taken care of.
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You're right I'm seeing conflicting info on this. Really disappointed by the X79 platform so far, fortunately I guess I have no money to upgrade my X58 currently so I can wait for something better, with more SATA3, more SATA or SAS, better support...
 
Intel pulled this driver from their down load web site.
Looking for an alternate download for this driver so I can try it out.


Somebody know where I can find it?
 
SonDa5 said:
Intel pulled this driver from their down load web site.
Looking for an alternate download for this driver so I can try it out.


Somebody know where I can find it?
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It has since been updated to 11.6 this week.
 
ney2x said:
The artcle at vr-zone.com is right. 11.6.x.xxxx IRST driver out now, we need to wait for the 11.6.0.1702 RAID OROM for the TRIM to work on older chipsets.

Some of our discussions at intel ssd forum --> http://communities.intel.com/thread/31155?start=0&tstart=0
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ney2x-
I doubt TRIM for Windows 7 will ever be enabled on Chipsets older than 7 series, it is not in Intel's best interests to do it. The VR-Zone article you linked to is almost 8 months old at this point. the newer 11.5.x drivers were compatible with older chipsets, but certain features (Such as TRIM in RAID) were NOT implemented with older chipsets.
 
How does one install the newer IRST drivers (post v11.2) ? I used to install the F6 floppy version through Windows 7 device manager as i'm not interested installing that whole package with Intel's RST UI tool, has always worked fine but now instead of iaStor.sys we got iaStorA.sys and iaStorF.sys. The txtsetup.oem file is missing as well.

f93cb527.jpg


When trying to update from 11.2 to 11.6 through device manager (i've done this many times in the past with older releases, always worked):

1e1e4270.jpg


Any suggestions?
 
Milena said:
How does one install the newer IRST drivers (post v11.2) ? I used to install the F6 floppy version through Windows 7 device manager as i'm not interested installing that whole package with Intel's RST UI tool, has always worked fine but now instead of iaStor.sys we got iaStorA.sys and iaStorF.sys. The txtsetup.oem file is missing as well.


When trying to update from 11.2 to 11.6 through device manager (i've done this many times in the past with older releases, always worked):


Any suggestions?
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It looks like you got the regular version of 11.2. The x86 floppy version of 11.6 should be here and the x64 version here.
 
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