RAID SSD's TRIM/GC Questions

[bkh2]

I have 3x Kingston V Series 64GB SSD's in a RAID0 array. I benchmarked them when I first set it up and got around 600 mb/s read and 270 mb/s write (sequential). To see the state of my RAID array, I benchmarked again today and got ~550/166 read/write. I read before that RAID arrays do not support TRIM, but do support Garbage Collection. So how can I get the Garbage Collection to trigger, assuming it supports it, and are there any programs I need to get in order to do a manual GC? Thanks.

[sswilson]

AkG would be the obvious one here to comment as he's played with these the most, but from personal experience with the intel -V SSDs (which I'm pretty sure are the same as the kingston ones) I can tell you that the intel toolbox will not work with a drive in raid mode which leaves you with only the internal garbage collection and as far as I know... all that requires is idle time to work.

[AkG]

Yup you got it right. Idle Time is what is needed. Depending on which version you have its either an older JMicron controller or a newer one (well actually a Toshiba branded and built one based on a JM design....but very little dif). So you will either need a LOT of idle time or a only a little bit to get it out of its degraded state (ignore the read speed numbers its only write that really tanks when the drives get dirty). IF you are impatient and want to get it back to normal NOW use FreeSpaceCleaner.exe w/ FF option (aka AS-Clean) and it will write 1's to all the free cells. Then it deletes the file it creates. This will bring all the empty cells back to a virgin state. It will take awhile. Let it keep going unitl it is FINISHED (ie ignore the green bar...it goes up and down and has no real bearing on whats going on). IF you want to take an extra step, do a "TONY-TRIM" which adds a free space consolidation to the equation before running FreeSpaceCleaner / AS-Clean.

Here is a link to OCZ's guide. It has links for AS-Clean.
Guide A simple guide for gen1 owners( Apex, solid, core V1/V2) or raid array owners who want to consolidate free space and clean the remaining Nand on the drives. OCZ gen2 drives..Vertex, Agility, Solid2, TURBO owners with FW 1.5 you do not need this.

DO this ONCE and then afterwords let the system idle every day for awhile to keep it from happening again. ;)

YMMV but thats what I would do.

[CoolHandL]

glad i came across this, i had the same question about my 3 Kingston ssd's in raid 0

[bkh2]

Thanks a lot for the info. I will probably try to wait it out and see if the GC will fix my write problem. If that doesn't work, I will take the steps you have listed, AkG. By the way, how idle is idle? Can I have music running and stuff DLing (to another drive, not my RAID array)? Sometimes, when I come back to my computer, I notice that the CPU is doing something, yet I have nothing running. Would that be GC running? It usually takes up an entire core (according to my desktop widget). When I open task manager to see what it was, it dies down completely. I'm assuming (if it really was GC running) that GC stopped because I started doing stuff (and therefore was no longer idle)?

[AkG]

Thats a tough one to say for sure, BUT it is my understanding that instead of saying "idle" its more precise to say "periods of low I/O"....but no one does. Just like Idle Time Garbage Collection isnt precise unless you are talking about Sammy SSDs...but its what everyone uses. Anyways....No one knows for certain what triggers the self maintenance routines and it probably varries from mfg'er to mfg'er. So this is just my "best guess" but listening to music via dif HDD...MIGHT be ok, depends on if the program is accessing anything on your OS "drive" or not. Probably OK. IF its the newer 325's they have aggressive "ITGC" and it doesnt take much to keep them happy :)

Might have to play around and see what they "like" and how much they need to stay clean. Good rule of thumb is to once a week leave the system on overnight, turn off your monitor....and just let it do its magic :>