Thats a sata6 drive so to get full speed you need to use one of the red ports on the R3E and Im sure trim is supported via the red slots dude.
To Trim or not to Trim? That is the question!
OK, been looking into this further. There are several hw configs for the C300 on the R3E each with its merits and drawbacks. Options are:
1. Use Marvell 6G SATA III controller with Marvell 91xx driver.
2. Use Marvell 6G controller with native Windows msahci driver.
3. Use ICH10 3G SATA II controller with Intel iastor driver.
4. Use ICH10 3G controller with msahci driver.
From a fresh W7 install I have been using option 1. Initial AS SSD benchmarks for my 64Gig were
450 +. I did all the various SSD optimisation tweaks to try minimise writes to the drive and it only basically contains my OS.
I subsequently discovered that the Marvell mobo controller does not support Trim even though the disk itself and the 91xx driver do. So if you run the CLI
"fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify" it will show a zero (Trim enabled) result even though it is not.
This would also be the case with option 2 as the problem appears to be in the controller chip on the mobo, although lots of forums suggest the msahci driver is better than the Marvell; the reason isn't clear but it definitely doesn't give you Trim.
Because I had been using the disk for 200 hours since installation I ran another AS SSD benchmark yesterday on my option 1 config and the performance had dropped off to
below 200, which is worse than results others have posted for the disk running on the Intel controller as a SATA II 3G.
I could see no reason for this drop off other than the lack of Trim/Garbage Collection on the Marvell controler.
To investigate further I booted with the disk connected to the Intel controller (option 3) and ran AS SSD. It scored
428 (270 sequential read /
179 4k-64 read) which is about right for one of these drives running on a SATA II 3G controller (options 3 & 4).
So after the disk has been in use for a while it performs better on an Intel 3G controller than a Marvell 6G controller. I concluded that this was due to the latter being a combination of no Trim and a poor driver (relative to msahci).
Because this disk is sold for its 6G performance I was not happy to leave it on the ICH10 port. I decided while it was connected as SATA II (with confirmed Trim) to run a 'Force Trim' with SSDTool to try restore the performance.
I hooked it back up to the Marvell 6G controller and re-ran AS SSD in the option 1 config. It only scored
283 which, although a significant improvement on the sub-
200 pre-Trim option 1 score, was still much worse than the SATA II.
I decided to try option 2 post-Trim by rolling back the Marvell driver to msahci and re-run AS SSD. SUCCESS.
It scored
475 (
351 sequential read /
203 4k-64k read). Full SATA III 6G performance restored.
The results of my tests are not conclusive as I did not run all the variables. I would however recommend the following to get and maintain the best performance from your Crucial C300 (running on a dual Marvell SATA III 6G / Intel SATA II 3G mobo).
1. Install on the Marvell 6G controller but DO NOT use the Marvell driver. Use the Windows native msahci.
2. Every couple of weeks hook up your disk to the Intel 3G controller and run a 'Force Trim.' SSDTool only takes a few of seconds, plus the time to take the side off your case, swap the SATA cable across twice and a couple of reboots. Well worth the effort to regain the massive performance advantage.
HTH
TOG
