Newbie Q: GA-X58A-UD3R and SATA 3.0?

[boffo]

I'm a relative newbie doing my first home build.  I bought a GA-X58A-UD3R (rev 2.0) and await delivery of a Crucial C300 128GB SSD.  (If it matters, I will also be installing a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB as a data drive and a BR-DVD on SATA2 ports).  Obviously I chose this combination in part to take advantage of SATA 3.0 speeds.  Now, as I await my SSD, I read on these forums and on Crucial's about the problems involving the Marvell SATA 3.0 chipset and/or the Marvell drivers.  I'd like to be able to make the right choice at the start, and so would like help in clarifying the situation.

Here is what I have been able to gather from reading the posts:

- AHCI mode is recommended generally
- Using Marvell drivers does not allow TRIM to work its magic
- Using Marvell drivers does not produce anything like the advertised SATA 3.0 speeds, and may not exceed SATA2
- Other drivers may be a better solution, at least until Marvell gets its act together.

This leads me to a few questions:

1. Is this characterization correct?
2. Given that I don't intend to use RAID, what AHCI drivers are recommended? Should I stay away from the Marvell drivers?
3. If I use MSAHCI drivers (as I have seen recommended) and plug the drive into a SATA 3.0 port, will this allow TRIM to work?
4. If I use MSAHCI drivers instead of the ones from Marvell, will this allow me to get speeds approximating SATA 3.0, or will I be stuck with SATA2 until Marvell fixes its drivers?
5. OK, a real Newbie question: Assuming it is better to set the drive as AHCI before installing the OS (Win7 x64), etc, where do I obtain the the MS drivers needed?
6. Will using AHCI for my SSD mess with my BR-DVD, as someone has suggested?  Is this an issue at all for optical drives?

Thank you very much for your help.  Sorry for rehashing this topic, but I'd like to make the right decisions at the start of the build and find some of this discussion in past threads a bit confusing, in part because they focus on the RAID question which does not pertain to my build.

[Dark Mantis]

Right well you seem to have done the sensible thing to start with and that is research.
I will try and answer your questions as best I can. Firstly AHCI mode is not going to make much of a difference to you performance wise so unless you require hot swapping ability there is not much to gain. If you decide to enable it anyway you do really need to do it before installtion of the OS.
Nobody is absolutely sure whether TRIM will work with the Marvell chip. It can be enabled but whether Windows actually uses it is another matter.
You wont get anything like SATA3 speed using the Marvell ports however they are the best place to put your SSD. Even though the SSD will not push the SATA3 limits in theory at least it can pass SATA2.
Whether it would be possible to use other drivers for the Marvell chip I am not sure but I don't think so. Otherwise we would all be using the Intel drivers.
You can set the ports to AHCI or IDE mode in the BIOS.
If AHCI messes with your optical drive(and I haven't any reason to think it will) just put it on another port and set it to IDE in the BIOS.
I hope that answer most of your queries and if you have any more don't be afraid to post here.

[onemilimeter]

I will try and answer your questions as best I can. Firstly AHCI mode is not going to make much of a difference to you performance wise so unless you require hot swapping ability there is not much to gain. If you decide to enable it anyway you do really need to do it before installtion of the OS.

Hi...

Let say I set it to IDE mode, what will happen if an eSATA device is unplugged from the computer when the OS is still running?

When I install the OS I set it to IDE mode. When will happen if I set it to AHCI now? Will it corrupt the system?

Thanks.

[Dark Mantis]

onemilimeter, if the eSATA port is set to IDE the system would probably crash or at best you couild lose data. If you install the OS in IDE mode and then change it to AHCI it probably wont read/find the drive and it definitely won't work without hacking the registry. There is a registry hack that is known to work but as always it is a dangerous thing to do.

[onemilimeter]

onemilimeter, if the eSATA port is set to IDE the system would probably crash or at best you couild lose data. If you install the OS in IDE mode and then change it to AHCI it probably wont read/find the drive and it definitely won't work without hacking the registry. There is a registry hack that is known to work but as always it is a dangerous thing to do.

Oh... It means I got to re-install my system again, which is quite painful to do...

[Dark Mantis]

Why

[onemilimeter]

Why

From my understanding, in order to use the AHCI, I got to reinstall the OS, which means I've to reinstall all the software (will take me at least 10 hours to do it)...

[Dark Mantis]

I take it you mean because of using the eSATA hot swapping mode? If that's the case just dont unplug the drive whilst using the computer for now or do a image for reistallation.

[onemilimeter]

I take it you mean because of using the eSATA hot swapping mode? If that's the case just dont unplug the drive whilst using the computer for now or do a image for reistallation.

"image re-installation" - interesting... something like using kind of "ghost" software, izzit?

[Dark Mantis]

Yes , it's just an exact image of your entire hard drive(mirror). You make an image and then when you want to you just copy it back to the hard drive and your installation is like new again. There are many programs out there that will do this.

[F5BJR]

*
you can test this :

1 - move your disk to another port but in normal IDE mode ( ex : Intel ICHxx port in IDE mode )

2 - program in BIOS the Marvell port in AHCI mode

3 - start computer

4 - OS search at this time the Marvell  AHCI driver because port is changed to AHCI

at this time you can move your disk to the Marvell port in AHCI mode

I think OS start normal because AHCI driver is installed in OS

*

Pierre

*

for RAID disks ( exemple ICHxx RAID to ADAPTEC RAID  you can :

1 - copy the RAID disk content with a program similar to MaxBlast to a normal IDE disk ( option add disk as a new boot disk )

2 - plug your new RAID card

3  - boot the new IDE disk ( OS install new drivers )

4 -  reuse MaxBlast for  copy IDE disk with OS to new RAID virtual disk

5 - remove IDE disk and boot the new RAID

*

i use if possible old MaxBlast 4 ( requiert a Maxtor disk connected )  

[boffo]

Right well you seem to have done the sensible thing to start with and that is research.
I will try and answer your questions as best I can. Firstly AHCI mode is not going to make much of a difference to you performance wise so unless you require hot swapping ability there is not much to gain. If you decide to enable it anyway you do really need to do it before installtion of the OS.
Nobody is absolutely sure whether TRIM will work with the Marvell chip. It can be enabled but whether Windows actually uses it is another matter.
You wont get anything like SATA3 speed using the Marvell ports however they are the best place to put your SSD. Even though the SSD will not push the SATA3 limits in theory at least it can pass SATA2.
Whether it would be possible to use other drivers for the Marvell chip I am not sure but I don't think so. Otherwise we would all be using the Intel drivers.
You can set the ports to AHCI or IDE mode in the BIOS.
If AHCI messes with your optical drive(and I haven't any reason to think it will) just put it on another port and set it to IDE in the BIOS.
I hope that answer most of your queries and if you have any more don't be afraid to post here.

Thanks for the reply! One thing I left out is that the case I'm using provides the option to easily hot swap a SATA drive, and so it sounds like AHCI is the way to go.  The lack of definitive information we have about TRIM support on the Marvell chip is annoying, to me more so than the speeds I might get with SATA 3.0.  I hope we can get an answer to this soon, from Gigabyte or from Marvell.

[Dark Mantis]

Well that is a question we have been pressing Gigabyte on for some time now but there doesn't seem to be any headway being made so far. Finally runn3R the manufacturer's moderator has started to respond and so things are looking like we might start getting somewhere.

[boffo]

Just a quick update: The install went smoothly, and everything seems to be working normally.  The SSD was installed in a SATA 3.0 port and AHCI mode was selected in BIOS. Win7 automatically installed the MSAHCI driver, as it is supposed to.  As we know by now, there is no way to tell whether TRIM is "working", only whether it is enabled, and it is.  The only odd thing is that Win7 ordinarily turns off defrag for SSDs, but didn't do so in my case until I did so manually.  Driver issue?  The speeds indicate that it is in fact making use of the SATA 3.0 speeds (for example, CrystalDiskMark for sequential reads was around 345-350 MB/s).

So, thanks again for the help.  On the whole (so far) the new system is working exactly as I wanted.  I will watch this forum to see whether runn3r and the Powers That Be can give us a definitive answer on the TRIM question.

John

[Dark Mantis]

Ah! So not too painfull John. That's always a good start. Thanks for the feedback as it's always nic eto know how people got on. Your SSD speeds are very good, what drive are you using?