So what is the solution you can suggest?
1. Should I change the connections of the 4 HDDs in RAID to SATA3_0-SATA0_3 ports, keep the OnChip SATA Type in „RAID” mode, and connect the SSD to a GSATA port and change Onboard GSATA/IDE Mode to ACHI? Will my IDE DVD Drive work when I change this controller to „ACHI” mode?
2. Or should I connect the SSD to SATA3_4 port (with RAID discs in SATA3_0-SATA0_3), set OnChip SATA Port4/5 to "IDE" mode and use Microsoft IDE driver (is it pciide.sys, right?) on this controller?
Mezman, what is your solution?
Hi kaqkk,
That's pretty much the situation I found myself in. I tried your first option as well but didn't like it because the GSATA controller is really a JMicron JMB363 controller and is at least 50 MB/s slower at reads with my SSD than the SB850. It was just too slow and not much better than a good 7200RPM drive.
Your second option is one you can use if TRIM is really important to you as I understand that the MS IDE driver will pass TRIM. However, what you lose is NCQ that way and you can keep NCQ if you leave your SSD on the SB850. You can try both and see if the performance drop with the loss of NCQ is small enough to make TRIM worth it. I didn't do any rigorous testing myself between these but opted to stay with the SSD on the SB850.
On the subject of TRIM, I decided it wasn't as important as NCQ speed improvements or the improvements of being on the SB850 controller as opposed to the JMicron JMB363. I have a Agility 2 SSD which uses the Sandforce controller (I think your SSD is a Sandforce drive as well) and the Sandforce controller is very different from the other SSD controllers with how it works. From my research (reading forums and posting questions) I came to the conclusion that because of the DuraWrite technology in Sandforce drives, TRIM doesn't have nearly the impact that it does on drives with other controllers like Indilinx or Intel. The DuraWrite wear leveling algorithm doesn't pass though TRIM commands directly like on other drives so Sandforce drives really rely heavily on the internal GC algorithms.
So eventually I came to the conclusion that since TRIM isn't going to have a huge impact anyway, I was much better off with leaving my SSD on SATA3_5 and leaving ports 4 and 5 "As SATA Type" to preserve the Native Command Queuing.
My additional questions are:
1. How can I install Microsoft ACHI driver (msahci.sys) to the GSATA controller?
2. After I swithed on the TRIM, do I need to security erase my SSD using a tool like HDDERASE?
3. And a little offtopic question: During boot after BIOS is loaded AMD RAID Option ROM is searching drives for a quite long time (about 10-15 seconds). Is it possible to avoid this searching somehow?
1. I think it should happen automatically assuming you didn't already install dedicated GSATA drivers.
2. I don't think you should need to. TRIM is an extra command that the interface can transmit, it shouldn't have any requirements linked to the data on your drive.
3. Not with the F5 firmware. I noticed that when I flashed F5 over my F4 firmware, that drive detection period really got a lot longer. I've read that's just something that's inherent to the new RAID BIOS that was part of the F5 firmware update.
Hope that helps!
