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How to Restore Corsair SSD performance WITHOUT using HDDErase


IanJackson

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Although SSDs are superb compared to hard disks, the inevitable performance degradation does become annoying. Unfortunately a lot of SSDs - including my Corsair P256 - are not supported by HDDErase. I've tried versions 3.1, 3.3, and 4.0 on a number of motherboards with varying chipsets in IDE compatibility modes but none of them work - they just report that the drive is in a "frozen state".

 

After a morning of fiddling about, I've worked out a way of performing the required secure erase function another way.

 

The reason the SSDs are not compatible with HDDErase is due to a BIOS lockout. Whilst many claim that putting the controller into compatibility mode fixes this, it certainly doesn’t on my Asus X58. You therefore need to use a different utility that can read disks from another sort of controller- namely USB.

 

First of all you're going to need a number of items;

 

1. A GParted Live.iso http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gparted-live-stable/

2. A blank CD

3. A USB-to-SATA adaptor or enclosure, any should do.

4. A USB cable

 

First use your favourite disk imaging tool to burn the .iso of GParted to disk.

Next, shut down and disconnect all of your hard disks from your computer. Remove your SSD and install it into your USB enclosure. Start the machine back up and boot from your GParted Live disk.

 

A number of prompts will pop up during the boot sequence, in each case just hit enter until you reach the main interface screen. A window should pop up displaying your SSD’s partitions. Right click on any partitions and delete them. In the top right hand corner of this window is the name of your SSD. Remember this name!

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/618/gparted.jpg

Next, double click on terminal and type the following;

 

hdparm --security-erase NULL /dev/hda

 

Where /dev/hda is the name of the disk you remembered earlier. The drive will now be secure erased and all data will be deleted. The disk will also be restored to factory performance. My SSD had degraded to below 120MB/s in HDTune Pro. After performing this is was back to its 200MB/s+ best.

 

Hope others find this useful!

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  • 2 weeks later...
Although SSDs are superb compared to hard disks, the inevitable performance degradation does become annoying. Unfortunately a lot of SSDs - including my Corsair P256 - are not supported by HDDErase. I've tried versions 3.1, 3.3, and 4.0 on a number of motherboards with varying chipsets in IDE compatibility modes but none of them work - they just report that the drive is in a "frozen state".

 

After a morning of fiddling about, I've worked out a way of performing the required secure erase function another way.

 

The reason the SSDs are not compatible with HDDErase is due to a BIOS lockout. Whilst many claim that putting the controller into compatibility mode fixes this, it certainly doesn’t on my Asus X58. You therefore need to use a different utility that can read disks from another sort of controller- namely USB.

 

First of all you're going to need a number of items;

 

1. A GParted Live.iso http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gparted-live-stable/

2. A blank CD

3. A USB-to-SATA adaptor or enclosure, any should do.

4. A USB cable

 

First use your favourite disk imaging tool to burn the .iso of GParted to disk.

Next, shut down and disconnect all of your hard disks from your computer. Remove your SSD and install it into your USB enclosure. Start the machine back up and boot from your GParted Live disk.

 

A number of prompts will pop up during the boot sequence, in each case just hit enter until you reach the main interface screen. A window should pop up displaying your SSD’s partitions. Right click on any partitions and delete them. In the top right hand corner of this window is the name of your SSD. Remember this name!

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/618/gparted.jpg

Next, double click on terminal and type the following;

 

hdparm --security-erase NULL /dev/hda

 

Where /dev/hda is the name of the disk you remembered earlier. The drive will now be secure erased and all data will be deleted. The disk will also be restored to factory performance. My SSD had degraded to below 120MB/s in HDTune Pro. After performing this is was back to its 200MB/s+ best.

 

Hope others find this useful!

 

Whitch Version of Gparted was that?

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have a Corsair X64 drive, running in Acer TM8371 laptop.

 

I've tried the method above to restore my drive, but it gives an I/O error (the attempt was made while the drive was in the laptop, set to IDE mode, as I have no external enclosure) (I haven't deleted the partition on the drive prior to running hdprarm, is that important?)

Second attmept was with HDDerase 3.3, but it didn't work also (program froze after accepting the licence)

Is there a third way how to restore my drive to it's peak performance? I'm getting desperate :(

 

P.S

Could somebody take a look at my Atto benchmark result and tell me, in what condition is my drive? It's 3 weeks old, and was forced to do windows reinstall 3 times, so I'm a bit worried

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/2039/60948093.th.gif

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I just downloaded GPARTED 0.4.6-1 and the CD does boot on an Intel iMac (24" Alu model).

 

It came up with the right screen and although I did not actually do the erase (my SSD is new anyway) chances are very high that this will work on Macs too.

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Btw, if you have doubts about the drive name, before using the erase command, type

 

hdparm -i /dev/xxx (where xxx is of course the name you remembered, e.g. sda, sdb, hda, hdb, etc.)

 

This will output the drive info (manufacturer, size etc.) and might save you from user errors when you have multiple drives connected.

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I have a Corsair X64 drive, running in Acer TM8371 laptop.

 

I've tried the method above to restore my drive, but it gives an I/O error (the attempt was made while the drive was in the laptop, set to IDE mode, as I have no external enclosure) (I haven't deleted the partition on the drive prior to running hdprarm, is that important?)

Second attmept was with HDDerase 3.3, but it didn't work also (program froze after accepting the licence)

Is there a third way how to restore my drive to it's peak performance? I'm getting desperate :(

 

P.S

Could somebody take a look at my Atto benchmark result and tell me, in what condition is my drive? It's 3 weeks old, and was forced to do windows reinstall 3 times, so I'm a bit worried

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/2039/60948093.th.gif

 

Here's a great wiki with more detailed instructions. Should have everything you need:

http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

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The last few hours I spent with GParted to erase my P256 to set it back to full speed. I used the newest version of GParted 0.4.8.-1 and a SATA to USB adapter. GParted boots just fine, dedects the P256 but can't send hdparm commands. Next I tried to connect the SSD to the SATA on the mainboad, works fine and I now can send the hdparm commands. Unfortunately,

 

hdparm -I /dev/sdb shows that my drive is in a secure "frozen" state that means I cannot continue to security-erase. There is no option in the BIOS to disable the security freeze, see here:

 

http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

 

I guess I'm out of options and I guess I just did a big mistake buying a very expensive SSD not knowing about a massive performance degradation over a short time.

 

Last chance would be a firmware update with TRIM supported and probably a special software to successful erase the Corsair P256.

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I can confirm gparted worked fine with the X128 using the instructions on the wikipedia page (http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase) i.e. defining an actual password instead of null.

 

I didn't use a USB enclosure - simply laptop onboard sata (Dell Studio XPS 1340).

 

Time to reinstall Windows 7 now. Roll on TRIM support...

 

Thanks!!

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Wow, sweet.

 

After trying to restore w/ HDDErase in 4 Pcs w/out success (ALL of them AMD w/ no IDE mode function)

 

 

What I've done:

 

- Select Sata Raid option in bios if you will need raid later, otherwise leave it at AHCI mode, but leave any other device disconnected for now (I've got 2x 320GB 7200.12 Raid0 for D:)

- Download and boot Gparted live CD

- Execute in terminal: hdparm --security-erase NULL /dev/sda1 and then sda2 (Ive got 2 partitions in my SSD before)

- Exclude previous partitions in Gparted interface leave it unalocated and dont forget to apply

- Execute in terminal again: hdparm --security-erase NULL /dev/sda

 

Win7 preparing for installing

 

- Select boot from CD in bios, leave any other storage disconnected except your CD-ROM and SSD.

- Keep Sata Raid selected in bios or AHCI if you wont need raid later.

- Have your latest AHCI or Raid drivers on a USB stick

- Boot from Win7 CD

- Load your AHCI or Raid drivers

- When installation shows the device for installation, select NEW and windows7 will ask to create a boot partition automatically (typically 100MB)

- Select OK to create that partition but then dont proceed w/ installation.

- Quit Win7 installation.

 

Formatting

 

- Connect your second drive or device in my case an 7200.12 Raid setup w/ win7 previously installed

- Boot from your second drive OS

- Select your SSD main partition in my computer, right click on it and format, set NTFS 32k for allocation and quick format.

- Don't touch in Boot (100MB) partition Win7 previously created and formatted or it wont install later.

 

Installing Win7

 

- Disconnect your second devices again, leave only CD and SSD

- boot from win7 CD

- Load your latest raid or ahci drives again from an USB stick

- Proceed w/ installation in the main previously formatted partition

 

 

Before I've got 215mb/s sequential reading but only 70Mb/s writting

 

and even worse for random.

 

 

Now they are back:

 

http://i35.tinypic.com/34qwgma.jpg

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This seems to work as I followed the wiki instructions and man...wa..la. This is what I expected when I purchased the drive. Takes some doing and I followed the instructions for setting up the partitions and formatting. Thought I would share some scores.

 

780G board sata raid enabled

P128G, current firmware, the idle trim seems to work. Will be nice to have some software though to manage this in the future.:D:

Scores.thumb.jpg.2897501247ac5ecdcf711644615ff380.jpg

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The last few hours I spent with GParted to erase my P256 to set it back to full speed. I used the newest version of GParted 0.4.8.-1 and a SATA to USB adapter. GParted boots just fine, dedects the P256 but can't send hdparm commands. Next I tried to connect the SSD to the SATA on the mainboad, works fine and I now can send the hdparm commands. Unfortunately,

 

hdparm -I /dev/sdb shows that my drive is in a secure "frozen" state that means I cannot continue to security-erase. There is no option in the BIOS to disable the security freeze, see here:

 

http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

 

I guess I'm out of options and I guess I just did a big mistake buying a very expensive SSD not knowing about a massive performance degradation over a short time.

 

Last chance would be a firmware update with TRIM supported and probably a special software to successful erase the Corsair P256.

You can try what I did:

 

Power off your machine. Unplug the SATA cable, keep the power cable connected to the drive. Boot up the Live CD. Then plug in the SATA cable. It should now show up as "not frozen"

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You can try what I did:

 

Power off your machine. Unplug the SATA cable, keep the power cable connected to the drive. Boot up the Live CD. Then plug in the SATA cable. It should now show up as "not frozen"

 

After a nightmare trying to erase my P256 it finally worked. I bought two different SATA to USB Adapter and as a last try a eSATA to SATA cable. The SSD always showed up as "frozen" so I was not able to do the secure erase. It worked with the eSATA to SATA cable and an external power supply for the SSD with an on/off switch. After boot to GParted drive was frozen as always, I turned the switch off and on again and voila, drive was in a "not frozen" state.

 

I did exactly follow this instructions:

http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

 

took about 104 seconds to erase the P256. Security was disabled after the erase.

 

I am not looking forward doing this many times more and I really REALLY hope there is a solution soon for the slowing down dilemma with my Corsair SSD.

 

Thank you to the members of this forum for all your help.

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  • 3 weeks later...

It's simply tragic how this stuff works. It's not even a week since I bought my p256 and you all can see on the screenshots how it performs. It's not only benchmark values. When I copy big files like movies from one partition to other I can't even get 100MB/s! It's outrageous! I did tweak all the settings since Windows 7 didn't recognized my disk as SSD using SSD tweaker from the very beginning. No effect. I can add that 2 days ago I did secure erase using tutorial from wiki. This disk is advertised as 220MB/s seq reed and 200MB/s seq write (I didn't get these values even on the first day) and you can say that this can be only obtained in perfect conditions, but what when you don't get even a half of what they are advertising after 117 hours of use?? What's more I got plenty of space on my SSD. C:43GB -13,9GB free, D:45,4 -28,2Gb free, E:149GB -45,8GB free. I tried to use performance recovery feature and stwitch off my laptop, then left it for a few hours at logon screen. I have now idea if this thing even work, cause surely I didn't felt any difference. $750+tax... for what?

 

http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/2198/secondday.png

http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/8545/notevenaweek.png

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woopi:

Those values look about right for a drive with older firmware. Can you confirm what firmware is on your SSD?

 

Also, with respect to transfering files from one partition to another, if you are saying from two partitions on the same SSD, 100MB/sec doesn't sound bad at all. Factor in you have to read at 200MB/sec into your computer, then you need to turn it around and write it to the same drive at 130MB/sec. While you're writing you can't read so there is a slow down.

 

I'm a bit shocked to hear Windoze 7 didn't recognize your P256 SSD. How did you verify it was not being recognized? I know of only one way to verify it.

 

-Joe

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@JoeSchmuck

 

Info about firmware:

IDE\DiskCORSAIR_CMFSSD-256GBG2D_VBM18C1Q

IDE\CORSAIR_CMFSSD-256GBG2D_VBM18C1Q

IDE\DiskCORSAIR_CMFSSD-256GBG2D_

CORSAIR_CMFSSD-256GBG2D_VBM18C1Q

GenDisk

 

I've seen somewhere that if Windows 7 recognize your drive as SSD it should automatically disable scheduled defragmentation and in my case it was enabled.

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