icsterm Posted November 2, 2010 Share Posted November 2, 2010 Hi, Just got my F60 a few months ago. After moving to a new laptop (Asus G60JX) it seems the performance suffered a bit (i get -20% performance compared to the factory performance). Now I'm trying to secure erase the SSD but I came across a few problems. 1. BIOS only knows AHCI by default, no switch for legacy IDE. 2. I can't hot plugg the SSD (too hard but not impossible). Also security lock won't go away after suspend. I tried PArted Magic, Gparted, Ubuntu, hdparm for windows but none worked. The SSD remains in locked state. I only used Windows 7 which is trim compatible. Question is: 1. Will the SSD restore performance by itself if I let it idle at bios boot selection? (garbage collection/duraclass or some other sandforce technology that works when SSD is idle). 2. Is there any other way i can unfreeze the SSD without hot plugging? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted November 2, 2010 Share Posted November 2, 2010 Have you tried deleting the partitions on the drive and then trying Parted Magic again? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icsterm Posted November 2, 2010 Author Share Posted November 2, 2010 I booted Parted Magic with USB stick and the drive is in security frozen state (checked with hdparm -I hda). I'm not sure how deleting partitions will help. I was wondering when SandForce will create a tool that send secure erase command and also bypasing BIOS security. It can be done at firmware level pretty easy i guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted November 2, 2010 Share Posted November 2, 2010 I booted Parted Magic with USB stick and the drive is in security frozen state (checked with hdparm -I hda). I'm not sure how deleting partitions will help. I was wondering when SandForce will create a tool that send secure erase command and also bypasing BIOS security. It can be done at firmware level pretty easy i guess. I am not sure that it will help. But, it's worth a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synbios Posted November 2, 2010 Share Posted November 2, 2010 Yes there is a way to unfreeze with a laptop, you're supposed to open and close the lid or something like that (possibly put the computer into sleep and then wake it), the fix is around here somewhere but it's not as definite as the hot plugging fix. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icsterm Posted November 2, 2010 Author Share Posted November 2, 2010 Like i just said, standby won't bypass the freeze lock. What about leaving the SSD idle for a long time? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted November 2, 2010 Share Posted November 2, 2010 Like i just said, standby won't bypass the freeze lock. What about leaving the SSD idle for a long time? I have only seen this message once or twice on my test bench. I know for a fact it was with drives that had data on them or an OS install. I can't remember which because I was not documenting it. However, I have not seen this message at all with clean drives or drives that had the partitions manually removed. It's worth a try. Otherwise, just hot plug the drive. ::pirate:: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icsterm Posted November 4, 2010 Author Share Posted November 4, 2010 I think i can live with the speed untill i receive my sata odd caddy for 2.5 drives. Then i can hot plugg it with just a screw. Just because I think after 2-3 months this issue will happen again and again. The standard hdd will take place of the internal ssd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synbios Posted November 4, 2010 Share Posted November 4, 2010 I think i can live with the speed untill i receive my sata odd caddy for 2.5 drives. Then i can hot plugg it with just a screw. Just because I think after 2-3 months this issue will happen again and again. The standard hdd will take place of the internal ssd. If you're using win7 with AHCI and TRIM which you seem to be, you should not see performance drops that much over time. The greater impact would be filling the drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icsterm Posted November 4, 2010 Author Share Posted November 4, 2010 If you're using win7 with AHCI and TRIM which you seem to be, you should not see performance drops that much over time. The greater impact would be filling the drive. The problem happened when i deleted the old partitions (recovery + original C windows drive) and then re-installed Windows 7. Original speeds with ATTO 270/285 now 220/240 and going down. The SSD was filled 30% originally and never exceeded 50%. I guess the firmware is way too rough on preserving cells lifetime vs raw performance. No drawback in realtime performance (SSD's are way too fast vs standard HDD's) but judging by the high price ( 60 gigs at 2 TB HDD price) I think SSD manufacturers should create a way better NAND. Or lets hope so :) I'm not sure about the next-gen Sandforce drives, maybe they find a better way of recovering performance without this secure erase game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted November 4, 2010 Share Posted November 4, 2010 No drawback in realtime performance (SSD's are way too fast vs standard HDD's) but judging by the high price ( 60 gigs at 2 TB HDD price) I think SSD manufacturers should create a way better NAND. Or lets hope so :) I'm not sure about the next-gen Sandforce drives, maybe they find a better way of recovering performance without this secure erase game. You should not need to secure erase with a SandForce drive to recover performance under normal circumstances. However, since you have installed the OS 2 times, a secure is a good idea, not a game. Also, repeated benchmarking of an SSD and filling the drive to 85% or more of its rated capacity both will degrade the performance. Also, SandForce does not create NAND flash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synbios Posted November 4, 2010 Share Posted November 4, 2010 The problem happened when i deleted the old partitions (recovery + original C windows drive) and then re-installed Windows 7. Secure erase is a good idea before the installation of an OS especially when the drive needs to be formatted anyway. The "bug" about the drive being frozen is not to blame but rather it is a symptom of the system itself because the BIOS is the one that freezes the drive. The only real way to fix it is by hotplugging unfortunately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raydabruce Posted November 4, 2010 Share Posted November 4, 2010 The "bug" about the drive being frozen is not to blame but rather it is a symptom of the system itself because the BIOS is the one that freezes the drive. The only real way to fix it is by hotplugging unfortunately. Booting from an Ubuntu 10.10 LiveCD on a USB flash drive I was able to unfreeze my Nova 128GB2 (Indilinx Controller) by simply shutting the lid on my laptop until it went into sleep mode. A few seconds later I opened the lid, it comes out of sleep and the drive was no longer frozen. Secure-erase ran just fine with the proper Linux terminal commands. It took about 7 seconds to complete after I issued the command. Granted, this won't work for everyone. It seems to depend on the BIOS in your computer and possibly on which controller you have in your SSD. It may also be dependent on your chipset and what type of power options it uses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synbios Posted November 4, 2010 Share Posted November 4, 2010 Granted, this won't work for everyone. It seems to depend on the BIOS in your computer and possibly on which controller you have in your SSD. It may also be dependent on your chipset and what type of power options it uses. Yeah I have seen this method as well and it doesn't work for everyone who has a laptop. That must be it, the power options for the chipset. Maybe in Windows you have to go to the SATA controller and enable it so that it shuts off when your computer goes to sleep, then you could use HDDerase.exe maybe? I've never used HDDerase just Parted Magic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raydabruce Posted November 5, 2010 Share Posted November 5, 2010 My laptop has the Intel HM55 chipset which is very common right now in laptops. This chipset has some pretty aggressive power management built into it so I'm assuming that's exactly what's happening, it's shutting down power to the SATA controller when in sleep mode then restoring it on wake-up and the BIOS doesn't "re-freeze" the drive. Probably because the BIOS doesn't "know" anything about the sleep mode since it has had power all along to keep the RAM contents refreshed. Another indication of power issues with this chipset is benchmarks. If you change a couple of settings in the registry that affect CPU power management, your SSD benchmarks will go up quite a bit. This has to do with how the chipset regulates power to the SSD based on CPU activity. If you run a CPU-intensive program while benchmarking your SSD you'll get better benchmark results. Therefore, if you apply these registry tweaks which affect CPU power, your SSD benchmarks will also go up. Here are the tweaks: (use at your own risk and only when in High Performance power plan) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Processor HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Intelppm Change on both the "Start" from 3 to 4. Only side effect is the increase of temperatures by a couple of degrees. I have no idea how these tweaks would affect a different chipset or any non-Intel setup. They've been shown to positively affect HM55/PM55 chipsets and would probably work the same on the QM55/57, but that's not been verified. Make sure your laptop is in High Performance mode, so you can still use the other profiles for power saving. In my experience, these tweaks ramped up the idle clockspeed on my Core i5-430UM but at the same time they prevented it from using Turbo Boost to get to maximum speed. Still, benchmarks for the SSD were improved substantially using Crystal Disk Mark. Keep in mind that the i5-430UM is an ultra-low-voltage CPU. I haven't tried them on my Core i3 system (a full-power CPU, no turbo boost) but my Nova is plenty fast for me and I see no need to tweak power settings on this system since I've already applied lots and lots of other tweaks to the OS to cut down on writes and unnecessary services. Finally, another consideration is that benchmark results don't always translate into real-world work/play performance. Benchmarks are only a stress test and don't necessarily reflect what you'll experience in normal day-to-day usage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synbios Posted November 5, 2010 Share Posted November 5, 2010 I don't use laptops primarily but this is very good info. Should be split and stickied as a tip! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raydabruce Posted November 6, 2010 Share Posted November 6, 2010 Yeah I have seen this method as well and it doesn't work for everyone who has a laptop. That must be it, the power options for the chipset. Maybe in Windows you have to go to the SATA controller and enable it so that it shuts off when your computer goes to sleep, then you could use HDDerase.exe maybe? I've never used HDDerase just Parted Magic. I didn't use HDDerase or PartedMagic. I just booted from a Linux liveCD (on a flash drive) and followed the instructions HERE. That post and the one following it which recommends the "sleep trick". It worked for me but I don't know about desktop computers... haven't owned one in years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icsterm Posted November 6, 2010 Author Share Posted November 6, 2010 I solved my problem. Ejected the SSD out, used e-sata external connection to an desktop, hot plugged in and out, secure erased. Now working at full speeds, w7 rating 7.6. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted November 6, 2010 Share Posted November 6, 2010 I solved my problem. Ejected the SSD out, used e-sata external connection to an desktop, hot plugged in and out, secure erased. Now working at full speeds, w7 rating 7.6. Very cool :sunglasse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icsterm Posted November 7, 2010 Author Share Posted November 7, 2010 Very cool :sunglasse PS: My notebook crashed when i hot plugged the SSD directly. So I should say as a warning that not all laptops support hot-plugging SATA drives (it also depend on BIOS). PS: I've used the direct competitor's toolbox software to secure erase the drive. IT seems it worked, because it's still Sandforce based. Will Corsair release it's own toolbox soon? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synbios Posted November 7, 2010 Share Posted November 7, 2010 PS: My notebook crashed when i hot plugged the SSD directly. So I should say as a warning that not all laptops support hot-plugging SATA drives (it also depend on BIOS). PS: I've used the direct competitor's toolbox software to secure erase the drive. IT seems it worked, because it's still Sandforce based. Will Corsair release it's own toolbox soon? Did you hotplug the OS drive? Also I think only AHCI supports hot plugging, IDE will not. I could be wrong though, I have to look that up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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