txfeinbergs Posted October 26, 2009 Share Posted October 26, 2009 I just ordered a P256 drive as I am sick of listening to my mechanical drive grind away while I am trying to work. I know that coming to the product support forums is the last place I should go to feel good about a product, but I have learned some useful stuff. That said, is there anything I need to do other than do a quick format on this drive when I plug it into my system tomorrow? I will not have any other drives connected, and will be installing a clean copy of Windows 7. Theoretically this operating system will disable Superfetch, prefetch, degramenting, etc all on its own because it should detect the drive as a fast SSD. I understand that although the operating system supports Trim, the drive does not (yet). Assuming I have the latest firmware on the drive that arrives tomorrow and am running Windows 7, do I need to worry about drive performance degradation? I plan on having more than 15% of the drive free at any given time. (somewhere I read that the drive will self heal as long as it as 15% free). Hopefully I made the right choice with going with an SSD for the first time and am not opening up myself to more trouble than its worth. Thanks! One other comment. I read that I should have AHCI mode enabled, so that is what I will be setting the drive to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tI2ouI3LeSoIVIe Posted October 26, 2009 Share Posted October 26, 2009 Don't be afraid the performance gains far exceed the headaches..... well that's questionable but for me it's worth it. :D: Sounds like you got all your ducks in a row except you should turn off indexing also, saves life before the inevitable decline of performance. Invest in Acronis, it'll be your best friend and makes wiping and reimaging a breeze. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davyc Posted October 27, 2009 Share Posted October 27, 2009 Boo!!! ;-) Seriously, you'll never look back - the performance gains are phenomenal. The only performance loss you will experience in the *long* term until new firmware is released is in *writes* to the drive. As most people don't write very often to their SSD (installing OS and programs will be about it) then you're unlikely to *feel* the loss. *Reads* are unaffected and from the benchmarks that I've seen from various users as *writes* degrade *reads* increase, which is kind of weird but not complaining ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxito Posted October 27, 2009 Share Posted October 27, 2009 ..... until new firmware is released ...... Yes. "Untill". Untill.... when? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employee RAM GUY Posted October 27, 2009 Corsair Employee Share Posted October 27, 2009 maxito You will be fine the Performance series drives are made with Samsung Controllers and Flash and have had the best over all performance and stability of any SSD drive on the market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxito Posted October 27, 2009 Share Posted October 27, 2009 maxito You will be fine the Performance series drives are mad with Samsung Controllers and Flash and have had the best over all performance and stability of any SSD drive on the market. "mad"? Ah, "made". And what do you mean with that? You know a lot of users are asking for FW updates and restoring tools: we all know Samsung should do it but I think Corsair MUST pretend them as business partner, MUCH more than the customers. I'm following this Forum since I bought my P256 in may. I had "problems" and I learnt to live with them. Without loosing the hope. That's why I asked "When". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employee RAM GUY Posted October 27, 2009 Corsair Employee Share Posted October 27, 2009 There are some basic limitation when using SSD drives that do differ from using a spinning HDD and as you have learned to get around this there is not much else you can do. As far as a Firmware update when there is an update that can be done remotely we will post it, but at this time there is no update and I am sorry no ETA. If you are having a problem with your drive please be more specific and we can try and address the issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
06si Posted October 28, 2009 Share Posted October 28, 2009 I just ordered a P256 drive as I am sick of listening to my mechanical drive grind away while I am trying to work. I know that coming to the product support forums is the last place I should go to feel good about a product, but I have learned some useful stuff. That said, is there anything I need to do other than do a quick format on this drive when I plug it into my system tomorrow? I will not have any other drives connected, and will be installing a clean copy of Windows 7. Theoretically this operating system will disable Superfetch, prefetch, degramenting, etc all on its own because it should detect the drive as a fast SSD. I understand that although the operating system supports Trim, the drive does not (yet). Assuming I have the latest firmware on the drive that arrives tomorrow and am running Windows 7, do I need to worry about drive performance degradation? I plan on having more than 15% of the drive free at any given time. (somewhere I read that the drive will self heal as long as it as 15% free). Hopefully I made the right choice with going with an SSD for the first time and am not opening up myself to more trouble than its worth. Thanks! One other comment. I read that I should have AHCI mode enabled, so that is what I will be setting the drive to. I just wanna know if you have additional hard drives installed in your rig? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
txfeinbergs Posted October 28, 2009 Author Share Posted October 28, 2009 Not anymore. I had two, but have unplugged both since I need to conserve the little power I have to run my ATI 5850 card. I have an HP machine with the standard 350 watt power supply. You are supposed to have a 500 watt supply to power one of these video cards, but since I am not powering any mechanical hard drives anymore, and the only other item I have drawing power besides the motherboard/CPU is my DVD drive, I thought I would give it a try, and it works fine even under heavy graphical load. I do have an external USB drive for backups. The new P256 drive runs very quick and I ran into no issues with the install (well, other than that I was trying to use an upgrade version of windows 7 to install on a blank drive which did not work, but the Microsoft tech support guy showed me a way around that). The firmware version is the one that has the self healing capability, so I am going to blissfully go on my way and not worry about performance numbers and get stressed over Trim commands or firmware updates, etc. I did disable all of the windows crap that is not needed with an SSD drive such as Pre-Fetching, Defrag, etc. I don't need the fastest drive out there, I just want a reliable very fast drive - and coming from HPs standard budget drives, this thing is amazing. I have gone from a budget off-the-shelf (albeit quad core Q6600) computer, added a great graphics card and amazing drive, and I now have one of the fastest systems I have ever used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employee RAM GUY Posted October 28, 2009 Corsair Employee Share Posted October 28, 2009 SSD's are the way to go even with some of the limitations they still out perform any spinning HDD on the market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Park Posted October 28, 2009 Share Posted October 28, 2009 SSD's are the way to go even with some of the limitations they still out perform any spinning HDD on the market. I guess with new firmware supporting TRIM it would be true. I got right next to me on the table Win7 and a P256 waiting to be installed but I don't want to waste my time doing everything again after a (possible) firmware update for the P256. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manick Posted October 28, 2009 Share Posted October 28, 2009 I guess with new firmware supporting TRIM it would be true. I got right next to me on the table Win7 and a P256 waiting to be installed but I don't want to waste my time doing everything again after a (possible) firmware update for the P256. From what i have noticed by upgrading firmware on other manufacturers SSD's @ work, data does NOT get removed from the disc during the firmware upgrade. I cannot answer to if this is the case with Corsairs disc's as well since i have not performed a upgrade on Corsairs discs but i would be supprised if the data acctually was removed. In that case it should be possible to just create a image/ghost of the disc before upgrading the firmware and then restore the data from the image/ghost? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employee RAM GUY Posted October 28, 2009 Corsair Employee Share Posted October 28, 2009 At this time updating the firmware will force the data on the drive to be wiped, it is part of the firmware update procedure. With SSD Drives the firmware resides in the Data area of the drive and as such the drive has to be wiped clean. Now that being said it has not been established if the End user flash utility will do the same or not however knowing that it has to wipe the data area to be written to; any Data on the drive may be lost. I would encourage any one using any HDD to get and know how you use a drive imaging software. Accronics Disk Image works the best so far with SSD Drives of the software I have used. It does not copy the source drive attributes unless instructed and that is what you want with SSD Drives. You can use any software you like but if you use something that has not been tested you should do some test copies before you delete the original drive information. There are other programs that I am sure will work but that is what we have tested and use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manick Posted October 28, 2009 Share Posted October 28, 2009 At this time updating the firmware will force the data on the drive to be wiped, it is part of the firmware update procedure. With SSD Drives the firmware resides in the Data area of the drive and as such the drive has to be wiped clean. Now that being said it has not been established if the End user flash utility will do the same or not however knowing that it has to wipe the data area to be written to; any Data on the drive may be lost. I would encourage any one using any HDD to get and know how you use a drive imaging software. Accronics Disk Image works the best so far with SSD Drives of the software I have used. It does not copy the source drive attributes unless instructed and that is what you want with SSD Drives. You can use any software you like but if you use something that has not been tested you should do some test copies before you delete the original drive information. There are other programs that I am sure will work but that is what we have tested and use. If an image of the whole disc is taken, is there a chance that when you restore the disc from the image, you will also restore the firmware to the old version again? If i format my Corsair SSD drive due to a reinstallation of the OS, will i have to perform the firmware upgrade again? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employee RAM GUY Posted October 28, 2009 Corsair Employee Share Posted October 28, 2009 No the Firmware data is not accessible to the drive cloning software. Only the user data should be part of the image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manick Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 No the Firmware data is not accessible to the drive cloning software. Only the user data should be part of the image.. Then all cloning tools should be available for use. When firmware patch is released, i'll give it a go and write a guide here with the whole cloning process and such. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wired Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 No the Firmware data is not accessible to the drive cloning software. Only the user data should be part of the image. That makes no sense. Clarify "user data"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manick Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 That makes no sense. Clarify "user data"? I was thinking the exact same thing... but my guess is that the firmware upgrade will be removed if formating the disc and that you should try to avvoid taking the firmware part of the disc along with the image to not overwrite the new firmware with the old. It sounds kind of dumb tho and i hope i missunderstood RAM-guy so the firmware is acctually saved on a separate part of the disc that wont get affected by a disc format or similar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employee RAM GUY Posted October 29, 2009 Corsair Employee Share Posted October 29, 2009 The firmware does reside on the Flash along with the Data stored on the drive but it is in a different location and should not be accessible to any other software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PNutts Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 I did disable all of the windows crap that is not needed with an SSD drive such as Pre-Fetching, Defrag, etc. Windows 7 disables the performance enhancements for you on an SSD drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employee RAM GUY Posted October 30, 2009 Corsair Employee Share Posted October 30, 2009 With Windows 7 I have not had to make any changes and it has performed properly in every test I have ran on it just using the default settings with any SSD drive I have used so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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