Alienware owners with Samsung PM800 SSD - TRIM now available!

Thanks!

Btw, you might want to run CMD and ATTO before your return period ends. This is to make sure your SSD is in top shape and can demand them for a replacement asap or you will return the whole machine for a refund

Congrats on your beast!

 

Ran ATTO - got good results! To be honest I had never heard of ATTO before you mentioned it. What a strong tool! Thanks again.

 

So I was noticing really crappy write speeds with my drive and started searching around on google. I came accross this thread, and did the test. The image of my results is attached. CrystalDiskInfo tells me TRIM isnt enabled. I have called Dell and they are sending me a replacement drive. I should be able to use Ghost to do an exact copy of my current drive to the new one so I dont have to reinstall everything right? My system is a Dell Sudio XPS 1645 with the Samsung PM800 256GB firmware VBM19D1Q. I'm hoping the new drive they send me will have the updated firmware and have better write speeds....... Can someone confirm I'm on the right track with all of the above? thanks

 

Care to share your results?

 

VBM19D1Q definitely doesn't have TRIM. That's a huge performance hit you've got with writing!

Maybe you could ask them what firmware is coming with the one they're sending out. If it's the VBM25D1Q (Dell's latest available for download on their support site) then it's meant to be TRIM-enabled.

 

Nice. My write speeds are significantly worse than yours - TRIM not doing it's job?! What's your WEI for primary drive anyway?

 

7.2 , you should try and verify if TRIM is working and also optimize windows for your SSD.

 

Still not so alarming, IMO.

Is it a fresh install? How filled was your drive when you ran the test? Run CDM too.

 

Yeah it's not a disaster but it's probably not quite right either. It's no longer a fresh install although to drop a whole WEI point because of amount of stuff on it seems counter intuitive to what SSDs are about. It's about 60% full. CDM returns similar results.

I've heard some very complicated ways to actually see if TRIM is running. @Accuse: How would you test if TRIM is going and what do you mean by optimise windows to SSD?

 

The SSD Review: Windows 7 SSD Performance Optimization Guide

#13 is how to verify TRIM, I've implemented most of those changes.

 

Thanks for this. The hibernation tip is an obvious but good one! TRIM is apparently enabled according to #13. The cause of my dropped WEI is still not obvious. Still open to ideas and will obviously see how things go - if ongoing badness Dell will know about it!

 

Can you post your CDM result? What's your WEI score?

Also which drive controller driver are you using?

 

Thanks for the interest:
WEI is 5.9 (used to be close to 7). Using Intel RST. Marginal difference without RST.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 203.048 MB/s
Sequential Write : 135.936 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 157.563 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 97.445 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 13.268 MB/s [ 3239.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 4.414 MB/s [ 1077.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 23.539 MB/s [ 5746.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 6.025 MB/s [ 1470.9 IOPS]

Test : 100 MB [C: 52.7% (62.9/119.2 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2010/09/06 18:37:46
OS : Windows 7 [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)

 

The easiest way to improve your performance is to image back-up > secure erase > re-image.
And if you want the best performance from your SSD, secure erase > fresh install.

 

Thanks. So... what have I actually done to the drive to drop the WEI and CDM/ATTO scores? Does simply installing and uninstalling stuff do this?

 

MS drive controller driver will give you lower WEI score vs Intel RST driver

 

I think you've misunderstood my question. Essentially have had this SSD with fresh install of windows 7 pro for about 4-5 months now. No changes to hardware during this time. Have installed and uninstalled various programmes (mainly games) over this time. Otherwise only other thing happening to this drive is usual daily stuff i.e. email, surfing, MS office and gaming and the odd bit of tinkering with the GPU via NST and benchmarking.

Is this enough to drop WEI for primary hard drive a whole 1.0 point? Is this normal for SSDs? Is this normal for drives in general i.e. HDD as well? Or is there something else going on e.g. something faulty with the hardware?

 

@caduceusnz

No it shouldn't unless you have tons of apps running (background)

Judging by your CDM result, you shouldn't get low WEI score (though some people say WEI is not accurate).

Things you can do:
Scan your computer
Try installing MS drive controller driver (I used to get higher score with MS driver from my XPS 1340 5.9 vs 6.8) or update your Intel RST driver.
Check for apps running (background)

 

i need help flashing my drive pleeeeeeeeeease, i'm not sure if it's because my sandisk cruzer micro usb drive isn't bootable or not though.

i formatted the usb with fat32 and made it active. i downloaded the dell files, they unzipped giving me the folder with the pdf instructions, the FW folder and some other files including DSRD.enc. i pasted all of this onto the usb and then tried booting. yes, i made the usb drive the first boot option. if you do this correctly what are you supposed to see on the screen after the bios info is done?

when i tried it once i just got to a blinking cursor and other times it just said to remove the drive and restart

 

Background apps look okay. Where do I get an MS drive controller driver from? Windows has checked my drivers for the SSD and declared them up to date.

 

When you click Update Driver Software, chose the Browse my computer for driver software > Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer > Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller..

 

Thanks. Didn't have standard ahci 1.0 serial ata controller but reinstalled some disk drive thing. No difference to WEI. Guess why the WEI changed will be a mystery for now.

 

You should have that driver on your system Aren't you using Windows 7?

 

can you use secure erase on the laptop will it work or do you need to do it on a desktop due to bios lock and drive being in frozen state

thanks

 

You can do it on a laptop with hot unplug/replug

EDIT: Just be cautious not to short circuit your internals when doing it.

 

cool that is what i thought the whole hot swapping deal. I will have to take some time out or just saw screw it and do it on the desktop. I was hoping you had a trick or something to be able to do it without hot swap

 

Some people claimed they managed to their SSD not frozen by rebooting multiple times (tried a couple of times, no dice).

Hot swap is good for those who don't have near desktop or lazy

I only tried the hot swap once on my XPS 1340 just to see if it work

 

Yeah have Win7. Don't know, it just doesn't say standard ahci 1.0 serial etc. Closest thing I can find is that for the driver file details it says: file version 6.1.7600.16385 provider microsoft corporation. Can you please show me a screenshot of where it says standard ahci etc? Thanks.

 

Here's how to update to MS AHCI driver

 

i just spent the last 3 days and about 6-7 clean installs trying to figure this problem out. we all have the same issue, the seq and 512k write speeds are significantly lower than they should be. all of the other figures look normal.

i flashed the firmware from dell's site on my 256gb samsung and noticed that after installing everything and THEN tweaking/optimizing my seq and 512k write speeds took a large hit in crystaldiskmark. the numbers still look fine when you run a 100mb or 500mb bench instead of the default 1000mb test. i always run crystaldiskmark at the default settings.

the problem comes up when you delete something large. for example, on one install i had the windows.old file (you get this file in your new install if you do a clean install over an existing version of windows and don't format the drive during install) which was 10gigs so i used disk cleanup to delete the file, which is the proper way to get rid of the file, and my seq and 512k write speeds crashed...i couldn't figure out what it was at the time. on another install, i turned off system restore after it had already run a bunch of times and it happened again. obviously there is performance degradation over time but the seq and 512k write numbers dropped like a rock with literally 1 tweak which resulted in a large deletion of files.

i don't know if this is a samsung ssd glitch or if this is normal for all ssd's. this must be for either version of the firmware because many of the quotes above have the same exact problem from way before the firmware update came out.

hopefullly this will help a few of use out there who won't have to go through what i just went through!! i don't know if this was obvious info but nobody here seemed to have a direct answer for this. i have a clean install up and running and so far my numbers on crystaldiskmark are (sorry no screenies):

197.7 186
160.4 143.1
15.02 5.688
26.91 6.248

you can find my old firmware numbers a few pages back.

 

Thanks. That's exactly where I've just got "Disk drive" under Model. Weird.

 

I have Samsung SSD MMDOE56G5MXP-0VB (Firmware VBM19S1Q) 256GB. Can I flash this firmware?

 

Anyone tried the Samsung Magician Tool: Samsung SSD | Samsung SSD FAQ

 

Can someone tells me which one of these SSDs is considered to be the super fastest unit for Alienware M15x:

OCZ Vertex 2, or Intel X25-M,

When I was trying to configure the hard drive for M15x, it came out w/ Samsung<< Being offered by Dell's website, but yet i have no idea whether it is as speed as others like Intel & OCZ.

Kindly, I like to see benchmarks for the fastest SSD

I really appreciate it

PS. If there are other brands that outperform Intel& OCZ, please share us with your inputs guys.. price aint that important to me, but i do care for getting such a high performance w/ stability

Thank you in advance

 

Dell provides samsung drives with thier new builds, they are not as fast as the OCZ or Intel, but they are also better priced.

The plus of buying the dell provided samsung drive is it will be covered under Dells warranty which could mean much faster service then dealing with samsung.

 

Check with the samsung site, and try the Samsung Magician Tool as noted above, it should tell you if the firmware can be updated

 

I just installed that Samsung Magician Tool and it says I don't have a Samsung Drive (which I do). Is there something wrong with the drive? Do I need a driver?

 

Thanks dave-p. but can I upgrade firmware white the method described by 5150Joker? and you know someone who is able to update the firmware of sony oem ssd?

 

mine says the same thing, but I have flashed mine with a different BIOS

I suspect the the samsung tool looks for a specific firmware and will not let you flash a unreconzied firmware.

 

If there is no update from Sony then you can try the method listed in this topic sure.

But there are risks involved, as mentioned by joker, some of the newer controllers may not flash and you can end up with a bricked drive.

I would try searching to see if anyone else has sucessfully flashed a Samsung drive with a Sony Firmware to help improve the comfort level.

I myself have not heard anyone flashing this firmware version you listed BTW.

 

thank you very much for your answers. Let me know if you have news. thanks

 

Bit of a delayed response but I'm convinced that the Samsung Magician Tool is literally for magicians as it was completely useless - in that it didn't even recognize a Samsumg ssd (MMCRE28G5DXP) running genuine Samsung firmware, tried on multiple machines!

 

I had no luck with that magician software either

 

Question to Samsung SSD owners:

I have the following SSD: (bought seperately NOT with a Dell computer)
Samsung 128GB MLC SSD 2.5"
SSD P/N: MMCRE28G5DXP-0VAD1
F/W: VBM9LD1Q

Someone told me to update to VBM9MD1Q Drivers and Downloads, but im not sure whether this is the correct firmware for my drive. Can anyone confirm?

 

If you download the update from dell it contains a pdf document with the firmware models that it should do.

 

The serial number seems to match, but can I use the Dell update, even though I'm not sure if my drive is Dell (and not used in a Dell computer)?

 

if the drive firmware is listed as one of the ones that can be updated your fine

 

Is there a program that'll tell me what Firmware I have on the drive and if there's an available update for it?

Also will updating the firmware wipe the drive?

Thanks

 

there are many choices to view your firmware

Try Crystaldiskinfo, for one

Download Center - Crystal Dew World

And updating the firmware will wipe the drive completely. So back up everything you need.

As far as doing the pdate need the firmware version and brand / model of the SSD drive