One more SSD thread, to TRIM or not to TRIM, that is the question.

Yesterday I picked up my first SSD drive. It is a 256GB Samsung SSD drive. The model number for the drive is SAMSUNG MMDOE56G5MXP-0VBH1 A quick google search for this drive shows that this drive is used in HP laptops, specifically the dv8, which pointed me to this thread I read through the thread, can't say I read the whole damn thing cuz it is 312 pages *sheez* but I could not find if anyone successfully flashed the drive with this model # SAMSUNG MMDOE56G5MXP-0VBH1 to the latest samsung firmware. The download page for the samsung firmware can be found here and the zip file containing the firmware can be found here The current version is DSRD 2.1.0, and as stated in the accompanying pdf The pdf states that this program is designed to upgrade samsung SSD drives with these firmwares:

Old version : VBM18C1Q or VBM1801Q (Before Update)
New version : VBM19C1Q or VBM1901Q (After Update)

Well according System Profiler on Mac OS X (10.6.3) the current firmware my drive is using is VBM1AH1Q and I did some Google searching today, never really read a complete answer of anyone updating these drives with this firmware to the official samsung firmware.

I am aware, that the Samsung FW update program located in the DSRD 2.1.0 zip requires to boot up into some primitive DOS mode to run the FW update program, and that I am going to need a system that can do this. I am not sure if anyone has successfully updated the FW on one these drives using a Mac Book Pro, but I do not see why it could not be done with the aid of program like this

Now my next question is, do I decide to upgrade the FW of this drive with the current one on the samsung website, and risk bricking the drive. Can I run the utility again, and flash the current FW I have on the drive if the update fails? The only problem I have with this procedure, is that I have not been able to find FW VBM1AH1Q on any site, granted I have not done an exhaustive google search, but I spent a little bit of time looking for the firmware, and I could not find it. I suppose it would be located on the HP website somewhere, but their support site pretty much sucks for the lack of a better word.

Second, I am not aware that OS X officially support the TRIM function that SSD drives use, but I have read conflicting statements on how the TRIM function performs. I read the TRIM function is a piece of code that operates at the kernel level, so if Apple has not implemented this in their operating system yet (OS X 10.6.3) that having a FW with TRIM enabled would not make a difference until this was supported by the kernel in OS X.

Then I read that it does make a difference and that using the FW with TRIM enabled helps the performance of the drive, but I do not see how this could happen if the OS does not even support it. I read somewhere that the TRIM function works at a lower level then the kernel level like some lower hardware level that the OS (Mac OS X) would not have to have TRIM enabled in order to see the performance/reliability of the TRIM function. If someone could clear this up, that would be awesome.

Also since my file-system (HFS+) is journaled, I was not sure if this TRIM function would make a difference or not. Also, I was reading how this TRIM function works hand in hand with garbage collection. I am not sure if journaled file systems have garbage to worry about, but I assume they do.

I read that Win7 officially supports TRIM, but if I remember correctly Win7 still uses NTFS and that NTFS implements some form of journaling, so it leads me to believe the the TRIM function is added benefit that does not relate to journaling.

If anyone wants to aid in my understanding of all this, it would be greatly appreciated.

cheers
-ipatch

 

If you want to maintain the performance of the drive you can use Tony-TRIM or a secure erase/ re-image.
I think a secure erase/ re-image every couple of weeks or so would be the best way to go.
https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

Guide A simple guide for gen1 owners( Apex, solid, core V1/V2) or raid array owners who want to consolidate free space and clean the remaining Nand on the drives. OCZ gen2 drives..Vertex, Agility, Solid2, TURBO owners with FW 1.5 you do not need this.

 

Welcome to the team and make sure system restore is disabled...bad.

 

Alright, I am about fed up with this SSD madness. This has consumed the past two days of life, and I have nothing to show for it but a few pictures, and sure as hell do not have TRIM. Not that my OS (Mac OS X) even supports it. I think I have downloaded every boot disk on the internet in the past 48 hours needless to say most of them are crap. I remember from back in the day that bootdiskDOTcom (can't even believe I am mentioning that site) as being a pretty reputable place to get bootdisks from, well I guess times have changed. So the skinny on the MacBook Pro booting a Win 98/SE/ME startup disk on a USB flash drive is pretty much none existent. If you do decide to install rEFIt you will be prompted with an option to boot from the flash drive, in my case, that would be a gen 1 apple iPod shuffle. At first I couldn't get my roomates laptop to even boot to the ipod shuffle, and I was thinking that the ipod firmware, or hardware aspect was preventing it from being a bootable flash drive, but I did manage to successfully boot a Win ME boot disk from the ipod 1G shuffle today on my roomates gateway netbook.

If you try to boot the MacBook Pro from the USB drive with the ME startup disk flashed on it, you will get this when using the rEFIt option. I tried all sorts of boot disk thinking it would make a difference but in the end none of them worked and ended up with various error messages.

So I know what your thinking, why not make a bootable CD and go that route to run this stupid DOS FW update utility, well my optical drive in my MacBook Pro is a ghost in the machine when it comes to this. It can still read optical discs DVD and CDROM, but asking for write support is out of the question. *shrugs* <-this is a whole another thread in itself.

So the best option I found for booting a bootable DOS OS from CD was this I was easily able to add the DOS program from the samsung website into the iso using magicISO on windows, and boot using Open DOS and Free Dos, the guys who boot this CD together have seem to done a good job, the stuff on the CD seems just a tad bit dated, but can't really complain for a free boot CD.

So I was able to launch the FW update utility earlier today, but it would always freeze up. So I decided to to give the ipod boot drive option a go again, and this time I was able to get it to work using the HP format utility in Windows 7 on the gateway netbook. I copied over two different FW update utilities to try once the USB flash drive booted up. Ohh forgot to metion I took the SSD drive out of the MacBook Pro and put it in the netbook. Both FW utilities seem to run fine using the ME startup disk, which I found rather shocking. The only problem I ran into with both utilities was seeing the SSD disk. Neither of the SSD FW updates reported seeing a SSD disk attached to the system. I even went to the bios of the netbook and changed from AHCI to IDE, and vise versa, and neither of these options seemed to work. So this is where I am currently at.

Here are some pictures demonstrating on what I was working on earlier today. If anyone has successfully flashed these drive please let me know.

[links removed by moderator; cannot link to own sites for any reason, no exceptions]

Ohh for grins I found this ebay auction yesterday, and apparanetly this person has been able to flash his samsung SSD drive with the same model number. Anyways, there's no way to validate this claim unless someone decides to buy one of this drives with the supposed firmware on it.

cheers
-ipatch.

ps, sorry for the typos, i am tired and hungry, so I am going to proof read this later.

 

if i were you i would go to a store like Fry's or Costco and get the cheapest PC desktop. update the firmware, then return the desktop.

i wish SSD manufacturers would be more upfront and in simple english tell us what TRIM is, and what it means for us OSX users. OCZ sells a 'mac' specific version of their SSDs and based on user's reviews it turns out that its identical to the PC version, same firmware and all.

apple's website is no help either, all we know is trim is not supported. Additionally if you do something like format the SSD it shorten's its lifespan and wont improve performance.

from what i understand, its POSSIBLE that new SSD's run TRIM locally and don't need the OS to do it. But no manufacturer flat out says that, so dont take my work for it.

Garbage Collection is a programming term that refers to the action of automatically releasing unused allocated memory. languages like java, c#, and objective-c use garbage collection. But like i said, that applies to memory (RAM). What it means for the hard drive should be similar, but at a file system level. What confuses me is that if it were the same then not having trim would mean you lose space over time, and apparently this is space that even formatting wouldn't recover, but i've also read that its not space that you lose but its performance.

too little info is out there about MAC, SSD and trim, in JUL2010 i'll put a SSD in macbook pro. This should make it faster than a new computer, and as long as i get the 3yr lifespan promised by the warranty, then it will be worth it. But one thing is for sure, I'll trust the SSD with my OS and programs, but all my data will be saved in an external hard drive.

 

I've flashed an OEM Samsung SSD before to get TRIM. It's not impossible, and relatively quick. I don't understand why you want TRIM, though, as you're using MacOSX. If you want to take advantage of TRIM, use Windows. Problem solved.

 

Firmware Fiasco

Well I tried to upgrade the firmware on my Samsung SSD again. I tried three different machines, and the firmware utility provided by Samsung could not detect the drive on any of the machines. I also want to mention that all three machines were fairly recent desktop machines, which Samsung requires in the accompanying PDF on their website.
I took the drive apart again to get a reading on the two most important chips in my drive, the cache chip and the controller chip, and apparently the controller chip in my drive is the Samsung controller chip, so all HP did with the drive is slap a label on it and renamed the FW. The main reason I think I am unable to flash this drive is because the DSRD utility provided by Samsung is looking for a drive attached to the system with a specific FW and since my drive has a different FW the utility is saying it can not detect a drive. So, this brings me to another point, why did HP choose to go with a different FW and not the Samsung FW, or did HP pay Samsung to make a custom FW, or was HP to cheap to license the FW from Samsung, so they decided to make their own FW? I am going to go with the assumption HP modified the original Samsung FW to better tie into their product family. So, I am at the point now, where I need to figure out how to get the DSRD 2.1 utility to recognize my drive even though it is using a different FW. Below is a picture I took of the controller and cache chip, I’ll let you do a quick Google search to find out which one is which

*UPDATE*

I got IDA loaded, but unfortunately Hex-Rays does not support 16 bit functions *shrugs* if you have knowledge in this area of expertise hit me up.

cheers