Garbage Collection in Raid

[bhobba]

Hi All

This is my first post here (I did reply to a guy but this is my first actual starting a new thread) so please bear with me.

I have just purchased two 64GB Falcons and plan to run them in Raid. My decision was based on the fact that when I purchased my new PC I got a Kingston SSD (its only a mid performing SSD - cheap and nasty would probably be a bit harsh but I am sure you get the idea) as part of the machine, not for any increase in speed, but purely because they are much more reliable than moving disks. The speed increase was SHOCKING. Every person I demonstrated it to just could not believe how fast it made the machine. Having Windows boot in no time flat and applications open immediately is simply wonderful. Having experienced this type of thing you will never go back. I looked around to see if I could take it to the next level and happened on the Falcon which I thought had the best cost/performance ratio of the better performing SSD's. I went down to my local PC store and had a chat about upgrading. He said if you want crazy fast go Raid - its what he does. He has not noticed any performance degradation, but admitted he spends so much time at the store he does not use it a lot. I also researched it a bit on the internet and found that Raid does give a noticeable improvement in some circumstances with good drives like the Falcon and is what those who want the fastest possible disk performance use so I decided to go that route.

My issue is I noticed 1819 now incorporates garbage collection. However I am not 100% sure how to activate it. I have read where you need to put your computer into stage 1 sleep mode (or something like that) overnight to activate it. I have zero idea what that is. I have configured my Windows machine to not to hibernate (it is really annoying when you are doing a download or something and your machine slows right down) so I guess it means switching it back on and leaving it in hibernation more overnight - but I am not sure. Does anyone have and further info?

Thanks
Bill

[bhobba]

I have done a bit further research into this and what I now suspect to activate garbage collection you must leave your computer on. For portables in can be in power saving mode but but must be on. Your hard drive must not switch off when idle otherwise it will not work. To that end I have changed my hard drive to idle after 500 minutes (a little over 8 hours) which hopefully should run garbage collection overnight but turn it off if I accidentally leave it on when I am away for a few days.

I hope this is correct but only time will tell. Hopefully someone a bit more knowledgeable about these things will chime in and and set the record straight.

Thanks
Bill

[Extide]

Actually, I dont think the 1819 firmware by G.Skill has garbage collection. I think the 1819 G.Skill firmware is the analog to the OCZ 1.4 TRIM firmware.

If you want, you can use OCZ 1.5 firmware, which has trim AND garbage collection. See here: http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=2487

[bhobba]

Actually, I dont think the 1819 firmware by G.Skill has garbage collection. I think the 1819 G.Skill firmware is the analog to the OCZ 1.4 TRIM firmware.

If you want, you can use OCZ 1.5 firmware, which has trim AND garbage collection. See here: http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=2487

I certainly agree the issue is not 100% clear cut since despite the fact many people have said they are unsure about it G Skill has never confirmed it. That said I believe it does for two reasons. G Skill promised it and users have reported it appears to be working eg:
http://gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=2156&page=17
'v1819 works great for me on my 64gb falcon drive with windows 7 64bit - no loss of speed compared to prior versions. Didn't align the drive or do any tweaks - just standard install of win7. I can confirm that garbage collection appears to be working. After filling up the drive in previous firmware versions (using win7 RC) there was a very noticeable slowndown (to under 150mb/s read). With a full drive & v1819 my read speeds are being maintained at around 220 mb/s (on win7 retail)'

Personally I am not worried about it one way or the other. First it only really affects writes - reads are not impacted much. Since I have a raid setup with write caching enabled in practice, unless you muck around with large files the performance degradation will simply not be noticed. Check out:
http://communities.intel.com/message...ode5COMS#24652
'I actually do understand the issues of TRIM and SSDs fully. I've posted several times about this topic on past threads. However, I'll emphasize my point, too: The gains you get from using TRIM are minimal in real-world use. Sure, you can see slight differences by running benchmarks, but odds are the system will not operate this way in real-world conditions. RAID benefits significantly by having a built-in cache, thus the difference between enterprise-level controllers and 'low-cost' home consumer controllers. Gaining RAID performance isn't just a matter of 'going wrong' but a matter of using the right combination of hardware. It's a proven science, not open to much theory. A RAID cache will benefit your write performance more than the TRIM will, and that's a fact of I/O, period. If you wish to wait for TRIM to be fully implemented, that's your choice, of course, but I will guarantee your wait will be rewarded with very little satisfaction, except perhaps on the cheapest of SSD components. However, I only speak for the majority of systems operating out there. Perhaps you have a very unique situation where you're constantly writing gigabytes of data on an hourly basis to your SSDs. But, if it happens to be for your system pagefile or temporary files, perhaps an additional RAMDISK would be the next best upgrade to your system.'

Also it appears the next version if the intel matrix storage drivers may pass the trim command with the latest release:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...age-on-horizon

I am not holding my breath though nor am I, for the reasons above, worried about it. And that my advice to - enjoy the benefits of raid and don't worry about it. In practice its not really an issue.

Thanks
Bill

[TwoCables]

But Garbage Collection is exclusive to OCZ.

[bhobba]

But Garbage Collection is exclusive to OCZ.

I don't think that's true. For example Crucial has it in 1916:
http://www.forum.crucial.com/t5/Soli...44BBA157F2DFC4

My understanding is that due to the close relationship between OCZ and Indilinx they worked together to get it working in one of the earlier firmware versions. However once it was working then it became freely available as part of all future firmware updates. Its just a question of if you as a company like to tinker with the update and/or give it a though test. G Skill seems to like to do that rather than release it quickly like for example Crucial does. Also G Skill announced it was part of 1819:
http://www.gskill.us/forum/announcement.php?f=9
'Details will be released shortly, but rest assured the firmware will have all the essentials you are looking for such as Win 7 support and BGGC (background garbage collection).'

Now either they are telling porkies or it does have it. The issue IMHO is despite a number of people being unsure if it does implement it no formal acknowledgment has been forthcoming from G Skill. That of course is rather poor support, but does seem inline with how G Skill functions in not having in house staff regularly post here.

The sure way of finding out of course (apart from someone from G Skill telling us) is for someone to test it out. As previously indicated I think someone has already done that and the answer is yes. In fact I have more than one person claim they have checked it:
http://gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=3744
'I just put the 1819 firmware on my drives and Trim or Garbage Collection is working in Raid0 I have Win7 64bit, and the drivers are microsoft from the Win7 install. Just run a bench test and note the results then log off for a hour and then run the bench again, if it is working you should see improvement in the score.'
'I thought I would try the FW 1819 first and see what happened. I get slightly lower bench with the 1819 but not enough to worry about. I do not have any where to host a screen shot of the benches or I would submit them. I guess they must have GC in the firmware, as I did a bench shortly after installing the firmware and then logged off for about hour and a half then did another and it was much better thats why the other post said either Trim or GC was working.'

Taking all the evidence together I am pretty confident 1819 has garbage collection. It would be rather silly for it not to have it if you think about it. Pure trim does not solve the performance degradation issue all by itself - it simply delays it. Your drive will eventully be really fragmented and that will slow it down. You still need some form of garbage collection to 'defragment' it. That's probably why 1916 that others like crucial are now deploying does both aggressive GC and trim. Evidently you could get a pure GC version and a trim version previously. The trim version evidently did non aggressive GC and the GC version did aggressive GC. I think people have now woken up Trim still needs good garbage collection. Hopefully 1916 will be released for the Falcon soon and we can enjoy its benefits. Not that it will benefit me since I want to stave of the day that I need to update my firmware as much as possible. The place I purchased my drives from have stated they wont update it for me since they believe it wont be of any benefit to me in practice. In fact I agree with them on that but being a tinkering enthusiast I like the idea of my drives being in tip top shape so I will get it done eventually. Probably when Fusion i/o gets their drives bootable and I use it as my boot disk and have my Falcons as a data disk.

Thanks
Bill

[ritchwell]

Well until the release of fw1916 twocable was correct regarding the gc exclusive to ocz and some samsung ssd. As of now fw1916 is still not release for the gskill idilinx SSD so i would say there is no gc for fw1819 since they gskil never confirmed it and other companies as well.

[bhobba]

Well until the release of fw1916 twocable was correct regarding the gc exclusive to ocz and some samsung ssd. As of now fw1916 is still not release for the gskill idilinx SSD so i would say there is no gc for fw1819 since they gskil never confirmed it and other companies as well.

I hate to admit it but after looking into it I suspect you are correct. None of the other makers did it except OCZ. Such a pity someone from G Skill does not confirm it one way or the other. Ah well 1916 here I come - eventually. I am pretty happy with my raid set up right now.

Thanks
Bill

[macdaddy]

well seems the 1.5 ocz firmware works like a charm from what i have seen from my cousin. He did fresh install and windows gave him index rating of 7.6 but he left his pc on overnight and redid the text its now 7.7 !!!!