Intel X25-M G1 (no TRIM) SSD – format and restore just as good as TRIM

ssdtrim

I've got an older X25-M that doesn't support trim. If I image the drive, format it, then reimage it, would that restore it to roughly its original R/W speeds?

Best Answer

I looked into this again (six months after my original post) and had much better luck: I found the ATA Secure Erase wiki entry. It shows you how to use hdparm to tell the SSD to do a "Secure Erase". From the article:

When a Secure Erase is issued against a SSD drive all its cells will be marked as empty, restoring it to factory default write performance.

The exact steps I took were:

  • Imaged my entire drive (I used an old version of Acronis True Image, but any imaging utility should work fine),
  • Connected the drive to the SATA controller on my linux box (hdparm needs to be connected to a drive controller - USB adapters won't work, I believe basically all "adapters" will not work with hdparm),
  • Followed the instructions on the above wiki - and you should read the wiki carefully before you attempt this. On the off chance that the link breaks someday, the short summary is (where X = your drive, i.e. "sda"):
    • hdparm -I /dev/X (look at the parameters for your drive, and make sure it is the CORRECT drive! Also make sure it says "not frozen" under security.)
    • hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass dummypassword /dev/X (you need to enable security/password protection to be able to send such a devastating command - the password and security will be cleared automatically after the drive is wiped) (and you can use any password you like)
    • hdparm --user-master u --security-erase dummypassword /dev/X (Secure Erase the drive) (Again, please read the original wiki - these shortcuts are just a "backup" in case something happens to the original article.)
  • Copied the image back on to the SSD
  • Voila! SSD is behaving as if it was just off the shelf.

I didn't do any before/after measurements, but several people have and it sure looks like the drive is performing like new.

There's also an option to do it using an MS-DOS-only HDDERASE.EXE from 5 years ago - I spent a little time with it and think hdparms is a far superior option. There are a lot of forum postings and blogs about this out there now - google around until you feel comfortable.

But not too comfortable - you don't want to wipe the wrong disk or find out your image was corrupt!

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