Windows 7 SSD – Is TRIM Supported on RAID 0 Configurations?

raidssdtrimwindows 7

I know this question has probably been asked at some point in the past, but I am trying to figure out if Windows 7 supports passing TRIM commands through RAID controllers yet.

I am trying to decide between buying a single SSD drive and utilizing TRIM or
Buying two SSD drives and putting them in RAID 0 configuration

What is the fastest current configuration I can set up?

I want my development machine to be BLAZING fast.

KronoS wants an update on this:

I'm looking to see if there's an update on this, as I currently have a RAID 0 setup with two SSD drives. Will a TRIM supported SSD in RAID0 array correctly pass the TRIM command?

Best Answer

Edit: For some systems, Intel now supports passing the TRIM command to SSDs in RAID-0. The requirements are:

  • A 7-series motherboard (6-series chipsets are unfortunately not supported).
  • Intel's Rapid Storage Technology (RST) for RAID driver version 11.0 or greater (11.2 is the current release)
  • Windows 7 (Windows 8 support is forthcoming)

Some Intel storage controllers will pass TRIM to SSDs, when the controller is in RAID mode, and some hard drives are RAIDed. However, at the moment, the SSDs must not be in RAID in order to receive TRIM.

This will also depend on the specific SSD(s) you plan to buy. AnandTech recently compared the performance of 2 x 40GB Intel X25-V SSDs in RAID-0 to other (non-RAID) SSDs. The sequential write and (aligned) random write speeds are improved, but there are still better single-SSD options available, which will not suffer from the loss of TRIM.

Update: For Windows 7, I cannot find any evidence that SSDs in hardware or software RAID 0 will accept TRIM. Intel Rapid Storage Technology has been updated from version 9.6 to 10.1, but does not add this feature. Nevertheless, this might be possible using software RAID with btrfs (and Linux):

As I understand it, hardware RAID controllers do not pass the TRIM command to it's disks; btrfs deals with the disk directly, supports TRIM, and supports RAID. I have seen no explicit mention of being able to combine RAID and TRIM support using btrfs with independent disks so I'm asking: When btrfs is in RAID mode, does it still pass the TRIM commands to the SSD?

If TRIM is enabled then yes it should.

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