Corsair’s P Series of SSDs get TRIM support

Corsair’s SSDs based on the Samsung controllers finally gain Windows 7 TRIM support

Corsair one of the biggest players in the memory and SSD market has recently released their updated firmware for their P series of SSDs. These drives are based on the Samsung flash controllers, and as such, the only company that could develop the firmware was, naturally, Samsung. Many other companies like Intel and Indilinx have recently released their TRIM supporting firmware as well, and in Intel’s case they required a few more revisions due to bugs. Since Corsair was polite enough to provide us with some of their P64 SSDs, we’ll gladly update the firmware on ours and report how they perform in our upcoming review.

Here is the full post that Corsair’s RAMGUY made on their support forums:

The new Samsung firmware and updater tool have completed internal qualification and BETA testing and has been released.
A couple important notes and warnings: Even though this has been released there are still some reasons why it may not work for everyone:
[1] You will need to use a System or MB that will boot and run Microsoft DOS 6.22 or 7.0 and be able to see a SSD Drive set to IDE Mode. (You cannot use a RAID card or an on board controller set to RAID and run this update)
[2] This tool will only work on Corsair P64, P128, and P256 drives.
[3] This tool WILL ERASE the contents of the drive. All data will be lost. You must back up your DATA prior to doing this update.
[4] This tool has been qualified on X86 Based Hardware ONLY with the above listed restrictions and limitations.
[5] This tool must be run from a bootable USB drive. There have been some users in the BETA program that used other methods but at this time theywould not officially be supported.
[6] This update has been developed by Samsung to enable Windows 7 TrimSupport on NTFS-formatted SSDs. We do not recommend or support its use on anyother platforms.

Please read the Firmware Download Guide (attached) and if you are not able to follow these steps as outlined we would not suggest running this update.This utility is supplied as-is, and is NOT guaranteed to run on all systems, regardless of operating system, CPU, drive format, or other factors. Using this utility WILL ERASE the contents of the SSD being reprogrammed. Use this utility at your own risk; Corsair cannot be responsible for any damages other than tothe P-Series SSD, which is covered under Corsair’s standard warranty. Note that using this utility does not impact in any way the warranty on your P-series SSD.

All the necessary files and the PDF guide are located on the Corsair Support Forums.

This firmware update addsthe TRIM functionality in Windows 7, but for those wondering… why is TRIM important to have for an SSD?

Microsoft explains the use of the TRIM attribute in their documentation about Windows 7.

1.1. The purpose of Trim Attribute

File deleting happens in a file system all time, but the information related to the deleted file only kept in OS, not to device. As a result, a device treats both valid data and invalid data(deleted file) in its storage media the same way, all necessary operations keeping data alive are applied. For example, background defect management and error recovery process are used for HDD. Merge, wear leveling and erase are applied to SSD. The OS’s processes, such as format, Defragger, Recycle bin, temp file deleting and Paging can produce a considerable amount of deleted files. By telling device the deleted file information as invalid data, the device can reduce its internal operation on all invalid data as self-optimization.

This can be found in the powerpoint presentation about TRIM located here.

If this all seems a bit complex there is a layman’s explanation…

You have a TRIM supported OS (windows 7) and a TRIM supported drive (Corsair P series). When writing, OS asks the drive for its rotational speed and the drive responds with a zero since the SSD itself never spins and then Windows enables TRIM. TRIM basically takes the cells of the SSD that exist within the blocks and wipes them clean every time you put data onto them since there is not necessarily a place where files always stay on an SSD. Because of this, files get deleted and moved around. Without TRIM there are remnants of the old deleted files left over, and over time, these can severely impact the performance of an SSD. Many users without TRIM support or any form of garbage clean up experience degraded performance over time. The only way to fix this problem for most users is to completely zero out their SSD and wipe it clean as if it was brand new. This is similar to what TRIM does, but TRIM does it on a very small scale and while you are using the SSD. It does it in a way that enables you to use the SSD at its full capacity and speed while still actively cleaning up the “garbage.”

Overall, this is a great step forward for Corsair and Samsung as well as Windows 7 users who now have another choice when looking for TRIM enabled SSDs to put into their computers.