Looking for an mSATA SSD with working TRIM. SanDisk X110?
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I'd like to add an SSD to my RCC VE-2440. If possible, I'd like to buy one which is known to have working TRIM [EDIT] in pfSense. Whilst looking around at various options, the SanDisk X110 caught my eye for several reasons, not least of which being it's current discounted sale price.
Can anyone confirm that TRIM is or isn't working on the X110?
Are there any other models of SSD that are known to have working TRIM?… I've tried reading through various threads, both here and elsewhere but I'm not having much success.
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Check out this article
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/04/30/which-ssd/
Its says virtually all drives support TRIM. It also says TRIM is disabled on SSD's when put into a RAID.
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Its says virtually all drives support TRIM.
Sorry, I didn't make it clear in my post. When I say I'm after a drive with working TRIM, I meant working in pfSense.
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Its says virtually all drives support TRIM.
Sorry, I didn't make it clear in my post. When I say I'm after a drive with working TRIM, I meant working in pfSense.
All software functions internal to hard disks, typically are handled independently by the hardware in the drive itself. Meaning, no matter what software you put on it, those special functions work.
MEANING, if it works on one type/brand, it works on all. However, if not functionally used by the OS, on just one type/brand, then it won't work on any. The TRIM function is a standard; just like S.M.A.R.T. so drives that have it, have relatively the same software/hardware piecd. So below, I post another link that explains this as well as enabling it.
Also, you say you have searched this stuff with little luck but I seem to have the opposite luck.
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=66622.0
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All software functions internal to hard disks, typically are handled independently by the hardware in the drive itself. Meaning, no matter what software you put on it, those special functions work.
Then why is there a need to manually set TRIM on pfSense? If it's automatic, why would there be a need to check TRIM is working/enabled on other OSs?
I've looked at that link, both now and when I was doing my research and it doesn't answer by question. It's my understanding that (and perhaps my understanding is flawed but) TRIM has to be set manually in pfSense. I also understand that it doesn't work properly, if at all, on certain SSDs. Case in point, the Samsung 850 EVO which it appears several users are having issues with TRIM when used in a pfSense system.
As I said in my original post "If possible, I'd like to buy one which is known to have working TRIM [EDIT] in pfSense". Having reread the link you posted, just four specific models of SSD are mentioned.
1. There's the Crucial M4 which appears to have TRIM working on pfSense but it's a pretty old drive, so prices are really high.
2. There's the Samsung 840 Pro which has working TRIM but there isn't an mSATA version of the drive so it's out of the window anyway.
3. There's the Intel 320 that, like the 840 Pro, has working TRIM but no mSATA form factor.
4. Then there's the Kingston V300… it appears to have working TRIM but I wouldn't touch the V300 with a ten foot pole thanks to Kingston's bait and switch antics.
So unless there's some fundamentally misunderstanding on my part regarding TRIM and pfSense (in which case I'd appreciate being educated on the subject), I'm back where I started. Looking for a specific model of mSATA SSD that is known to have TRIM working on pfSense.
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Here is a very good and fresh thread about "enabling TRIM support in pfsense"
2.2.4 and how I enabled TRIMI'd like to add an SSD to my RCC VE-2440. If possible, I'd like to buy one which is known to have working TRIM [EDIT] in pfSense. Whilst looking around at various options, the SanDisk X110 caught my eye for several reasons, not least of which being it's current discounted sale price.
Why must it be a SSD and not a mSATA? There are three miniPCIe slots inside of the RCC VE-2440 and one
is capable to hold a mSATA drive. Less heat and also less power consuming too.Are there any other models of SSD that are known to have working TRIM?… I've tried reading through various threads, both here and elsewhere but I'm not having much success.
In former days there were mSATA and SSD drives that will be not really supporting TRIM, but all newer ones
will do that for sure and this can be seen as mostly confirmed on the vendors website. And then usually only
some SSDs or mSATAs are not really well working with only some rarely drives. I only know two of them;- Samsung850 EVO
- Samsung950 Pro M.2 MNVe
- PC Engines 16 GB mSATA drive (But this was last reported as well working now)
So you can see, often something is changing also and tis results are going more and more outdated.
So unless there's some fundamentally misunderstanding on my part regarding TRIM and pfSense (in which case I'd appreciate being educated on the subject), I'm back where I started. Looking for a specific model of mSATA SSD that is known to have TRIM working on pfSense.
Please read this named thread above on top of this post and dig out some perhaps interesting informations
for you. Ypou can also ask there for a well known working mSATA model.
Or must it 100% be a SanDisk X11 drive?Check out this article
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/04/30/which-ssd/
Its says virtually all drives support TRIM. It also says TRIM is disabled on SSD's when put into a RAID.Newer mSATA and SSD drives are coming with TRIM support for sure, but in former days this was not the
common case. And this older but cheaper SSDs and mSATAs are also in the market, able to buy. So for a
router someone could be thinking it will be a fine and cheap offering for his pfSense appliance, and there
for it would be not able to realize it really ton enable TRIM at the install, from what the pfSense developers
should know what kind of SSD or mSATA each of us are using? So it might be better to enable it manual by
the users or customers as I see it right. -
@BlueKobold:
Here is a very good and fresh thread about "enabling TRIM support in pfsense"
2.2.4 and how I enabled TRIMWhy must it be a SSD and not a mSATA? There are three miniPCIe slots inside of the RCC VE-2440 and one
is capable to hold a mSATA drive. Less heat and also less power consuming too.SSD simply means solid state drive. It could be a SATA SSD or an mSATA SSD. I will admit that in my first post I should have specified that the RCC VE-2440 only takes mSATA SSDs. I blame the late hour at which the post was written and the fact I've asked this question elsewhere (with the requirement of the mSATA format).
In former days there were mSATA and SSD drives that will be not really supporting TRIM, but all newer ones
will do that for sure and this can be seen as mostly confirmed on the vendors website. And then usually only
some SSDs or mSATAs are not really well working with only some rarely drives. I only know two of them;- Samsung850 EVO
- Samsung950 Pro M.2 MNVe
- PC Engines 16 GB mSATA drive (But this was last reported as well working now)
So you can see, often something is changing also and tis results are going more and more outdated.
Finding an SSD (mSATA or otherwise) that has TRIM isn't the issue. As I said in a previous reply, I'm looking to find a drive that is known to have working TRIM on pfSense… one that I am able to active TRIM on by following the various guides floating around.
Please read this named thread above on top of this post and dig out some perhaps interesting informations
for you. Ypou can also ask there for a well known working mSATA model.
Or must it 100% be a SanDisk X11 drive?Thanks for the link. I've actually read that thread before but the thought of asking for a drive recommendation hadn't occurred to me.
Aside from my dislike of Kingston, I have no real preference regarding brand or model as long as the price is reasonable and the capacity isn't minuscule.
Newer mSATA and SSD drives are coming with TRIM support for sure, but in former days this was not the
common case. And this older but cheaper SSDs and mSATAs are also in the market, able to buy. So for a
router someone could be thinking it will be a fine and cheap offering for his pfSense appliance, and there
for it would be not able to realize it really ton enable TRIM at the install, from what the pfSense developers
should know what kind of SSD or mSATA each of us are using? So it might be better to enable it manual by
the users or customers as I see it right.I'm not sure I understand the rest of this paragraph 100% but I'd like to address the last sentence specifically. You say that the customer should enable TRIM manually. Whilst I'm not sure I agree with that it did raise a question in my mind. All this second guessing and worrying about whether TRIM will or won't work in pfSense, whether I can or can't enable it… perhaps it's based on the flawed assumption that the issues with the 850 EVO drives aren't specific to the 850 EVO. I just assumed that it could be an issue with SSDs (of all types) in general. I know that there are/were TRIM issues with the Crucial MX100 on Ubuntu.
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I found one that was reported to work together with TRIM support under pfSense in that thread here it is a
Toshiba HG6 128GB mSata (THNSNJ128GMCU) -
May I throw in a few thoughts I think is going on, in this conversation?
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Early SSDs Did garbage collection, and cleaned out those old blocks by themselves, but did not support TRIM.
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Newer Drives, still support garbage collection by themselves, when idle, etc but now Support Trim, which forces a garbage collection on delete, make the process faster by identifying the blocks.
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Some OS's had drivers for TRIM, but since in the wild there was only TRIM and Non-Trim drives, they may have said do TRIM for APPLESSD and Don't for all others. Apple was notorious for this, forcing people for a while to buy only $$$ Apple SSDs.
Now at this point unless you are using a really old SSD, I believe all SSDs now support the TRIM protocol, and unlsess pfSense has an internal mechanism that allows to excludes drives, they all should work if they support TRIM out of the box.
My 2 Cents and I know nothing :) But at this point is has to be intentional not to support trim on specific SSDs because of bugs or something with the drive.
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@BlueKobold:
I found one that was reported to work together with TRIM support under pfSense in that thread here it is a
Toshiba HG6 128GB mSata (THNSNJ128GMCU)Excellent and thank you for asking on my behalf.
May I throw in a few thoughts I think is going on, in this conversation?
Any information on the subject is appreciated.
Now at this point unless you are using a really old SSD, I believe all SSDs now support the TRIM protocol, and unlsess pfSense has an internal mechanism that allows to excludes drives, they all should work if they support TRIM out of the box.
Unfortunately I don't think it's as clear cut as that. A few months back I wanted to replace the HDD in and install a Linux distro on a relatives laptop. One of the drives I considered was coincidentally another SanDisk drive. Specifically the Z400s. It had acceptable performance and was going for a really low price at the time but no matter where I looked or what forum or datasheet I read, I could not confirm that it did or didn't have TRIM. I never did get an answer, I ended up just getting another cheap drive.
My 2 Cents and I know nothing :) But at this point is has to be intentional not to support trim on specific SSDs because of bugs or something with the drive.
That was the case with the MX100 and Linux (that I mentioned in my previous post). At was related to an issue with async TRIM that could result in the SSD deleting data that hadn't been marked for deletion. The issue was at first thought to be a bug in the firmware of Samsung 850 Evo drives but it later transpired that the bug was in the Linux kernal itself. The bug also effected some models of Crucial SSD, including the MX100, so as a result they were blacklisted and prevented from using async TRIM.
There's more info on the subject here if you're interested - https://blog.algolia.com/when-solid-state-drives-are-not-that-solid/
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Totally OT: Extremely cool user name! 8-D
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I just did a build using a PC Engines APU2C4 board and pfSense 2.2.6.
I'm using a 30GB Intel 525 Series mSATA drive and tunefs reports that TRIM is enabled - I did have to manually enable it though.
The part number is SSDMCEAC030B301.
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I just did a build using a PC Engines APU2C4 board and pfSense 2.2.6.
Did you enable PowerD (hi adaptive or adaptive)?
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@BlueKobold:
I just did a build using a PC Engines APU2C4 board and pfSense 2.2.6.
Did you enable PowerD (hi adaptive or adaptive)?
Yes, I've got PowerD enabled with Hiadaptive.
After reading other posts, I was expecting to see errors in the log as I'm on 2.2.6 but I haven't seen any problems yet.
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I need to add something here that while not directly related to this on mSATA disks, it applies directly to M.2 PCI-e SSD's which I have been messing with for about 6 months. When it comes to them, I have mixed reviews since they come in several flavors and how problematic it can be loading windows on them. The comments I am going to make now, apply specifically to Samsung SX941 and SM951 M.2 SSD's which are both M-Key variants and operate at PCI-e devices. B-Key variants in my understanding are SATA.
Now, for the 2 Samsung variants I mentioned above, the reason I bring them up here is for 2 reasons, first let people know to expect issues installing software on them and second, neither of these two cards have onboard Bios in the traditional since of an HDD bios so I don't believe you get TRIM, S.M.A.R.T, etc. Why is this important is that adding a MBR is a tricky process that requires some advanced settings in the bios and installing windows from a Windows Installation bootable USB Drive. The goal of doing this is to create a Windows Bootmanager Partition which makes the devices bootable without an MBR.
Anyhow, if anyone is looking at M.2 for hard drives in their pfsense boxes, the 2 above are insanely fast but I would think issues would be had loading pfsense on to them.
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ASUS X99-E WS / USB 3.1 & Samsung 950 PRO Series M.2 2280 SSD - 512GB [PCIe 3.0 NVMe]
Running Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 without any problems.You need only to know for that the following things:
- NVMe M.2 SSD or AHCI M.2 SSD
- NMVe or AHCI M.2 slot
- PCIe 2.0 x2 or PCIe 3.0 x4
- slot dimensions likes M.2 2230, 2242 or 2280
(22 mm width and 30, 42 or 80 mm length)
This should be or most be matching together and then you will have a really fast system.
With pfSense or FreeBSD I really have no clue or experiences together with that M.2 SSDs.I only found that thread here in the forum about a Supermicro Xeon D-1500 platform together with
a M.2 SSD that wont boot and the install hangs or is be problematic. Link -
Me - Asus X99A with i7-5820k (Overclocked to 4.55ghz all cores)
Samsung SM951 NVMe M.2 PCIe 4x SSD (Samsung's fastest M.2 but its an OEM device) with WD Black DriveYour 950 pro contains a bios chip. The SX941 and SM951 do not. This is the difference. Prior to the release of the 950 pro, Asus chose to add support for these to SSD's but getting them bootable was a challenge since by default, they are not bootable drives. Once you get the windows boot manager loaded however, they run awesome. They run full PCIE 3.0 speed across 4x lanes.
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Been running a Samsung 840 EVO 120GB mSATA with pfSense 2.3 and TRIM enabled for a couple months. No problems to report so far. I had to manually enable TRIM via the CLI, but that was trivial to do and check. Originally there was a brand new 850 EVO 250GB in it, also with TRIM enabled, that got swapped out after a few weeks as it was overkill for my needs.
Of note: The 120GB drive was recycled from a production CentOS 6 server where it had been running for about 2 years with TRIM enabled. Manually enabling TRIM for that setup was required as well. Never had a problem, but also kept kernels and everything meticulously updated.
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I can finally update this thread with some new info. First of all, I need to say thank you to all of you who have helped me with advice and hardware recommendations (especially BlueKobold, thanks for the interesting and informative conversation).
Unfortunately I was only able to find one of the mSATA SSDs, recommended in this thread, in stock. The price was stupidly high though so I ended up going with the 128GB SanDisk X110 (SD6SF1M-128G-1022I) after all.
Man are these drives tiny!
I installed pfSense 2.3 and then followed the steps detailed by The POO in his guide (linked below). I added one extra step though. Before manually enabling TRIM, I took the opportunity to see if it was working as default. It wasn't. I followed the guide and everything worked like a charm. TRIM is confirmed as working on the X110 from the shell.
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=97554.0
Totally OT: Extremely cool user name! 8-D
(assuming you're talking to me)
Thanks!
It's a little homage to a friendly neighbourhood pfSense guru, gonzopancho, as he's helped me out several times in the past and he does a lot of good for the community… Also, the mental image of a Poncho made out of Gazpacho is really funny to me for some reason. Of all the things you could make a Poncho out of, Gazpacho has got to be one of the most impractical choices.