Actually, I meant that the information gleaned from my vendors at NAB was news to me, not in the general sense. I am running a MacBook Pro with 10.6.8 and had a demonstration from OWC right on show floor regarding their auto-leveling bios and how the trim function is completely unnecessary and perhaps even a hinderance to the technology already built into the controller on those drives. The Crucial line of drives does not have this technology but a more ad-hoc based method which requires the user to manually garbage collect and level, i.e. auto-trim not necessary.
The ubiquitous misinformation found on the Internet might lead some to abandon their preferred OS in order to take advantage of better storage technology.
Last week I followed the instructions in the KB and activated AHCI, at first all went good, but yesterday something strange happened: I couldn’t import audio files in Cubase anymore (File → Import → Audio file), both mp3 and Wav, the importing started regularly, but after reaching the 100% of the import process, no track was added, and Cubase and Windows both froze completely.
So I reverted to IDE, both on Regedit (back to Start = 2) and in the BIOS, and then back to AHCI, and all went back OK, Cubase working as expected!
Anyone with an idea on what happened?
Paolo
PS I have 1 OCZ Agility SSD for System/Programs, and 3 regular HDD: 1 for projects, 1 for samples, plus 1 external USB HDD for backups.
Interesting thread. FWIW, my studio DAW (home built) began it’s life with an OCZ vertex 60 gig SSD for the Cdrive. Ran perfectly, no issues at all and I didn’t tweak anything. The other 6 drives in the system were all SATA drives (4 of them are WD 600 gig caviar blue drives paired up into 2 raid 0 arrays, the last 2 drives are a pair of WD Raptors, also paired up as a Raid 0 array.
The first two RAID0 arrays are dedicated to streaming sample lib’s, the raptor pair is used for audio recording and, I’ve found, it’s totally overkill.
Again, FWIW. last year I upgraded the SSD drive to an Intel 120 gig SSD (went with the intel because of lot’s of internet posts/reviews that talked about other brands turning into bricks, several mentioned that the intel drives weren’t quite as fast but seemed to be reliable). Copied the sys drive over the new Intel SSD, came right up and has worked flawlessly ever since.
The last FWIW…my mobile laptop came from ADK (jschild is frequently on the forum). It’s run flawlessly from day one and when I upgradede the studio DAW drive I recycled the old 60 gig SSD into a tiny external SATA case and have used it repeatedly for live recording job’s. Recorded 24 chan’s at 24 bit, 48k numerous times and never a hitch. I do run an Alesis HD24 as backup but haven’t needed it yet.
Lastly, to go back to my mention of the raptor raid0 array as being overkill…I’ve used a single eSATA drive (Seagate 500 gig, 7200 rpm) on many many recording job’s and found it to be plenty fast enough. Same thing for the SSD drive. From a measured data throughput standpoint, the raid0 array is substantially faster, but my experience on actual jobs has been that a good eSATA drive (7200 rpm, decent size cache) seems to be entirely adequate.
I spoke too early : This is what happens to me exactly:
immediately after AHCI activation, all is good;
then, if I just restart the PC, all is good again;
but when I completely shut down the PC, and then start it, all disks (both SSD and regular HDD) become extremely slow in accessing files (for example, in Cubase, importing audio files takes forever);
if I revert to IDE, and then back to AHCI, at first all is good again , but then I’m back to previous 1 → 2 → 3.
Anyone can help me please (see other hard/soft details in my previous message)?
I noticed in the KB article, it mentioned that you might try a fresh re-load of W7. Not the most welcome suggestion perhaps but I have no idea what would cause the problem you describe.
if you change from IDE to AHCI, it’s recommended to reformat. Windows uses specific drivers to access the hardware based on if it’s IDE in AHCI in most cases. Although it usually works after changing it, there are many performance issues and driver problems that will most definitely come up if you change it.
: This is what happens to me exactly:
, but then I’m back to previous 1 → 2 → 3.