SanDisk Extreme 240GB is not passing TRIM commands

I brought a SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD a week ago and I read in the manual that it had TRIM feature available in it. According to this feature, the SSD will automatically delete the user deleted memory pages so that when new data is inserted in the SSD, it won’t have to replace the old memory spaces, but will have to write whole new amount of data directly. This will enhance the performance as well as transfer speed of the SSD. This f3eature was to be executed by the operating system in the computer. I have Windows 7 in my computer and I don’t think that is using the TRIM feature and this SSD is working as normal SSD. Can someone tell me how to activate the TRIM feature in SanDisk Extreme 240GB?

When SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD was produced the testing team had found that this SSD had speed that was too high. So the technician to optimize the performance tried to reduce its speed. But the tests failed and the SSD continued to make the SSD in the high speed that it originally ran at.

Due to this problem, putting the features like auto erase cycles and so on was difficult for the technicians. Various drivers were designed to keep the speed in control as well as maintain the stability of the SSD, but the SSD failed to come down and work at the normal speeds. Even the resetting of the firmware for the SSD didn’t help much.

The developers of the SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD have added some new type of NAND support and LOG support using which the hardware handling and internal read buffering have been well maintained. Also the block counts manage and the power management of this SSD is the best from rest of the SSDs available at this time. Actually, SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD was the best SSD of its time with least SSDs that would come close to it. Developers had included various features that would help in better power management and other functions necessary for its operations. But the sole feature that they lacked was that of having the TRIM feature in it.

Actually I tried the SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD with the series 5 firmware that the SanDisk had released some time ago. This firmware had upgraded the performance f the SSD by a noticeable level and it actually helped to make the hard disk work better. I think that this SandForce based SSD was easily able to perform much better than SSDs with Marvell controllers in them. I think that the developers of SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD were so in rush to bring out the best SSD in market with highest performance speed and other features that they forgot to implement the feature of TRIM in it.

The issue of SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD not having TRIM feature as per what was advertised had taken many users by storm. This issue was discussed on many forums, websites, blogs and other such sources. People have been asking the developers via email and online posts but still there has been no firmware that will give the proper feature of TRIM in this SSD. I hope the developers are taking notice of this issue and will release the firmware that will enable the TRIM in this SSD soon. If the TRIM feature is provided in this SSD, not only will it enhance the performance of the SSD considerably, but also increase the security that we provide to the data in this SSD.

People haven’t noticed that there is a feature by name VANTAGE ATER SE in SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD. The SE in the above name of the feature stands for secure erase. Actually this secure erase also works like the TRIM feature. But the performance is not provided similar to it. It will erase the deleted pages and create an erase cycle. Though it sounds like TRIM, let me tell you that it is nowhere close to the TRIM feature. Also the erase cycle created by the secure erase won’t run in the background like TRIM.

The TRIM was not just designed to delete the remaining pages from the SSD but it was designed also to rebuild corrupt or improperly deleted memory pages from SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD. This thing cannot be done by the Secure Erase that is given the developers in this SSD. I ran HD Tune Pro tests to see if it can rebuild the broken or corrupt memory pages in the SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD, but I have to say that it too failed to do so. Also after running this utility, I’ll say that the performance of the SSD has not improved but has rather gone down a bit. So I think that TRIM was the one feature that would have changed how SSDs work.

I tried benchmarking the SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD to see how the performance is with different softwares and different processes running on the SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD. I got highest speed of 432 MB/s when running images for the SSD in the Windows Picture viewer. The pictures were running in slideshow format which would require the SSD to perform in bursts. Then I checked the speed while running a video from the SSD. The speed that SSD gave was that of 305 MB/s which is actually great. I checked the speed for other processes like video editing, playing games, listening to music and so on. The speed was quite enough to run smooth operations.

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The speed that SSD gave was that of 305 MB/s which is actually great. I checked the speed for other processes like video editing, playing games, listening to music and so on. The speed was quite enough to run smooth operations.

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You tried the SSD’s speed when the SSD was almost empty. It must be having an operating system and some data that you are trying to check speed of. But try the speed of the SSD when it is full at different levels. For example, when the SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD is 25% full, 50% full and so on. I think this would help us better if we know how the SSD acts when we fill the SSD with stuff.

Various tests are done on SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD to test its speed at various levels after it was filled with data. The results showed that the speed and the performance of the SSD weren’t affected much and the speed of transfer wasn’t much affected. The performance and the speed were reduced by just 10% to 15% when it was filled up to 80% with data. I think this is a great result. With TRIM successfully implemented in this SSD, I think SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD would have had been the best SSD available in the market. I hope it is brought out in the next firmware release by SanDisk.