OCZ Agility 3 / SandForce 2281 on Linux?

[gweaver]

Has anyone with an OCZ Agility 3 (or any other SandForce 2281 based SSD) tried using it under Linux?

I'm very tempted by a 60GB SSD and the latest SandForce drives look ideal, but I'm a Linux user and apparently some people are having issues with the Vertex 3 under Linux. The Agility 3 and Corsair Force Series 3 drives use the same controller as the Vertex 3, so it follows that other drives with the same controller and firmware may well have the same issues.

There are a couple of threads on the OCZ forums about this, but I can't post the addresses because I'm a noob.

In summary, it seems that the drives don't play nice with the ATA identify and softreset commands. The problems may not affect older kernels, as one user has reported that the Vertex 3 works well with Debian 6.0.1, which uses kernel 2.6.32. Unfortunately kernel 2.6.32 isn't used in recent mainstream linux distributions, and doesn't support TRIM - TRIM support was introduced with kernel 2.6.33.

[richieuk]

There are a couple of threads on the OCZ forums about this, but I can't post the addresses because I'm a noob.

Send me the address via PM and I'll post it for you I'm getting one and I was hoping to use it to dualboot Apple OS-X and Windows 7, but seeing as OS-X is Unix based, I may be buggered.

[Bagnaj97]

Send me the address via PM and I'll post it for you I'm getting one and I was hoping to use it to dualboot Apple OS-X and Windows 7, but seeing as OS-X is Unix based, I may be buggered.

The OS-X kernel is completely separate from Linux so this issue wont affect you. That's not to say there wont be other problems though. As with any purchase you can never do too much research.

[shaithis]

Send me the address via PM and I'll post it for you I'm getting one and I was hoping to use it to dualboot Apple OS-X and Windows 7, but seeing as OS-X is Unix based, I may be buggered.

Unless you use a hacked OSX kernel, you won't get that to work unless you use the drive as part of a raid on a Mac-compatible raid controller as you would need to split it into volumes. You can only boot retail OSX (i.e. an Original Mac OSX disk you bought!) via a GPT partitioned drive and Windows will not boot from them unless you have an EFI based board.....and even if you did, the current Mac bootloaders for PC will not work with PC EFI yet.

Raid lets you get around this as the various raid volumes appear as separate physical drives to the BIOS/EFI/OS.

OSX did have issues with SSDs early on, although I have heard of no recent issues.

[gweaver]

Send me the address via PM and I'll post it for you

Thanks. I would, but I don't have permission to PM yet either! Maybe after a few more posts...

If you Google "Vertex3 (sometimes) not detected on Linux boot" you'll find it. There is also another thread on the same topic ("Ubuntu 11.04 + OCZ Vertex 3 = intermittent kernel load failure") and a bug report on Launchpad with the title "[natty] OCZ Vertex 3 not detected using BIOS emulation".

It'll be interesting to see whether OS X takes issue with these drives as well. I can't imagine Apple going out of their way to workaround any bugs in the Sandforce controller implementation of the ATA protocol - unless they sold Sandforce drives themselves.

My guess is that this is a bug that can and hopefully will be fixed by firmware updates from Sandforce. Fingers crossed these issues will be resolved sooner rather than later.

[gweaver]

I've just re-read the Ubuntu(Launchpad) bug report and there are some reports that suggest that the latest firmware update improves matters, though there is nothing in the release notes for the firmware that sounds relevant.

I'd still be interested to hear from anyone using the Agility 3 on Linux (preferably Ubuntu). I'm planning to wait for fully baked firmware before parting with my hard earned.