[gentoo-user] Marvell 9128 controller and SSD in Gentoo

[Paul Hartman]

Hi,

I obtained a Samsung 830 128GB SSD, it supports SATA3 interface, but
haven't installed it yet. My motherboard has the Marvell 9128 SATA3
chipset. I read a lot of FUD about this chipset, but it is always
exclusively from the perspective of Windows users complaining about
Marvell drivers, lack of TRIM support in the driver, etc. (Official
statement on the capability of the chip itself is covered by NDA,
apparently...) The driver should be irrelevant in Linux since I'm just
using ahci for everything, but limitations of the chipset or BIOS
implementation itself... who knows?

I understand the Marvell 9128 chip does not reach the full speed of
the SATA3, but it should still be faster than the onboard SATA2 ports
even if it's not as fast as the drive's maximum speeds. Lack of TRIM
would be bad, though, and any bugs causing disconnects or data
corruption obviously would be unacceptable to me.

Are any of you using this chipset in Linux with SSD and can tell me if
it works properly for you and has working TRIM commands passed through
to the SSD?

Thanks