mSATA SSD - 60Gb OCZ Nocti - failing with TrueCrypt

[ccmuk]

I recently installed a 60Gb OCZ Notci mSATA SSD in a T520, as the secondary drive (the primary is a 320Gb OCZ SSD). It worked for about 10 minutes until an attempt to re-format the mSATA drive as a TrueCrypt encrypted partition - it got ~85% of the way through the formatting, then failed. Following that the mSATA drive was completely dead and couldn't be recognised in a number of machines.

We replaced the drive with a new one, and tried again, with almost identical behaviour - TrueCrypt formatting reached ~90% then failed, and then the drive becomes completely unusable.

Can anyone report success or other failures using this (or other mSATA) drives with TrueCrypt?

It it likely it's a problem with our particular T520? I'm reluctant to try (and destroy) a third drive.

Thanks

[ZaZ]

I'm curious if OCZ had anything to say about this? You might want to try the OCZ forums. They're generally pretty helpful over there.

[ccmuk]

An update on this - the distributor has been told by OCZ that the Nocti mSATA drive is not compatible with TrueCrypt partition encryption, and are giving me a refund.

I'd be interested if anyone has had success with any brand of mSATA disk and TrueCrypt in a T520.

- c.

[loyukfai]

Wow this is interesting, I always thought that the drive doesn't matter when one uses TrueCrypt...

After all, what TC does to the drive is just reading and writing data, and if I'm not mistaken, the operations are still done through the standard OS calls/mechanism.

The drive shouldn't care if the user is writing 1 or 100,000 Word documents to it, as long as there is enough space.

I suspect something else, maybe that model has some inherent problems that is manifested by the operations of TC formatting...?

Do you have another computer to try...?

Cheers.

[sjthinkpader]

SSD controllers look for "blank" area (11111) to write since this is the fastest. Encrypted software make data on the disk look random. So it would get very confused or eventually take very long time to write because it is doing erase and block moves constantly. I would not use encryption on a SSD at all. TRIM probably doesn't work either.

If you want to use encryption, stay with HDD.

[loyukfai]

Encrypted software make data on the disk look random. So it would get very confused or eventually take very long time to write because it is doing erase and block moves constantly.

AFAIK, on modern SSD, the encrypted software doesn't get to tell which block to write or erase due to the wear-levelling mechanism in the disk controller.

I thought the software would just make "000011110" become "111100001" (okay, it's overly simplified), so it shouldn't matter to the drive at all...?

Could you elaborate...?

Cheers.

[sjthinkpader]

The SSD controllers looks for "11111" first during write cycles because it is the fastest. But encryption place data randomly instead of sequentially. So eventually the controller cannot find any "clean" free space (11111). Then it starts to do erase on every write. This makes the drive look busy all the time because erase takes a long time.

For NAND flash used in SSDs, write is 1-0 and erase is 0-1. Write is fast and erase is slow. New flash start with all 1's and TRIM does erase in the background. TRIM doesn't help in encryption because whole drive encryption place data everywhere.

[loyukfai]

The process may become slow, but I think it shouldn't fail altogether, which is what the OP is experiencing.

Cheers.

[sjthinkpader]

In order to erase a block, controller has to use a spare block to move the data. Eventually the controller is just overwhelmed.

[loyukfai]

There should be enough sectors anyway and it shouldn't fail that way. It doesn't seem to be uncommon to run TrueCrypt on SSD, and this is the first time I heard about it.

If you google "truecrypt ssd format fail", this thread is the top and only relevant result.

Cheers.

[ccmuk]

What's interesting is the primary drive is a OCZ SSD as well, and is working fine with TrueCrypt, so it's most likely something specific to the T520 or the mSata drive, rather than SSD's in general with TrueCrypt.

I wondered if the TrueCrypt format operation over-loads the drve, and it overheats. The location of the mSATA drive on the T520 doesn't provide a whole lot of airflow.

Anyway, we're still looking for a TrueCrypt compatible mSATA drive for the machine - can anyone report success with other models in a T520 with TrueCrypt?

Thanks