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Why such SLOW write times with 3x X25-M RAID 0?

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

I've got three 80 GB X25-M SSDs in RAID 0 using the SATA RAID option on my motherboard (Intel ICH10R.) I flashed the drives to the latest firmware on 3-4-10. I am using Vista64 on an i7-920 system.

READ speed is fantastic; 4k WRITE speed is DISMAL - like 4 mb/sec - OR LESS- no matter what benchmark I use. Using AS SSD benchmark I get the following results- What am I doing wrong? Is there some setting I goofed up somehow? I spent $650 on these drives and my system is WAY SLOWER now than it was with a WD Raptor!

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

I suspect your partitions are not properly aligned to erase boundaries based on the screenshot of AS SSD (31k - BAD).

Use this calculator to figure out proper alignment for your disks and then repartition:

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157

View solution in original post

15 REPLIES 15

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

I'm not familiar with the capabilities of various tools out there, but just make sure that if you're not going to re-install the OS from scratch, that you're using a tool that puts the system image in the right place. A tool that is not alignment aware will overwrite any fancy partition manipulation you do.

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

Here are the results after aligning - the partition has a 128k offset.

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

ok, now the benches look more in line, but still not stunning on the write side fro RAID. Are you using software RAID? I would also play around with the various intel drivers to see if you can eke out any more performance gains. Are these G1 or G2 drives? That could make a difference in the write speeds too.

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

You could also try to run SSD optimizer on each drive seprately before RAIDing them to get a write boost. unfortunately, I don't beleive SSD toolbox supports trimming RAIDed drives yet.