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

idata · ‎03-09-2010

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!

idata · ‎03-09-2010

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

idata · ‎03-09-2010

Well, using RAID you loose the TRIM support. I don't know if you have used those drives before or they are brand new. In any case the performance is very bad. I would suggest you to check each SSD seperately and clean them. Then RAID two of them at a time (try all three combinations 1st with 2nd, 1st with 3rd, 2nd with 3rd) and compare the performance.

idata · ‎03-09-2010

They are brand new drives, less than a week old. Hard to imagine they are worn out already. OS is Vista 64 which doesn't have TRIM anyway. Reviews of these drives in three- and four-drive arrays show much better write performance. I must be doing something wrong. What Intel driver package should I be using? There's Intel MATRIX and also Intel RAPID STORE packages, etc etc but no guidance on which to use when...... I am using what the motherboard mfg. (ASUS) provides on their support download web site... wish I could find someone who has actual knowledge of this.

idata · ‎03-09-2010

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

idata · ‎03-10-2010

Alignment, OK, I read the articles and learned something new! For certain my drive (fake raid array) does NOT have the "correct" offset, I checked and you were right about that. Whether this is the cause of the performance issue remains to be seen but it certainly seems plausible. It's a bit of work to image the drive, repartition it with the correct offset, then put the system image back on but, OK, I'll give it a shot. I have so much useful software installed that I hate to start with a clean Vista install. I'll report back in a day or two when I accomplish this. Many thanks!

idata · ‎03-10-2010

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 · ‎03-10-2010

Here, this util looks like it can do it:

http://www.tuxyturvy.com/blog/index.php?/archives/59-Aligning-Windows-Partitions-Without-Losing-Data...

idata · ‎03-10-2010

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

idata · ‎03-10-2010

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 · ‎03-11-2010

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.

idata · ‎03-11-2010

I couldn't put my original partition image back on the aligned partitions without all kinds of trouble. So I restored the partition completely from an Acronis image then used a GPARTED under Debian live CD to offset the partition by 1025 k. This worked OK. However write performance is a bit better but still slow BOG SLOW. Maybe I'll try a hardware RAID card, I have an open PCIe slot, but they're all so damned expensive for decent ones...

idata · ‎03-11-2010

Anyone here know if using an Adaptec RAID 5405 will provide any significant performance increase over using the fake raid from my motherboard? (especially write performance!)

idata · ‎03-12-2010

Use HDDErase 3.3 version to fix those SSDs. I had same problem with Raid 0 2xSSD 80gb drives and nobody was able to help here. For some reason a lot of people thought that Intel X25M-80Gb was G2 but G1. I had same bad write process.

Befor you use HDDErase 3.3 which will properly format your SSDs switch from Raid to IDE in your BIOS.

After doing this your SSD will perform better then brand new one out of Intel Fab.

idata · ‎03-30-2010

I broke apart the motherboard-based RAID, connected the drives as IDE, booted into Vista and used the HDDErase program and also the Intel SSD toolbox to condition the drives. This had **NO** impact on performance. None at all. These are new drives, I wouldn't an erase program would speed them up.

idata · ‎04-08-2010

/message/89496# 89496 Re: Why such poor benchmarks with three X25M RAID0 on Adaptec 5405?

Adaptec tech support pointed out that I had mistakenly set up my three X25-M drives as a SPANNED PARTITION and not RAID0! I GOOFED! Changing over to RAID0 and copying the backed-up drive image back onto the array did the trick!

idata · ‎04-08-2010

I just got 3 off them and tested with a nVidia drive controller on a 790i SLI ULTRA PWN and here it is:

Single Drive:

2X RAID0:

3X RAID0:

I think it could be better with a PCI-e RAID controller. What do you guys think?