M17xR1 dual Vertex 3 RAID 0 crappy performance issues

Howdy,

I did some searching and see that the M17XR2 is having SSD issues w/ the intel controller but supposedly the R1 shouldn't be having issues. I just did a fresh install on a pair of Vertex 3 240G OEM drives and notice w/ HDTune 4.61 I only get around 230ish MB/s versus the 500ish MB/s I was expecting in RAID 0. I know the M17xR1 only has SATA2 ports so at best these drives should be running around 250ish MB/s individually but about double the speed when in RAID 0. Anyone experience a similar issue w/ the M17xR1?

I've got the QX9300 CPU over clocked to 2.93GHz but CPU-Z shows my multiplexer keeps jumping around turning it into a 1.6GHz CPU instead so I don't know if they're related or not.


BIOS: A07
Used all Dell drivers for Nvidia chipset (Storage driver 11.1.0.43, RAID driver 11.1.0.43 and RAID ROM is 10.0.0.35.)
WEI score for SSDs was only 7.5 not 7.9 so that was my first clue I had slower then expected performance.

I may just reinstall on a single SSD and see if my performance improves because RAID 0 is messing things up.

-Qwkhyena

 

In RAID your SSD's won't use TRIM, so performance will degrade, use them solo, but why are you using Vertex 3's in a SATA 2 laptop? Your performance is being chopped in half!

 

I checked my system's TRIM settings via command-line by typing fsutil.exe behavior query DisableDeleteNotify and it returned 0 so I'm pretty sure that I'm using TRIM even though it's in RAID 0. I also verified that my HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\msahci start wasn't set to 0 (it was still on the default value of 3) so I changed that to zero as well so I'd use the AHCI not IDE settings. But still no love.

As far as using Vertex 3's in a SATA 2 laptop, I'd rather spend the same amount of money and future proof then to buy Vertex 2's and get the same performance. Either way SATA 2 is my bottleneck here but maybe next year I'll buy another laptop and then I'll get the full power of these SSDs.

I'm going to rebuild the whole thing from scratch again but this time I won't use the RAID just AHCI. Maybe I'll see better performance w/ a single SSD

BTW, I did notice that the Win7 installer disc didn't align to 1024 so maybe that's why I'm getting crappy performance.

-Q

 

So I broke up the RAID 0 volume, repartitioned the SSDs using the recovery console and specified the alignment = 1024. Did Win7 install and DID NOT install any Dell drivers this time. I did make sure the BIOS was configured for Native AHCI mode and Win7 was using a start value of 0 (the installer picked that up for me and set it correctly thankfully.)

HDTune results were abysmal at around 130MB/s ish. Wasn't happy at all about that. Now I know why I'm getting around 230 ish MB/s when in RAID 0.

I did some more searching on the forums and found mention of "Throttlestop" for the M17xR1's CPU bouncing so I'll give that a shot later for my CPU issues. I'm going to go back to RAID 0 and this time NOT install the nVidia controller drivers. Also using a partition alignment of 1024 this time too. Looks like maybe the Firmware version of 2.09 might be causing some issues w/ the SSDs. Like an idiot I flashed them w/ the latest firmware before trying them out for size.

-Q

 

For more information on OCZ SSDs and proper use:

Guide THE BASIC GUIDE & FAQ - ABC for OCZ SSD

But as others have mentioned, Vertex 3 drives in a non SATAIII system is simply a waste unless you plan on migrating them to another system later. You could save money by returning the Vertex 3s and getting Vertex 2s.

Here is more information in relation to Vertex 3s on an NForce chipset, this is a desktop board and not in RAID but it might supply some suggestions you can try:

Support Question HELP: Vertex 3 underperforming

 

Thx for the advice Beradon. I do plan to eventually put those drives in something else (the cost of Vertex 3 compared to the Vertex 2s was a wash as far as I'm concerned. Eventually they'll go into something w/ SATA3 ports on them )
As far as the thread over on OCZ, I tried most of the things they recommended (change to AHCI, do a secure erase and so on ..) w/ no luck. I went ahead and posted a new thread in the Vertex 3 OCZ forums so we'll see what they say. Seems to me that the SATA ports are acting like SATA 1 not SATA 2 ports!

Oh ya...quick ATTO screen shot.

 

Now that I see what you're talking about, I had a similar experience before I turned on write-back cache, I'm on an Intel controller though. I'm not sure where the option would be on the NV controller.

Gimme a minute, I'll see if I can figure out what it is.

EDIT:

I cant seem to find any specific mention of a location, however I do see multiple mentions that the generation of NVRAID controller that you have does not have very good performance overall. It might be worth going single-drive. But see if you can find that write-back cache option.

 

Start-Computer-Right click on applicable disk-Properties-Hardware Tab-Select disk-Policies and then check/select Enable Write Caching . . .

 

I think you gents are on to something. I went to the drive properties like Revelator said and changed the write cache from "enabled" to "disabled". It actually was a bit faster by about 4KB/s for what it's worth. So I started looking around in the Device Manager RAID controller properties to see if you could disable/enable caching at the nvraid controller level and look what I found...


Looks like my SATA controller is operating at a SATA 1 speeds!! See how the speed test says Max is 150 MB/s. What's up w/ that??!!

I'm pretty sure the M17x R1 was SATA2 compliant.

 

Someone with an R1 will have to answer that question, I'm not sure if the number of SATAII ports is limited (like the R3 only has 1 SATAIII port) or if you have to enable it in some form.

You could take a look in your BIOS settings to see if there is an option.