Port 0 / Sata III Speeds Dropping To Sata II Speeds

To which I would reply- Puss In Boots - Oooo Cat [Cycle] - YouTube (my kid loves this)

 

Haha - yeah, maybe more like that...I was tryin' to be "restrained" lol - man, that German kid is a bit "off the charts"......

 

Well, havent unboxed it yet but the new rig arrived today (yay!!! - Father Dell-mas keeps his promises!)....sata II drives. I got the Samsung 470's (Dell PM810's) so I wouldnt be able to test out for sata III dropout ...unless I play about with putting my C300 256gb on both ports at some point in the future.

Actually, I know they arent Sata III drives but I am quite pleased that I got these ones because I do love Samsung products - they have always done well for me and I trust the brand even if they are kinda rebadged as PM810 for Dell.....same drive just not as fancy to look at!

 

Cool. Glad you got it. Samsung products are excellent and that includes their SSD lineup.

If you run SATA-II SSD in RAID0, isn't the read/write performance roughly the same as a single SATA-III, around 6.0GB/s?

 

Im not exactly sure how it will work, Brother Fox. I imagine that they will provide some seriously fast SSD wickedness in raid 0 - even only being sata II. With that said, I also imagine that if Sata III drives with read/writes over 500+ etc were raided, the performance would be blisteringly fast...

I think Amo's initial CDM benches using his Sata III Liteon drives shows something in the region of 850+ for seq. reads.....cant see my Sata II drives getting anywhere near that mark.

We (I) will see when I run a couple of SSD benches...

 

Looking forward to seeing and hearing about it, Stevie.

 

Actually, I just had a very pleasant surprise!

My packing slip showed "Samsung PM810", so I took this as fact. I didn't think any further of it, until I wanted to check my array. Bearing in mind, the PM810 drives are simply a Dell version of a 470 Series Sata II 3gbp/s drive - their current Sata III drive "offering" is/was a LiteOn Vangogh (according to the parts list at the start of the owners lounge).

Now, here is the very interesting part - not just for me but for anyone considering a SSD from Dell.

My replacement system has actually shipped with x2 Samsung PM830's (Retail version being Samsung 830, of course!). These are Sata III 6gbp/s drives and are showing as such under the advanced tab in Iastor - proof that Dell are shipping these beauties in new M18x orders.

I deleted the Serial Number of the Drive, for obvious reasons, but check it out......

Spoiler

I know that currently, the US website shows that the Raid 0 SSD options are $800 for only sata II 3gbp/s drives, but if you guys can get these 830 drives at the same price, it obviously pays to get your SSD's from Dell, bearing in mind the warranty/peace of mind aspect it would bring - especially, given that NewEgg are selling the retail version of the same drive at close to $400 each .....the only thing is, I don't know HOW you can specify what kinda drive you get when you order! - I think it was touched upon by someone, that it would be a good idea if we could see the make/model/version of the SSD's available on the website whilst configuring.

I may have just fell extremely fortunate in getting the SSD's I got recently, I'm not sure. All I can say is that if Dell are using these drives as a standard, that's a great way to deal with the fact that alot of us choose to buy "after-market" drives.

Also, given their slim form factor, at <7mm, they could fit into any other ultra-portable laptops you may own - now, or in the future.

As for the drives themselves, they havent dropped port yet - I will keep a check on them (I had thought I wasnt gonna have to, as the PM810's on my packing slip were Sata II drives).

Quick reviews of the drive available:
Samsung 830 256GB SATA 3 SSD Review - Make Way For Incredible Performance & Lower Prices - The SSD Review
Samsung 830 Series 256GB SATA III SSD Review - Samsung's SSD Of Ebony Excellence - Legit Reviews

And from Samsung
Specs - Solid State Drives MZ-7PC256N | Samsung Memory & Storage

Both suggest extremely good performance from a non-sandforce based drive. Anyone considering a SSD could look at these as it seems they are a good retail price too....maybe not the top of the charts for SSD's but pretty good, afaik.

Will post up some figures when I can. Suffice to say that if Dell are shipping with these drives "as standard" now , they are, IMHO, a very attractive proposition as that of buying your system with stock HDD and upgrading yourself! - Well done Dell on choice of hardware!

Merry Christmas to all!

 

Excellent, Steve! I'm so glad it turned out that way.

Hopefully, these are standard M18x SSD drives now. If so, they need to update the order configuration page to reflect SATA-III 6GB/s drives are being shipped. Showing the slower drives would definitely be a disincentive for anyone to order an M18x with SSD. I think if they were identified as Samsung drives in addition to SATA-III 6GB/s they would sell even more. Samsung has a reputation for producing rock solid SSD.

 

Yeah, I couldnt agree more with more distinct labelling. I know that for me, as a consumer, I like to know what components I am getting instead of "grey info" - I wonder if anyone else recently got an M18x order with a Dell SSD installed....wonder what they got, be it a Sammy or a Liteon. I Imagine the older PM810 (470) simply was superceeded with the PM830. Wether Dell still have an alternative to use would be handy to know.

I certainly agree that Samsung products are among the very best - given the choice, I would 99.9% of the time choose a Sammy because of reliability/quality reasons.

 

Very helpful thread. Read all 16 pages. I purchased the m18x right when it came out in April, and explicitly asked a Dell Rep about the SSDs being SATA III. Based on their ignorance concerning the matter and the website stating SATA II, I avoided buying the SSD from Dell during system configuration and figured I would have to buy aftermarket.....to which I am just getting around to doing.

My research lead me to this thread....which as of 4 minutes ago I just purchased the Samsung 830. I must say, I'm a little worried about installing it and what the precise order of steps are that I will need to follow but that is for me to figure out.

Thanks all for great discussion! Rest assured if I get one iota, nay, a whiff of dropping to SATA II I will make my contributory debut on the Notebook Review forums.

/bite

 

BiteTyson - welcome to NBR. We are glad you joined us and look forward to hearing more from you in the Alienware Community.

I'm glad you found this thread useful. We have threads to assist with the setup of your Samsung 830 SSD. There are several threads, but here is one that has loads of information: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...d0-questions-troubleshooting-discussions.html. If you need more help than what is already there, post in that thread and I'm sure you will get all the assistance you need.

I customarily share helpful links when greeting newer members. Please take a few minutes to click through them. I hope that you and other readers find the links useful in jump-starting participation in the Community. Again, welcome to NBR.

USEFUL THREADS FOR FORUM MEMBERS

All members reading this post are encouraged to become familiar with the rules for our forum. The information on how to search the forum is especially useful, as it should help members find information quickly, avoid creating new threads to ask questions that have already been answered in another thread, as well locating appropriate threads to participate in an established discussion.

Forum Rules - *PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING* | Alienware General Information & HOW TO: Search the forum - *PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING*

Reputation Points/Power and User Titles | Forum Guide and "How-To" | How To Properly Insert an Image Into Your Post | NBR Marketplace

 

i have been having this "port has dropped out" syndrom on my raid 1 array since the first days i purchased the m18x from dell. i am talking about mechanical drives and not ssd, so hope i am still inline with this thread. at first thinking it was the hard drive i had them rma and exchanged. the repalcements exhibited the same thing. thinking again it was another bad hard drive / batch i had them replaced again. i went through 3 different drive replacements and still get the a particular port that keeps dropping from the array.

i ordered the system with the standard 320gb hard drive to replace it with "aftermarket" drives due to pricing and brand interests, of course. all were new from newegg.
all drives are / were brand new. i went through;

2 pairs of samsun 1TB 5400 rpm
a pair of WD Black 750GB 7200rpm
and now (currently installed and simply gave up on this) a pair of Hitatchi 750GB 7200rpm.

the darn raid array will simply drop one of the ports. it seems to always be port 0. it is completely random and i am not sure if it is tied to how full the raid array becomes. sometimes several times a week. other times once per 2 months. after 2 months of no drops it just dropped and it is rebuilding the array as i type this. i am really fed up with this issue and i am pretty sure it is not a hard drive problem but something related to the m18x, instead. i can actually hear the hard drive lose power and spin down when this bug occurs. then the system will freeze for about 1 minute or so until the raid realizes what happened. the port is missing. it is required to power-boot the system, either cycle a sleep session or reboot. during the power-boot power is restored to the port and drive starts up to rebuild the array. oftentimes even with power restored it will drop out again during the array rebuilding process.

i had the entire system replaced due to this issue when i was in the 21 day return policy and of course even the brand new replacement system exhibits the same thing. instability is not acceptable to me. games is not the only thing this system runs. i don't know what to do!

 

You're in the right thread. Dell_Bill is looking for a few systems to capture. Hit him up.

 

ARGH - assuming your original drive is a SATA III and fits the criteria outlined... as johnksss suggested, send a PM to Dell-Bill_B and follow the instructions in his post (above). I don't know that they have even one of the two captures needed yet.

 

I'm running 2 240Gb Crucial M4's and I was suffering this issue until I ran the LPM registry fix.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port0]
"LPM"=dword:00000000
"LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
"DIPM"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port1]
"LPM"=dword:00000000
"LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
"DIPM"=dword:00000000

and it has been running at SATAIII since.

 

This works on some, but not all.

 

Yes, this fixed me up also... huge improvement. The problem some are having with the "drop out" is slightly different and severe in comparison.

Unfortunate, but true.

 

i ordered the system with the single defualt 320gb 7200rpm mechanical drive, so it was not in a raid setup. i had "aftermarket" drives already waiting when the system arrived to swap the hard drive and run raid 1 manually. i have 2 of these systems (ordered them at the same time) and the one with the single drive and not in a raid array never experiences the drop out. it is only when you pair drives into a raid array that the troubles begin.

dell-bill states that the system capture requires an affected system but that means giving up my hard drives to them. he also stated that the hard drive manufactures have the responsibility to ensure compatability and i find this a tad strange on their flagship product. dell should also make an effort of ensuring performance with name brand drives....otherwise there should be a disclaimer on their product ordering section that cautions of incompatibility with drives other than their own supplied. this would have forced me to either not purchase or make the purchase with their drives.

i would be willing to exchange the drives with "their own" drives if their drives are gauranteed compatibility but not willing to lose out on hundreds of dollars by becomming a test dummy. this impasse that dell-bill describes is true but as an end user of their product i will have to claim that it is not performing as expected / advertised.

dell-bills legal logic can also be applied to any other system "Aftermarket" component, like RAM. it simply is not acceptable from a global perspective.

 

There is no reason for it. They are in business to sell their own merchandise, not the wares of other companies. I have seen the aftermarket vendors do this to show their aftermarket parts are compatible, but never the other way around.

From a global perspective, I think it would be totally unreasonable to expect Dell/Alienware or any other OEM to test their products to ensure they are compatible with aftermarket parts purchased from another source. It is entirely up to the purchaser of aftermarket parts and the manufacturer of aftermarket parts to take steps to ensure what they are purchasing or selling is compatible. You can apply this to anything... not just computers. Aftermarket automotive parts are one example. The OEM doesn't certify success using stuff they don't sell or service.

It seems that you have a defective motherboard. Have you called 1-800-ALIENWARE about getting a replacement sent to you? As many drives as you have installed, it's obviously not a part compatibility issue. Only a few people have been identified as being affected by this problem, and it seems your system is one of them.

 

i already had this system replaced under the 21 day return policy for this issue. so i personally do not believe it to be a motherboard defect or warranty related.

 

Well, if you don't take any action on getting the motherboard replaced, I guess you'll never know. Replacing drives is not working out for you and there are very few M18x owners having this problem. It's unlikely all the drives you have purchased are defective, so I think you're running out of options other than the motherboard. Honestly, I would be surprised to find a compatibility issue with any HDD or SSD on the M18x... it just doesn't seem feasible that compatibility would come into play with an Intel(R) ICH8M-E/ICH9M-E/5 Series/6 Series SATA RAID Controller or the Intel® HM67 Express Chipset.

Have you already installed the latest Intel Rapid Store Technology (10.8.0.1003) package? If not, that would be a quick and easy thing to try.

If you are attempting to run a RAID1 setup (rather than RAID0) have you tested this in RAID0 also to see if the same problem is present? I don't know of anyone specifically that is attempting to use a RAID1 setup on the M18x.

 

No, it's definitely your board. That's a fact. The problem....Getting one not affected by this port 0 bug.

 

Yes my Port 0 bugged, i have change my SSD OCZ Vertex 3 from 0 to 1 and now work right.

 

PaoloC - should call Alienware about having that fixed. Both ports need to work properly. You cannot build a RAID0 SATA-III installation later on if you leave it messed up like that.

 

This is true.

Ran these test on a fresh install.

 

This is a question Dell-Bill_B or DELLChrisM may want to run by Dell/Alienware Engineering...

I am wondering if the "staggered spinup" setting being enabled in the BIOS is causing the dropping on Port0 issue. On Port0 staggered spin-up is enabled and on Port1 the setting is disabled in the M18x BIOS. From what little I understand about the subject, staggered spin-up applies only to a mechanical HDD and it might not play nice with SSD in RAID0. It would have been interesting to see if changing this to disabled on Port0 might have fixed the problem on John's previous system or on Dan's system.

Serial ATA Staggered Spin-Up - Staggered spin-up

I am making an uneducated logical assumption here, but if powerup with an SSD on Port0 is delayed and the SSD on Port1 is not, in a RAID0 configuration this might cause problems.

With SSD, there is possibly no need or reason for this feature. With a mechanical HDD, it would make sense, considering the high power demands of the M18x with dual-GPU. With mechanical HDD, the power surge at POST is probably high if booting with discrete graphics. With an SSD, the power demands are low and there is no such think as "spin up" with flash drives. Possibly a situation where SSD1 is ready to roll before SSD0 is getting power during POST??

Edit: if this turns out to be a valid reason, it should be easy to fix with an updated BIOS. There could be a separate "special" BIOS revision for SSD RAID0 configurations.

 

Please send me your service tag numbers via private message.

 

John, have you ran sequential benches - back to back? - I'm sure you dont need me to say that back to back benches on a ssd will produce lower and lower performance each time....I gave mine a good "rest" at login screen (for GC) in between running benches and noticed that the figures do pick up again.

Just a thought.

SIDE NOTE FOR CHRIS: my replacement equipped with x2 PM830's hasnt dropped to sata II once .....yet......

 

Mine had more to do with what was installed when the os was fresh and no drivers installed. It seem to run better...but as I did updates and drivers it slowed down even more.

 

Gotcha. A squeaky clean install without drivers performed faster, right?

I'm thinking of a clean install shortly. I am wondering as my system shipped with raid setup, will I have to do a F6 install and set up a new raid array again or will it just be a case of slap in the OS disc and good to go?

Bit of a grey question but as I havent set up an array before, I thought it might be worth asking before hand so I am prepped with the F6 drivers and ready to roll. I've read the 1st post on "how to" - but wondered wether the F6 step would be applicable to me.

Any advice from anyone greatfully received.

 

You can just do it like a normal windows install. Delete all partitions and then start new. The dvd will still allow windows to install on the raid array with out you having to go through a bunch of problems.

 

That's what I like to hear! - thanks Brother John.

 

No problem Brother Steve.

 

Just for info really.

Finished off a clean install. Didnt test the drives before (on a bare OS install) installing all the relevant system drivers as I thought it would be a moot point, as they are a prerequisite, really.

No signs of dropping to sata II (hasnt happened yet at all with these PM830's / current Mobo)

My AS SSD mb/s scores remained about the same as before a clean install and this is after applying the LPM fix and also disabling indexing and enabling writeback cache. What I didnt do beforehand. was check the IOPS side of AS SSD, and here is what I am looking at now on a fresh install with latest RST from Intel's website:

 

Anyone come up with a fix for the Port0 @ 3gb/s and Port1 @ 6gb/s with the Max IOPS?

 

Yes. You have to replace the motherboard.

 

Oh, interesting! So seeing 3Gb/s, ever, with a SATA III drive is grounds for a motherboard replacement? Does Dell agree with and accept this?

 

You would have to prove that is the case....

 

And you would have to use a Dell-validated SSD to prove it.

 

Bill,

Whilst on the subject of Dell SSD's, I wonder if you know of any plans for a firmware revision for the PM830 Samsung drives? - I have seen plenty of news flying about the internet (and on NBR here) concerning a new firmware update for the Retail version of the Dell drives (Samsung 830 series) but when I contacted Samsung to ask them wether it would be applicable for my drives, they said no and that it would be down to Dell.

Any input greatly appreciated bud.

 

@stevie What are the known issues with the current Dell firmware version that the Samsung update fixes? We'd have to make a business case to get the new firmware in house and validated. Not impossible to do.

 

From what I gather, Samsung's notes on the firmware update suggest improved stability and reliability. You can check out the firmware release notes from Samsung themselves (under firmware tab / adobe document) located here:

Samsung

As technically, they are the same drive but the PM830 being Dell OEM version, I just thought we should have the latest firmware update too.....

 

So to answer my question, then: no, Dell does not accept seeing 3Gb/s with a SATA III drive is grounds for motherboard replacement.

I've held off raising a case with them for this reason, and was a bit startled to see it suggested earlier in the thread that motherboard replacement is the "standard fix". I thought we were nowhere near that level of "this is the issue and this is the fix" - thank you for confirming.

Now if Dell would be willing to loan me a couple of Dell-validated SSDs I would be happy to install them, configure them for 64Kb RAID 0 and close my current disk image onto them... Failing that I don't see how else I'm going to be able to see a fix for this.

As a business owner myself I understand Dell is not in the business of charity... but as an IT consultant I have to say that a disk controller only warrantied to perform as advertised with a narrow subset of disks is perhaps neither merchantable nor fit for purpose. I think you'll find the vendors of disk controllers say their SATA III controllers will work with SATA III drives at SATA III speeds, period - isn't the point of an industry standard to avoid a million individual hardware certifications?

Ah well. I appreciate you taking the time to answer, and certainly don't mean to pile on you, I'm sure the decision was made in an ivory tower somewhere.

 

That's just it. It's not the disk but the motherboard itself. Which I have already proven. And since it doesn't matter what drives are in there as long as they are sata 3 drives, it will keep showing the problem. So send it in or have them investigate.


For me, that was a huge thing! Drove me up a wall!!!!!!!!!!
And now, with new setup and the same drives that didn't work on my last setup work fine and dandy on this one.

But good luck to ya Ausjoe.

 

Just installed my OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS Edition with 2.15 Firmware and everything works perfectly so far. I think and hope that there will not be new complains about this, i really hope to not see performance drops on my machine at some point.

 

Do you want to try a mobo swap to see what happens with your current drives? It may not work, but if it does it would be a big "What are going to do now?" moment for us.

 

FYI- My Raid0 Samsung 810's from Dell came formatted 128Kb, not 64Kb. Tried out the Vertex 3's on Tuesday @ 128Kb and they gave me the 3GB/s & 6GB/s error. I have Intel 510's coming this afternoon. I plan on formatting them 128Kb as well. I'll keep you guys posted as to my results.

 

I think the stripe size is somewhat irrelevant (but I hope it makes a difference for you) to dropping Sata speed. As Johnksss has said, its a mobo problem as his were dropping but the same drives with a new mobo work fine.

 

OK so I imaged the system onto the Intel Drives and they are reading at 6GB/s on both drives. Same computer, same motherboard. Drive speed is coming in twice that of the Vertex 3's. So it seems that there is more to this issue than a motherboard replacement?
On another note, my 4k Read scores seem a little low.
Thoughts?

SEQ Read is 950.2
SEQ Write is 656.3
512 Read is 426.1
512 Write is 543.5
4K Read is only 14.35
4K Write is 37.7
4K QD32 Read is 160.5
4K QD32 Write is 101.1

 

Nevermind... You guys were right! I enabled Write-Back Cache and rebooted. Came up as Port0 6GB/s and Port1 3GB/s.
Disabled Write-Back and stayed the same... 6/3...
Now benches are half the speed.
Must be a bad motherboard.
Strange about the Port0 / Port1 swap though... On the Vertex 3's no matter what I did the drive on Port0 was always the slow one.