Transferred my Rai0 but....

Hi,
I just got my m18x replacement in but my raid speeds dropped to half! I think that the machine runs my raid as if its was SATA2 but I don't know where to check what controller speed it is using.

It is driving me crazy and I really hope its not a performance drop that coincidentally happened the same time as I moved the drives over.

I did not recreate the raid0 on the new system I just transferred the drives over. The bios saw the raid array properly and booted in without a hitch but the speed is HALF!

does anybody have any idea on what could be wrong? Worse case ill wipe the drives and recreate the raid but I do not want to go to that extreme yet.

I think most likely one of the drives is running at SATA2 speeds and the other at SATA3 but since the raid only runs as fast as your slowest drive it keeps the speeds of both drives within sata2 specs.

 

Are Port0 and Port1 keys there on the reg?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\iaStor\Parame
ters\Port0\
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\iaStor\Parame
ters\Port1\

 

no , inside parameters I only have BustType with a value data of 8.


Whats weird is that it worked before and the older m18x is identicalexcept that this one has a 6990cf vs the 6970cf


Also I see that there is an iaStorV under that in parameters I do have Port0 to 5

 

Don't wotty your RAID is only working at Sata2 (as you stated, it only takes one drive in a RAID 0 to bring the whole RAID to 3gb instead of 6gb) I had that issue and got it fixed through a number of steps which you already probably covered. There's a thread here (looking for it) that has even more details.

 

Thanks its bad enough that with a 128 stripe im wasting an SSD's life by 4 times the speed but using a raid0 that runs as fast as one single vertex3 is killing me

 

I can't find the thread! The only one I found is my own but not sure it's going to help you much

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/602847-raid-0-issue.html

Can someone link the other RAID 0 Sata2 issue thread?

 

According to Intel rapid storage app both drives are running on 6gb/s so thats SATA3......


.....I don't believe that the drives slowed down to 50% capacity!

 

Thats impossible... Those drives (even in a Raid 0) would never degrade that much even in a few years.

I would do a clean install....

 

Yeah thats what I will do now, so sad though this image was a really good one.

 

Hello,

Is it only possible to get a single sata3(6gb/s) SSD to go at the 6Gb/s speed with the raid controller or can we go to this speed without using raid controller ?

I've read some articles about the performance between the same SSD at 6gbs en 3gbs and the performance are really extremely different !

Very interesting Anandtech's article :
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the-intel-ssd-510-review/1

On Storage review
http://www.storagereview.com/ocz_vertex_3_review_240gb

 

You can use a single drive to get that speed both in raid and in AHCI mode. The m18x comes on raid by default and you should get the sata3 speed.

 

Thank you for the answer.

Evidently i talk only for a single drive.

I've read in that only the raid controller can get the sata3 speed and for that it's an obligation to put the SSD in a raid0.

You are sure that in the m18x i can get the 6gb/s without using of raid controller ?

 

100% Sure. You will get it in the first drive anyways (I tested this before I went Raid 0)

 

Thank you so much for that clear answer !!!

 

I swapped the drives in hopes that would help but still only 550mb/s reads and writes. That's half the speed on what it used to be.

I also updated the bios on this new machine from a02 to a03 modified ver. Sadly that did not fix the issue either

 

There is clearly an software issue... did you do a clean install Oni?

 

I am about to do that now. I plan to recreate the array and install everything from scratch I dreaded this moment but it has to be done. I will also sanitary erase my SSD's so I will not be on steam for a while. I will check the thread on my other pc so feel free to write here.

 

Good luck man!

 

Ok I remade the array on Sanitary erased SSD's reinstalled the OS etc and still the same speed issue!

I will try to remove the drives and place them back on the old m18x and see if it was a hardware error on the new m18x.

 

Sorry Oni been out with no power for 3 days man!! wow that sucked... any luck with the RAID 0?

 

No luck yet its driving me crazy!

So did Irene get your power out? It skipped me here in South Florida ^_^;

 

Yeah that Irene did a number in NJ/NY, I live in a heavy wooded area and it didn't play well with the power lines... I was lucky I didn't have any flooding but no power for 72 hours sucks!!!

 

Yeah! I remember not having any power for 3 days a fears back in NY and it was the summer so I was going crazy without internet and without AC.

 

I put the raid drives on the old m18x and nothing still the same speed. At this point I broke the array and I will RMA both drives (even though im sure the drives are fine) and once I get the new ones in ill keep them separate.

Raid0 for 1.1gigs/sec was sexy but getting the speed down to 550 was a joke after only a couple of weeks!

So at this point im either missing something or the speed degredation from the raid0 was arround 50% and thats something I am not willing to do.

Besides with a 128 stripe you end up writing 4 times as more thus making your SSD last only 1/4 of its actual lifetime.


I will miss the 1.1gig/s though, I hope its something other than the lack of TRIM that causing the slowdown and if it is I will remake the raid once again!