Installing an SSD? tips/tricks/benchmarks

Interested because I am folling with RAIS right now myself and have 2xC30064GB/2xC300256GB and 2x256Samsung470 drives.

 

I would suggest to increase cluster size to 64K and leave the stripe size to 128K.
I was also wondering if you have the option to set stripe size to 8K? if yes give it a shot

 

I can play around with stripe size (4,8,16,32,64,128) but I do not think I have any control over cluster size. If I do, how do I change it?

Ran some more tests last night, the Raid result above is 128KB stripe, below are 16KB and 4 KB. My understanding is that when the stripe size is smaller than the file being written/read, it is then split into 2 stripes and stored on both disks instead of one, when this happens you benefit from the Raid 0. That is why 4k files do not see a boost at all with Raid 0 right? Also why the sequential numbers drop slightly from the larger stripe size when smaller stripes are used, due to more overhead now?

I also tested both drives individually and saw drastically lower numbers for 4K QD=32 with the 2nd ssd, everything else was comparable. Think I should exchange it for a new one? Aside from the 4K file size results, I showed very good scaling from Single drive to Raid 0. Added the single drive so you can compare and the original Raid wih 128KB stripe along with Intel drive. For most of the raid results I watched as the tests completed and the rages were generally very tight meaning these numbers are representative of consistent performance, which I like

 

Step 1

If you have one partition (it's not the default) for windows like me (the other partitions that you see are form the external drive) click drive options (advanced) and delete the partition. If you have two (the default for windows installations), delete first the big partition and then the small 100MB System reserved one.


Step 2

After delete the partitions you will have one big Unallocated Space on Disk 0
Click new and apply
You will have something like this


Step 3
Press Shift - F10 to open the console and type: diskpart

Then type: select disk 0

Then type: select partition 1

Then type: active

Then type: select partition 2

Then type: format fs=ntfs quick unit=64k

Then type: exit and again exit

Step 4
Click Refresh and then click on the Disk 0 partition 2 and press next


Step 5
After you finish with windows installation open a command promt as administrator and type: fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo C:


If it says Bytes per cluster: 65536 then your installation was successful and your cluster size (or else allocation unit size) is 64K instead of 4K.

My only concern with the tests is that because the TRIM command doesn't go through the controller, the more you benchmark those drives the more their performance will degrade. So before every benchmark with different settings it's good to unRAID them and let either the garbage collection or the TRIM do it's thing (or even secure erase them).

 

So cluster size is a windows parameter and not a Raid parameter. And I assume it cannot be changed after the fact? I ask because I am just imaging over the install I already had on my 80GB Intel G2

 

Yes cluster size has to do with the file system of the OS and stripe size has to do with the RAID controller.
The cluster size cannot be changed after windows are installed because you need to format the partition.

 

And what is the best way to verify the current cluster size? I wont be reinstalling windows but I am curious

 

By default Windows have cluster size of 4K

 

Oh, ok. What exactly is the effect that different cluster sizes should have? That has to do with the 4KB block vs 512 B block size stuff right? Or something like, aligning the OS and physical drive block sizes

 

Don't worry about the alignment, Windows 7 will take care of that no matter what the cluster size.

NTFS uses the cluster as its unit of allocation to maintain its independence from physical sector size.
On a larger volume, use of a large cluster factor can reduce fragmentation and speed allocation, at a small cost in terms of wasted disk space.

 

wrong thread..

 

I just read somewhere that with SSDs the best stripe is simply adding up the cluster size (ie 4kx2 SSD = 8K stripe)

I am experimenting a bit installing 2xcrucial with 16k stripe whereas they have all been 128 earlier today...

Thoughts?

 

yes that's correct. 8K should be the optimal if the cluster size is 4K in RAID-0 of 2 drives on low QD (desktop usage).
Increasing the cluster size and the stripe size should increase the IOPS with bigger files but you would waste even more space (I wish I had an extra X25-E to test it) and would decrease IOPS when smaller files are involved.
What I would be interested to see are the access times and how much they are affected (especially in drives like X25-E with access times of about 0.7ms the RAID controller should have a negative impact)

 

Wish I saw this yesterday eheheh. I never thought of measuring IOPS. I built like 10 arrays to determine the best and help with the article and I am building a permanent one in a day or so now. I got ome great scores. RAID is the new thing for me and I am trying to get a LSI 94601 card which is apparently amazing as it is SATA# now.

 

looking forward to your results Les. What controller are the drives you are using?

 

I'm looking forward too. Thinking about implementing a raid setup.

 

I tested with the 3 that I thought would be best and Crucial in SATA II blew the others away!! I am doing up an article which will explain how easy it is but if you are doing it before then...

My best stripe size was 16 k, best driver 10046 and make sure you enable caching in the Intel RST program AND in the policies of the hard drive... Both boxes checked!

Quite frankly... I enjoyed this almost as much as my first experience with a ssd.

EDIT... That 10 second boot is just the normal system and not tweaked or with services/startups shut down. Also... check out that Vantage score and dare others to touch that!

 

Here is 4 Crucials

 

Well, wish me luck, getting ready to wipe my drive and set up the RAID

 

Les, what I found interesting from your results is that the 4k QD32 results are scaling up with Raid while the regular 4k tests are not. Maybe that is due to how the firmware on the crucial drives is handling the data.

 

Hmm, Acronis doesn't recognize the RAID setup at boot

EDIT: Disregard, I got it to recognize the RAID setup.
Also trying to decide on strip size. I'm thinking 16K by Les tests? Or would I benefit from going as low as 4k? Any suggestions from the pros?

 

I think 16k is the best balance for performance in large and small files. Coincidentally that is also the recommend setting from intel for solid state drives in Raid 0. (Is in the help in RST control panel)

I think I am going to do 16k for mine with the 2 sandforce drives. Are you talking about raiding your Intels DR?

 

Yea, I just imaged my 40GB X25-V with my benchmarking image, secure erased the 160GB SSDs, and at the moment, my X25M Raid setup is 16k stipe, and the setup is in the process of being imaged. Once thats done the blu-ray drive comes out and goes in the external enclosure which got here today

Hmm, imaging the RAID with my standard OS image caused BSOD upon windows start. Now time for start up repair

 

I had a nightmare of a time getting my non raid windows install to image to my raid array....was a very frustrating and hectic 3 hours and shamefully, I do not know what I did that finally made it work haha

 

Oh, man hahah I could really use that info about now.

Hmm for some reason I can't do windows start up repair. Only acts like I need to reinstall

 

I loaded RST in AHCI mode then tried boot in Raid, failed

Tried loading drivers during windows "repair" in RAID mode

Tried "Upgrading" windows over itself in raid mode

Tried cloning the image to raid array in ahci mode then booting raid

The list goes on (and I do not remember it all but it was quite the triumph once I got it working haha)

 

Heres a question Scook, given that the R2 has crippled 4K speeds, does 16k make sense still being the best all around strip size? Or would I benefit from the larger strip, since 4K really isn't going to be improved?

 

although the benches show 4k and then 512k, in reality there are many OS files that fall closer to the 4k size so the smaller stripe should still be beneficial

 

I give up, just doing a fresh install at this point That was definately quite the triumph scook! I'm just going to make an image of the RAID setup once i'm done.

Another question. Will I have issues going back to the raid setup after swapping in my benching SSD? since it's a single drive?

 

As long as they were both installed with RAID set in the BIOS they should have the correct storage drivers to load and boot windows.

I agree, no clue what I did right but I had pretty much given up then was like "I'll try to boot it one more time...." and it worked haha

 

haha, hope you made an image! lol, I'm going to have a lot of images by the time i'm done. One benching, one RAID, still have my non RAID, but I'll be loosing some game progress since my games were purchased from Iraqis at $2 a game but at least I still have them and thier fun so I won't mind. I'm going to have one HDD dedicated to images, and might have to clone it so I have a back up of my back up.

I'm wondering if it will be beneficial to get everything installed and customized, then create an image, secure erase the drives, and image back to start with fresh SSDs. Or would it not be worth it? Thoughts?

 

I would be too lazy to do the secure erase but I also am a big fan of imaging everything to backup disks haha

 

lol, well once I get it all nice and purty, i'll reimage, after a secure erase, just so that I don't have all the blocks written to that I did installing updates, deleteing, updating, ect. Well see how it goes Hopefully it won't be an issue given that it should have all the proper drivers. If it is an issue, well then i'll give up and get violent lol

 

Here is my RAID 0 install with everything on it. Tommorrow I'm going to create an image, and secure erase the drives, then re-image. That way I don't have all the writes and stuff from things that were uninstalled, and removed. Start fresh. Than comes the optical drive converstion.

 

Just got a vertex2, any tips or tweaks I need to do?
Havn't installed this yet because I'm not exactly sure what needs to be done lol. Im going to be using my 250gb as a secondary now and the 120vertex2 as a primary.

 

You probably will want to flash the BIOS to the current, and make sure your AHCI driver is up to date as well. I just got an OCZ Vertex 2 and did this myself.

Once you go SSD you never go back

 

i got an OCZ vertex 2 60gb, and when i push the power button, it immediately prompts for my password. i don't even see the computer post anymore...

i feel as if the computer is 'sleeping' rather than powering on.

 

Hey Sabaku,

I have the same drive and am still learning the ins and outs myself, there is a lot of info in this thread I am repeating, but there are some rules that seem to be common:

- not a bad idea to have a USB to SATA cable on hand

- flash the drive BIOS to the latest version

- best to load Windows onto the drive, no need to format

- turn off defrag and DON'T defrag your disk!

- turn off prefetch & superfetch & indexing

- turn off write caching and write buffer flushing

- get most up to date AHCI driver

- ensure your BIOS using AHCI (in most cases) for the drive

- Rerun Window Experience Index (it can tune a few settings this way)

- turn off restore points (still unclear about this one)

- familiarize yourself with some of the CLI tools for interrogating the drive to check operation and help ensure TRIM is enabled.

There are a few other tweaks that deal with the cache size in use, 8;3 naming, and so forth. I am sure there are more, but this should help get you started.

I would say it is worth reading up on the hard details on their operation, they very different from standard HDD's but the file systems we have expect a platter which results in some issues.

Another thing is that due to the way the drives work, as I understand it, successive benchmarks usually show slower scores down to a point, you will need to allow sufficient time like 5 days to let the drive recover to get an accurate benchmark. OCZ recommends ATTO and IOMeter, not CrystalDisk for benchmarking FWIW.

 

I finally got around to applying JBBs tweak. Here are my pretweak, and post tweak numbers for my Intel X25-M SSD RAID 0 setup (2x160GB) The numbers in my previous post were after doing the SSD optimization. The numbers below were done after doing JBBs tweak found here

Pretweak:


Post tweak

 

WOW...those tweaks really seem to have boosted your SSD performance no end!.....how do you feel about them?

 

Results of applying JBB Tweaks on M11x-R1 A05 BIOS - 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD FW 1.24

Wow... this brought my otherwise weak scores into line....!



Max Read: up to 285MB/s Max Write: up to 275MB/s Random Write 4KB (Aligned): reported drive specs

+1 rep OP for helping test out!

Scores are still a bit off from what is advertised, but I suspect this may be due to too many benchmarks taken in a short period, this is like the 5th time this week. Thinking about it, I cloned the drive which may be contributing to a lower score instead of a fresh Windows install as well.

 

They really did help. On top of that I didn't really see much of an increase in temps. One of the biggest things is that the 4K speeds are going to be boosted under a light CPU load. I tested this and running itunes with a song playing, helped. So it actually helps in real world multitasking senarios. This was also backed up by running Cystal Dsk Mark while running wPrime 1024, only utilizing one thread. This put the cpu load at about 13-15% This seemed to be the sweet spot for the benches, even up to 20% cpu load seemed to help. I don't remember exact numbers but a light (30% and under) seemed to really help the benches following the tweaks.

 

This is all great info, I have a 60GB SSD to put in as the system drive in my M17x-R2, definitely plan to do the tweaks AND install Windows 7 fresh.

BTW, is that a playable 3dmark06 score on your R1 or a benchmark high with tweaks?

 

Definately just a benchmark. All extreme benchmarks for the sake of pushing the system, just to be on top of the benchmarking scoreboard . Those numbers are pretty much the system limits. Any gaming done is done at all stock clocks. As it stands I havn't seen a need to overclock.

As far as the SSD, that is my everday use numbers. They are tweaked through the help in this guide as well as JBBs tweak. The system at startup is running 60-70 processes and boots in about 18-19 sec, timed with Windows Boot Timer.

 

Pretty good times, with Windows Boot Timer I am getting a sub-32 second boot time (non-optimized). Not awesome but a heck of a lot faster than on the old HDD

 

It is very good to hear that there is finally a fix for SSD performance in the M17x R2

Those numbers look pretty good too

Also makes me glad I got the dual sandforce drives instead of a 2nd 80GB Intel G2

 

since you are all excited for sandforce drives....here is a raid setup after GC has been ran overnight.

 

Curious about the use of CrystalDiskMark instead of other tools... is that considered particularly good for benchmarking RAIDs?

I was using ATTO which was one of two tools recommended by OCZ for benchmarking in place of CrystalDiskMark which why I ask...

 

I had stated that my system started in 18-19 sec, but after running boot timer a few times, here is what I have. This is tweaked just for everyday use, and not benchmarking for the fastest boot time. I ran this about 5-6 times and this was pretty average.

15.709 sec with 72 processes running. The only thing I have changed, was to change the AlienFusionService from automatic to manual as I rarely use it. This way I can use if if I choose.

 

Realized I didn't disable write cache buffer flushing, and it seemed to make a decent improvement in 4K writes

Before:


After:


Ran the bench a few times and 512K went up to about 340, and 4K read was up to 24K. The thing I don't like about these benches is they fluctuate so much