Vertex 2 slow read/write speed

Hello everyone.
I did a clean install of win 7 pro x64 on my acer aspire 5745G (intel 5th series chipset, i believe HM55). I followed all the instructions from ocz forum and also double checked on this forum as well. But the result i have are not so promising.
Can anyone help me solve that problem please.

 

This is not the tools to measure, try ATTO and report back.

 

Here is the benchmarks done by ATTO.

 

Nothing out of the ordinary. Did you update chipset and IRST driver?

 

your ATTO looks typical of Sandforce so there is nothing wrong with your driver or setup.

It is possible that the version of CDM you are running is using randomized data that makes Sandforce looks bad.

 

I just downloaded the latest RST driver. I believe its version 10.1.x.x . So the Crystal mark doesnt show the speeds correctly? How reliable is the ATTO?

 

Can the write-cache affect perfomance? Should i have them both checked or just the top option?

 

Was the drive previously used? I have the same drive and noticed it got a bit slower after a Win 7 re-install. I used Secure Erase that is recommend on the OCZ forums, and it fixed my issue. I also made sure I had the latest Firmware installed for the drive too.

 

Yes, the DuraWrite is another possible reason.

No matter what you do, this would be the long term performance profile so personally, I would forget about the SE thing and just let it stands for a few days giving its GC a chance to work.

As SE would only reset the counter of its DuraWrite and once you have written enough (that is what I mean long term), you would see this happen again.

Your drive is ok, it is just that Sandforce never wants to tell you their controller's characteristic and their quoted speed is using ATTO that is the best scenario for them.

Just have the computer in the login screen overnight for a few days.

Sandforce is quite fast for day to day usage where the data is to certain extend compressable, but it can never really get to the advertised speed on real usage.

 

No i haven't used the drive. It was the first win7 installation. The version of FW is 1.25 . I think its the last one OCZ released.

 

I don't want to sound like a newbie but i dont understand all of these abbreviations. what is Durawritre, SE and GC

 

SE = Secure Erase and GC i believe is Garbage Collection.

Here is the link to the OCZ tool that I used.
OCZ Toolbox for Sandforce based SSD drives. (Agility2, Vertex2, Vertex2 Pro, Vertex-LE))

But since you said your drive is new, you do not need to do any wipe. The tool is good for checking you FW version and updating it too.

 

Thank you i saw that tool, but it doesnt work with rst version 10.x.x.xxx unfortunatelly. About write-cache do I have to enable both options or just the first one "enable write-cache on this device"

 

DuraWrite is Sandforce's fancy name for 'speed limit'. Sandforce is a software company(in a sense) that sell controllers to OEM like OCZ. Their termed 'DuraWrite' allows OCZ to use less expensive NAND chip(fewer P/E cycle) to achieve the same 'expected life' of the drive. One trick they use is to limit the NAND write per fixed period(sort of). IOW, if you have written a massive amount of things within a short period of time(windows installation, image restore, heavy benchmark), they would kick in the speed limit to deliberately not allow the host to write as fast as it can. This speed limit would ease off as time goes by and their garbage collection routine kicks in.

Secure Erase is just a way to reset this counter, a way to delay the speed limit police. But over the long term, the speed limit police will always kick in at some point (unless you don't use you drive but what is the point).

For normal day to day use, you won't notice this as it is seldom that you need to do the kind of thing a benchmark program do in terms of writ. And for those rare people who really write as much as a benchmark program does in a daily basis(mostly video editin), they may really need periodic SE to reset the counter and the drive should not be used as an OS drive anyway.

The read speed of a sandforce drive is also a bit 'misleading' in the sense that they never read as fast as say Intel. You can easily see this using HDTune. In the area where there are real data that needs to be read from the NAND, the read speed is no where near the advertised 270MB/s.

 

You can enable both, it doesn't affect Sandforce drive that much anyway.

They are actually an OS setting. By enabling them, the OS doesn't wait for write confirmation from the drive(in a sense). In a HDD(or drive with lots of cache), the drive would receive the write(first into cache) and return 'success' even though it has not been written to the actual media. Sandforce controller however doesn't have a large cache.

 

I can tell you Durawrite is broken. It will enable just using the drive as an OS/program drive within a few weeks and once lifetime write throttling starts you can leave the drive idle for a week and it will no go back to full speed. For consumer use as Durawrite is it is just plain garbage.

A consumer if they need to write either 1GB or 10GB+ uncompressible data daily they will do it at 140MB/s or 80 MB/s etc. Durawrite does not save NAND writes or OP usage or help with wear algorithms as it is. I could see it if the writes threatned free clean OP memory etc but then when the free OP memory cleaned up it disabled Lifetime write throttling. Durawrite as it is was meant for servers not consumer grade............

 

Agree with you that the speed limit part of Durawrite is broken, it doesn't even have a space in server.

It is pure nonsense IMO. If I have an usage that needs to write large amount of data(compressed or not) in the shortest amount of time, that is my requirement. There is no need to limit my speed. Just give me enough tools (via SMART for example) to warn me when I really need to replace the device. The whole RAID thing that is used in server space is designed in similar fashion, people don't mind using cheaper less expensive drive, just give them hot plug and automatic rebuild(say in RAID 5) and all server admin are happy.

 

I can see write limitations under the circumstance of extreme writes to prevent overloading the OP making the wear leveling over stress etc. This was the primary reasons of the onllder drives before all th weaks causing stuttering and other issues. Implimented properly it does have its place especially in a server that is exepected to run high loads without constant intervention. better to slow down than stutter to a crawl.

Consumers for the most part do not have these high requirements therefore no real need for Durawrite in its pressent state. Our drives will experience times of long low usage. It should be tweaked to kick in at a much later time and also kick off much, much sooner and allowed to recoupe. Under server usage demad can spike at any time so it doesn't want to be caught in GC or wear leveling etc. Consumers usage pattern of the data streams is entirely different and durawrite should have been tweaked for such or as you suggested eliminated. I am not sure total elimination is the answer though. Some LIMITED protection may be in order...........

 

To prevent stutter on a heavily utilizied server where no idle GC time is allowed, the best strategy is simple over provisioning.

Just look at what Fusion-IO do, their drives allow you to tune the OP to as much as 60%.

 

Agreed there are many other options, Durawrite is SF's. I have no problem with the option, and am not asking they just give it up, if they tune it to work right for consumers. Other options as you suggest is too look elsewhere as in tunable OP etc............

Edit; this is a great example of where sometimes Server tech is just not good for porting over too consumer products............

 

Indeed. Like using XFS as the file system on a desktop linux.