Sony Z11 - Long Term SSD Performance - Post your results

Gee! I just got my VPCZ1 (256 GB @ 4 * 64GB and RST 9.6.0.1014) not that long ago and it never occurred to me that something so obvious like TRIM may not be implemented! What were Sony and Intel thinking releasing such a configuration? Perhaps they were hoping they'll release an updated driver before people's systems crawl to a halt?


-A

 

If you read the beginning of this thread, the SSD's have some sort of garbage collection utility...

 

That's what I've been reading. [I followed this thread from the first page]

But my VPC 128 which is left on even through the night has been having issues with writing especially if I'm attempting to write 10 - 20 gigs of information. The computer just *stops* responding intermittently all the time. If you open Resource Monitor in Win7 and look at the graph for Disk I/O, you will notice that it writes, then stops, then writes, then stops. Good Old Stutter at work there.

I leave 60 to 90 gigs of free space for my 256 quad SSD, leave it switched on most of the time 24/7, so if there was garbage collection I shouldn't be hit with the SSD stuttering.

I've just learnt to live with the fact that there is no garbage collection and no TRIM rather than to keep trying to convince myself that it's somehow working in the background. My friends who went with a single Intel X-25M are laughing at how I blew so much money for an SSD solution which doesn't keep up with their much cheaper drives.

The Vaio VPC Z 2nd Gen is my favourite notebook in the whole world, so this will not change its ranking. It's really just crapped on itself for this performance boo-boo because it could be ranked far higher than itself.

 

So it's been asked before... but in a nutshell, if I'm a heavy I/O user (lots of video/audio rendering, etc) I should probably NOT go for a Z then, based on what I'm reading throughout this enormous thread?

 

Hi Steve,

You are asking about the Z in a thread which is specific to the RAID SSDs for Z?

The Z is an excellent portable machine for what you wish to use it for but the RAID SSDs would be the can of worms.

If you're up for buying one of the Zs with a HDD and swapping it out yourself for a single/non-RAID SSD such as the X-25 with TRIM. Then you'd be able to achieve most of what you'd wish to do.

Your question would probably receive more expert answers compared to mine in those "what laptop should I buy" threads.

The BIGGEST strength about the 2nd gen Z is that it is currently still the lightest notebook with such power/features in the world. You'd consider a Z if portability with ability is paramount to you. There are many other excellent choices if this isn't your biggest priority.

 

Whwtam,

Thanks for the reply. Also, my apologies for any spelling mishaps as I am posting from my Evo at the moment.

It most certainly IS my top priority, and I have done enough research on this subject to make my brain bleed. I have been on these very forums for literally months now attempting to gather meaningful advice from the initiated about this very subject.

But the jury still very much seems to be out on the whole SSD issue, and it truly concerns me. I would in fact LOVE to find a model with the hard drive preconfigured as opposed to the SSD array, but as it seems, someone at Sony decided it would be a better idea NOT to let us Americans make that decision. I am not particularly interested in having to perform the mod on my own either.

So really, what options do I have then? Is it pretty much determined at this point that the SSD array is bad news for longevity?

Thanks!

 

Garbage collection isn't an alternative to TRIM, it complements TRIM. Unless the drive is told just which blocks have been deleted, it can't erase them.

What GC can do is shuffle blocks around to clear up entire sectors that can be pre-erased. But without being told which blocks are considered empty by the OS, it fumbles around in the dark.

 

All right, so one more (potentially stupid) question for all of you who've been wrestling with this SSD degredation stuff for some time now.

If I were to bite the bullet and purchase a Z and immediately break out my drive configuration into JBOD as detailed in Zoinks' extremely helpful supplemental thread, would this definitively solve the issue of TRIM support on my machine, or not? Also, can the quad SSDs be addressed as a single logical volume?

I know I've said it before, but I really am going to be working with a lot of big files, so this is a very serious consideration for me.

Thanks as always.

Edit: Bah, nevermind, I just found the answer buried away in yet another older post by Zoinks. Sheesh, Sony.

 

This is intriguing: Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) — Is there TRIM support for RAID configurations?

IF i'm understanding this correctly (which i probably am not), but it says:

which means it WILL support TRIM if the BIOS are in RAID, but the drives aren't? Am I understanding this wrong? So, if you break the RAID array, TRIM will work?

 

that means if you have multiple ssd drives and you make it like
drive1 + drive2 (raid0)
drive3(no raid)

then drive3 will have trim working

 

So does that above imply that the 3rd drive is not in AHCI, since the other two are in RAID0? (sorry if it's a dumb question, my knowledge of RAID/AHCI/JBOD BIOS options is limited)

Or can you have 2 drives in RAID, and have the 3rd drive in AHCI, in a computer (not the Vaio Z, as Zoinks pointed out)

 

Intel says, TRIM works in raid mode as long as the specific ssd is not part of a raid array.

 

Okay, so that's what i thought... so does that mean the answer to othersteve's question (below) is that he can put his drives into JBOD and see TRIM support? (And the quad SSD's will probably be seen as 4 separate 128 GB volumes by the Z)

 

After researching with SSD erasing softwear I found parted magic 5.10 really secure erase and increase a performance. After erasing with parted magic 5.10 2x64Gb Samsung SSD on VAIO Z11 I have 7.7 WIE disk score on RAID configuration vs 7.3 before erasing and 7.3 vs 6.9 before erasing on non-RAID configuration. Now I using non-RAID configuration for TRIM support.

 

I did a walkthrough of the process, if it helps at all

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/467519-how-configure-raid-jbod-new-vpcz1-series-ssd.html

You can't mix RAID and AHCI. Even if the drive is not in an array, the RAID driver is in effect.

Pyr0 is correct though, any stand alone drives will likely be TRIM'ed.

 

I can report that after months with the system I ran benchmarks and the numbers are still high.
I have the quad ssd 512GB and I dont fill it up to the max.

 

Ok, it's been almost a year since I got my Z, and I've been saving crystal mark benchmarks approximately every month or so. I own the 512Gb quad setup.

As before, I turned on write caching sometime the first week I got the laptop, which I think accounts for the jump in write numbers on April 11.

Overall, I'm very happy with the performance. I use the laptop everyday for software development.

Here are the results - enjoy!



The actual numbers are:

Code:

   1       2       3       4      5       6        7      8        9
468.812	293.185	179.676	258.629	13.705	8.728	92.632	56.723	2010/04/09
472.261	291.433	192.670	260.624	13.537	8.780	92.486	57.093	2010/04/09
469.512	296.627	178.843	258.218	13.520	8.676	93.048	56.730	2010/04/09
459.633	226.230	178.636	276.123	13.547	52.817	93.010	60.280	2010/04/09
457.228	209.946	162.543	282.051	14.235	51.929	92.341	60.106	2010/04/09
485.152	170.945	208.568	275.394	13.835	53.120	91.938	60.494	2010/04/11
460.440	359.964	184.817	277.355	15.152	52.394	91.516	61.041	2010/04/17
483.958	376.960	205.706	299.050	19.820	49.376	95.156	61.135	2010/04/28
455.771	333.517	183.900	269.708	13.969	53.598	87.590	58.828	2010/05/25
405.848	341.778	187.587	262.619	12.974	47.465	92.419	60.407	2010/07/14
446.393	361.204	202.984	264.086	13.326	48.697	93.926	61.603	2010/09/04
425.386	353.651	202.018	264.958	13.257	49.033	93.842	60.855	2010/10/14
416.377	353.254	193.085	268.112	13.279	48.234	93.802	61.777	2010/11/16
413.857	351.832	168.147	269.308	13.133	47.532	94.063	61.478	2010/12/17
405.430	355.209	183.195	269.975	13.835	47.966	93.979	61.182	2011/01/16
513.253	359.142	166.025	254.484	13.103	48.374	94.714	62.730	2011/02/12
458.027	318.377	213.033	257.351	13.592	46.996	93.549	61.008	2011/02/25
446.900	358.528	181.954	270.678	13.486	48.792	93.330	61.254	2011/03/26

1: Seq. Read, 2: Seq. Write,
3: Rand Read (512), 4: Rand Write (512),
5: Rand Rd (4k, qd=1), 6: Rand Write (4k, qd=1)
7: Rand Read (4k, qd=32) 8: Rand Write (4k, qd=32),
9: Date

 

I just got a rather amazing deal on a Z11 refurb, but it only has 128 GB (2X64) SSD. Can one increase the storage, or is it soldered in by SONY?

 

If you wanted to change out the SSD themselves check out this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/511578-how-replace-ssd-vaio-vpcz11-vpcz12-non-sony-ssd.html

What the SSDs in the Vaio Z are two small drives (proprietary). but what enny did in that thread was to take two C300's and take them out of their enclosures so that they fit and voiding the warranty. However, you got the Z11 which mean Samsung drives which mean they use a ZIF connector (i could be wrong) which means you need to buy the cables as well as the drives. The best way, i think is to just augment by replacing the ODD (as described on the other thread you created)

 

What he says is true. Z11 = need new cable from sony which has become unavailable for a while now. Easiest way now is to get a converter bay and get a 2.5" drive of your choice, whereas your 1.8" drive options are more limited. You'll find that you'll hardly miss your ODD in the end. The only reason I changed from my stock 128gb + 128gb C300 2.5" in ODD setup to dual caseless 1.8" C300's were for purely enthusiast reasons. Just thought it would be cool to do Haven't used my ODD since I putting it back in, it's just a gap filler

 

Although psyang's findings that the stock drive is pretty damn resiliant makes me reconsider my ssd distribution among my computers. Might put the stock back in and one of my 2.5" c300's and put my 2 1.8 C300's into my desktop :\

 

how come I cant find rst 9.6.4 theres only 10 on intels site.

 

Version:10.1.0.1008 is the latest one, use that one, not 9.6.4. This thread was created a year ago, hence the reference to 9.6.4

 

I've had my drive at about 80-90% capacity for a few months and my write speeds are < 50MB/sec and for smaller data sets in the single digit MB/sec. I'd consider that significantly degraded. Defrag with free space consolidation didn't do much for me but I didn't give the system idle time to do GC. However, FreeSpaceCleaner w/o FF restored my write speeds up to 170MB/sec.

 

Help - I just got a terrible result on CrystalDiskMark:

CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 248.507 MB/s
Sequential Write : 202.643 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 81.111 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 148.287 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 13.421 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 22.080 MB/s

Test Size : 1000 MB
Date : 2011/04/21 10:57:17

I bought this as a refurb a month ago and it works great and I didn't notice it being slow at all, but for some reason was having trouble getting CrystalDiskMark to run. Finally did and wish I hadn't I also can't get Crystal Disk Info to recognize my SSDs, so I can't get the number of boot-ups and other S.M.A.R.T. data. Ideas of other programs? Should I run a garbage cleaning program? Which one? Would a clean install help?

Thanks. BTW, the 128 GB, which only had 85 GB free after OS and Sony bloatware still has 80 GB free, so I'm nowhere near capacity.

 

Question do you have Intel RST installed?

 

S.M.A.R.T. data can be read out with a linux live cd and "smartctl". Linux sees your single SSDs as /dev/sda, sdb etc. even when in a RAID array, whereas windows doesn't.

 

Just downloaded and installed version 9.6.0.1014 from the Sony driver site. No appreciable changes. Any other ideas? Thanks

EDIT: Just updated to version 10.1.0.1008 from the Intel site. Still no appreciable change.

??? Help, please?

Should I run a "garbage collector?" Which one?

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 232.603 MB/s
Sequential Write : 206.636 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 106.804 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 185.512 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 13.597 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 11.951 MB/s

Test Size : 1000 MB
Date : 2011/04/22 7:40:50

Though my performance seems fine, I'm now bummed! FWIW, my WEI for the SSD is 7.6.

Thanks so much.

 

Go into RST and enable write cache, then if others are to be believed, run CrystalDiskMark in about a week, you should see better performance then.

 

Wow, is that right? Believe it or not, I had recently (after I ran the CD tests) disabled write cache because some said it was preferable (though I don't know why). So, in other words, my low readings are all with it enabled (you do mean ENabled, right, not DISabled?), but I will re-enable it and wait a week!

Just out of curiosity, did you do this?

 

The garbage collectors run on the drive controller, from firmware.
When blocks are marked as unused, the garbage collector can pre-emptively consolidate these blocks and pre-format sectors so writing to the disk is faster.

 

Thanks for that; can you recommend a good one to use on the Z11?

 

As arth1 mentioned, the garbage collection runs standalone on your SSD, there is nothing you need to do. After some idle time, your SSD is "refreshed" and you should be able to enjoy your full write speed again. The Z's SSD's garbage collection works pretty well, after 3/4 year with my Z now and several terabytes of writes/deletes, I do have full speed just like my SSDs were in factory new condition and I did nothing.

 

Sorry, I did miss the part about it running on the controller from firmware - I was assuming I needed to install something. May I ask a couple of also ignorant questions (and yes, I've read the better part of this thread, but it rambles so that it becomes hard to sift out the current facts from speculations)?

1) Is the f/w based "collection" routine similar to TRIM? Do all SSD controllers have such f/w routines, even if they also support TRIM and are running in Windows 7?

2) If my read/write times are really low compared to most I've seen reported on CrystalDisk (like, 200 mbs vs 500 mbs from most others) will this periodic cleaning restore mine to the faster times if I wait long enough?

3) Should all third party SSD garbage collection utilities be avoided?

Thanks. Sorry if these seem to be noob questions, but I'm used to single SSDs with TRIM support, so none of these issues were ever relevent.

 

1) Most ssds today do support TRIM out of the box or can be firmware upgraded to do so. Then, if your OS also makes use of that, it's a good thing and GC is not needed. I dont know if there are controllers W/o GC. All toshiba/samsung ssds in our Z's support TRIM and do have a GC.

2) GC and TRIM only cleans your SSDs to improve WRITE speeds. READ is not affected by those technologies. Others with quad ssd setups do have higher speed rates than your dual setup. From this point of view, your rates seem ok.

3) I am not aware of any software GC tool. There are safe erase tools to refresh your drives but you delete everything then. As mentioned, it is absolutely not necessary to use suh tools since the firmware gc does a good enough job. After 3/4 year of intensive use, i still have 100% factory speeds.

 

Pyr0,

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

There was so much back and forth about whether all of the Samsung and Toshiba SSDs in all the Z1x's supported TRIM and I'm sorry I did not see the definitive "turn" of opinion/fact in the thread that it is, once and for all supported.

I knew that the dual 64GB array was the slowest of all others in the Zs, but I didn't realize both read and write speeds are 50% lower, and worse, especially for the 4kb read/writes. Of course, the speeds CD reports on mine are about as good as the Intel G2 SSD I have had in several other machines and it is no slouch, but I truly did expect faster speeds from the hard-wired Raid 0 architecture. And of course, with all the talk (but little data) about the potential degradation of the Z Raid 0 ssds (largely while TRIM support was still uncomfirmed) it was easy for me to worry that my potentially oldest and most used of Zs in service (a Z11 refurb) was indeed experiencing the deterioration, though I don't have an historical database on this machine. I'll have to go back in the thread, but I didn't see any reported speeds this slow, though yours is among the very well informed responses I've gotten that the CD numbers I reported on this thread are "in line" with what my model should be getting.

I feel no need to do a "wipe out" of my SSDs to improve read speeds if they are presently in line with norms and do not "feel" slow in use. True confession: I started this sub-thread solely because of the numerical data I got from CD after initially not getting any results running the newer versions. Though I really wanted to become better educated than I could reading this long and winding thread (and now I am, thanks largely to your taking the trouble to walk me through it), it has always been the case that if my numbers show no cause for alarm, to those who really know, my concerns drop from fairly high to rather low. My sleep thanks you.

 

You are very welcome!
Summing things up in this long discussion brings following performance tips for you in particular:

Install latest Intel RST drivers (>version 9.6.0 do well on the z)
Enable write-back cache on your raid array
Leave approx. 20GB space unused in order to allow GC to do its work effectively (and to prevent speed degradation)
Enable ssd's caching in device manager

There is nothing else you could do/is necessary to do to (further) significantly improve your write speeds.

Other ssd tweaks e.g. disable drive indexing, browser caching, defragmentation, superfetch etc. stuff is recommended even though they do not provide you any speed increase but help avoid unnecessary ssd wear.

Hope you find this extra piece of information useful.

 

More than useful - thoughtful, and very much appreciated And, as the questions seem reasonable and important to a new owner and you are the only one who took the trouble to fully explain, it's +1 for you, my friend!

EDIT: One last thing: in device manager there are two checkboxes: 1) enable write caching (done, as you suggested - actually, was already checked!); 2) Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing... What say you on the second option? It warns not to check unless there is a "separate power supply in case of a power failure" and I would assume that round thing on the bottom back - called a "battery," if I'm not mistaken, qualifies as a "separate power supply." Check it or leave it unchecked? Thanks again.

 

Check both boxes in the SSDs caching settings.

More useful information here:
Guide * Windows 7 Ultimate Tweaks & Utilities *

SSD Tweak Guide

SSD Windows 7 Tweaks

Cheers!

 

Took a test drive with PCMark Vantage and scored 9302 points. I suspect a few hundred of those points were lost because of the SSD degregation. I remembered Engadget posting up a VAIO Z PCMark score of 9949, and that's with the i5 configuration. My i7-640M (2nd best dual core there is) should've gotten a hundred or two hundred points extra but it turns out my Z actually has a few hundred points less.

 

Crazy power

 

This is sparta......what on earth did you do?

 

I have owned a VPCZ118GX/S since May 2010. Yes, the warranty has expired.

It has an RAID 0 array of three 128GB SSDs. Intel RST reports 0 verification errrors but 1 block with media errors. I ran the test after the the screen went black and I had to shut it down.

I have been doing research on handle the "blocks with media errors" problem but have not been able to find any information.

Any ideas?

 

I honestly don't find these numbers remotely credible.

 

^Perhaps you should read his post before making a judgement.

 

Yea, he is talking about four drives in RAID 0 on a workstation

 

Hi,

I have a Sony Z series with (stock RAID0) SSD & this is now over a year old and is running fine. I would like to know how worn the SSDs are.

Therefore, does anyone know where I can find the the 'wear status' of my SSDs ?

I am familiar with 'SSD-Life' but this does not work with raid configuration.

Thanks,

 

After my HP Mediasmart home server failed to backup my VPC-Z1390 one night, I discovered that one of the SSD drives had 3 blocks with media errors in it. All my attepts to fix it (running various options in RST, running CHKDSK with various options) failed. The machine kept on working fine and since I was about to go on vacation, I ignored it (except for backing up everything important). Few weeks later, the machine wouldn't boot up and I had to take it in for service, diagnosed as a failed SSD. The machine is still in service (3 weeks already in and estimated 1-2 weeks to go....) so I have no final diagnostics.

My advice to you is to backup all your important data, just in case.

 

20GB?? Isn't it... too low free space?