Sony Z11 - Long Term SSD Performance - Post your results

This thread is for the Vaio Z11 series and the drives they are talking about are the Samsung drives that come in the Z11. The only disk options are whether you want 2, 3, or 4 drives. They are Raid 0. Those times look like one of the 4 drive models. And it looks like the write-back cache was enabled in the second image.

 

I believe this is it:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/detail_desc.aspx?agr=N&ProductID=&DwnldID=15251

 

So here is what I have done to the poor SSDs in my new Z117 (HK Version: i7+8G RAM+64GB*4 SSD in Raid 0) to test the effect of partitioning to SSD performances:

The SSDs were fully filled with random files once and later I re-created the Raid (with default 128k stripe size), and thus deleted all partitions.

A windows 7 x64 OS was installed with default settings except that I created two other main partitions after the system partition.

Partition 1: 100Mb – boot partition created by Windows 7
Partition 2 (Drive C): 42G – OS, NTFS with 4k cluster size
Partition 3 (Drive D): 88G – Blank, later formatted in NTFS with 8k cluster size
Partition 4 (Drive E): about 101G - Blank, later formatted in NTFS with 8k cluster size

After installing all drivers and SONY softwares, I Tony-TRIMed Drive C, D, E and restarted the machine.

All tests are done with Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver v9.5 when write cache was enabled.

Drive C:



Drive D:



Drive E:

 

^ I can't open the attachments ..

 

Updated...

Continue writing...

 

As I used CristalDiskMark v3.0 RC2 which is different from what most people used here, I made another test on Drive D with CristalDiskMark v2.2. Here is the result which showed no significant differences:



Then I tested the reading speed with HD Tune Pro 4.01 but stopped the testing as it was too time-consuming and the results stay more or less at the 530Mb/s level.



Then I deleted Drive D and E with the windows partitioning tool in Computer Management, and resized C drive to maximum.

Here shows the results with a single partition (except the booting partition) in Raid 0:







The results showed significant sequential read speed drop with a single partition in the Raid 0 array, and that's probably why someone got read performance 100Mb/s slower than the others.

I started to wonder how partitions were created on disks in Raid 0.

For example, if I create 3 partitions (50+80+126) on a 256G quad SSD array, PHYSICALLY will the SSDs EACH be partitioned according to the 5:8:10 proportion, or partitioned by sequence (i.e. Disk 1:50G+14G; Disk 2:64G;Disk 3:2G+62G; Disk 4:64G)?

I guess probably the former was right but that didn't explain the results unless you say 8k cluster size was THAT BETTER than 4k cluster size...

I'll find out these and also test the new Intel RST driver after I get back my Z from SONY as I asked them to restore the recovery partition for me... (the recovery disks they copied for me just didn't work!!!)

 

@kevinhk

Hi, thanks for all that information I'm in Xi'an and have been trying to buy the same model as you online. First there was no option to select besisde the picture, now it says 'out of stock'

Wondering how, when and where you got yours. And if it's possible for me to order it by internet/phone from the mainland?

Would you mind following this link and tell me if you can order online? (suspect it may be limited to HK only)

http://www.sonystyle.com.hk/ss/product/vaio/vpcz117gg_e.jsp#package

Thanks Kevin

 

The pre-sale started on Mar 22 and due to very limited pre-sale volume and supprisingly low price (HK$5000 cheaper than in China or Singapore), the Z117 model was sold out as of Mar 23.

The Sony staff told me there were only 7 Z117 models in each store for pre-sale (3 stores in HK, so totally 21), and luckily mine was believed the last one for pre-order.

The product is not restricted to HK residents, but I believe they won't ship it abroad. You may call SONY HK for when new models would be available. These days I saw ads of the new Z models all around in HK, thus I believe new ones would be available within a month, although "Made in Japan" would still potentially limit the supply.

 

Thanks Kevin I can catch a flight down there to collect it if I can pre-order, it will still work out cheaper that way.

Finger crossed

EDIT: sorry for going off topic

 

Mine was the first one ordered from Sonystyle Causeway Bay. I arrived exactly at 11:00 on March 22 to pay for the Z117.

 

The delta in performance can be attributed to the physical location the test is run on the SSD for that pass. Run CrystalMark enough times and you will see the higher number.

I chose CrystalMark 2.2 because it is a final release. They are iterating through beta builds now and the results could be even more unreliable.

However, I do see that they released 3.0.0 yesterday. I'll give it a try later. I'm going to avoid the 3.5.x betas.

 

You are correct at that point.

But I did tried several times and I still got similar results. Besides, HD Tune showed worse performance as well, in line with CristalDiskMark.

 

Haha...I didn't find our the start of pre-order until 22nd noon, and decided to pre-order, rather than walk-in purchase, on 23nd...

Luckily I also got one, but until now I haven't enjoyed it...

Still waiting for SONY to restore the system...I hope they can give me back the machine before this weekend...

 

@OSCAR

I know this thread is for vaio Zxxx series .. and don't worry I know what is RAID 0 but I haven't seen laptop with 4 drives so that why I asked even such a very good performance
This is the ONLY laptop on the Earth with QUAD RAID you know

And that guy he answered to me but from some strange reason that his post disappeared ...

 

@kevinhk

last off-topic question, I promise

have you noticed any large battery drain due to the 1080p display?

And do you think the sound/speakers are ok?

Thanks again

EDIT:

Sorry Kevin, just realised ... today is Mar 22! Am I missing something? So it went on sale today? sorry if i'm being stupid ...

 

I am happy to see you find the answer
So, is it better to do partition on SSD?(I don't really care about the 100M/s seq. read speed)
If yes, how much space should I leave for the OS drive and how to do the partition?
Do I need to format the SSD?
Thank you.

 

For battery drain problem, until now I didn't notice at all. But I don't know if that's related to the operating system, as most of time I used the machine on WinPE or on a clean installed Win 7 Ultimate x64.

For speaker, sorry I haven't played any songs/movies yet, so I don't know. Is there any problem with the speaker?

For the date...sorry just a typo...That should be Feb instead of Mar...

 

Thanks for the feedback Kevin

On the owners thread some people said the sound wasnt good, some said it was fine. just wanted to get your opinion.

For the battery, there is supposed to be an issue where the battery loses power when its turned off, something like 5-8% overnight. Apparently this is a well known Vaio 'feature'

But I'm actually wondering if the 1080p full HD screen uses more battery than the 1600x900. When you do get your baby back maybe you could post some battery time info on the owners thread?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=457519&page=186

I know weveryone would appreciate it as not many have received the full HD screen that you have. (I should really be asking these questions there, hehe)

Thanks again

 

It seems to me multi-partitions performed better than single-partition, but as I said I'm not sure if that's due to the cluster size (8k in my case) or something else. I will try that after I get back my Z.

If you don't care the speed, I recommend you leave it at the current status as multi-partitions was not necessary on SSDs.

If you decide to do something to your disk structure, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you do that with the windows disk management or VAIO recovery centre.

If you prefer 3rd party applications (which could be with more functions), Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2010 was recommended after I tested many disk management softwares.

 

Sure I will test that...

Till now, the only problem I found was: very very slow DVD/CD read speed on WinPE (not tested on Win7 or DOS), that is to say nearly an hour copying 4 recovery DVDs (15G Data) to the SSD, or 20mins+ copying Windows installation DVD to the SSD vs. 5mins- with USB flash drive, and SONY service staff said it is quite "normal" amony VAIOs...In my opinion, the problem may be related to the BIOS, and I hope there could be some updates later.

 

Folks, let's try to stay on topic, please.

 

Apologies,

we can continue this conversation at

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=457519&page=187

 

Any other I/O reports out there regarding the Intel 9.6 drivers? This was the main thing keeping me from buying but I may now go ahead if trim looks good on the Intel RAID. Thoughts?

 

I finally recieved my purchased version of HD Tach RW which will allow for detailed info gathering across the entire SSD.

I'll run these tests later today.

 

silly question but...

does the Intel Rapid Storage application need to be launched and minimized to execute TRIM commands in the background? or are the working with the driver and windows7 without the application?

reason i ask is because everytime i reboot i never open the Intel Rapid Storage app

TIA

 

Nope, don't need to load it.

 

New raid drivers out today that support trim through raid on SSD's. Updated my drivers just now going to benchmark and see if there's much change.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/detail_desc.aspx?agr=N&ProductID=&DwnldID=15251

 

Good morning Columbus. You just discovered America .

Sorry I just couldn't resist.

 

I've updated mine to 9.6 RST

left it idle, after a while the HDD(or in this case SSD) light indicator shows activity. TRIM in action?

it kept on going. when I resumed and opened task manager... it stopped. I was going to check whether something else triggered it.

is there anyway to confirm TRIM on our Z?

 

Should the drive led blink when doing internal stuff like TRIM and GC? Shouldn't it only blink when the drive is used for actual reading and writing?

It could have been a virus scanner or some such?

Check if you can leave task manager open (and sort it on the CPU column) and leave it alone for a while to get it started again. Then you might be able to see what process is working.

 

Does anybody know if there is any way to make TRIM work (through Intel V9.6 Drivers) with a RAID 0 based on 1st gen. SSD as well (SAMSUNG MMCQE28GF MUP-MVA, with firmware VAM05S1Q)?

Thanks in advance!

 

sorted the task manager by CPU, nothing uses the CPU... probably taskmgr.exe but that's when I'm moving the cursor and it's only showing 01 CPU consumption.

I don't know... it's a wild guess...

TRIM does involve drive activity right? which leads the led to blink?

 

I don't know whether this is a fluke, I just ran crystal mark again after the whole drive LED blinking paranoia

here's my result when I first got my Z



and here's after uninstalling the garbage, installed some softwares and updated RST to 9.6



Might be TRIM, might be just a fluke.

 

TRIM is an additional ATA command used when deleting a file. It would not cause LED activity on it's own.

Garbage Collection might, but you could verify by looking at Resource Monitor. If you see the drive LED light up with no read/write activity, that'd be it.



There are tons of background processes that can make the LED flicker.

This said, I haven't looked into this at all. As long as the light doesn't stay lit constantly, you shouldn't worry about it.

 

"Turn off window write cache buffer flushing on the device"

is this option should be enable or disable on raid 0 SSD?.
thx

 

I have it enabled.

 

Do I have to wipe out my stuff and use my recovery disk to update the Intel driver to support TRIM?

 

No, just an install

 

On another forum, many users there believed the LED would light up when Trim was in action. They were using that as a test to see if Trim was working. They would delete a file and wait 5 - 10 seconds and see if the light would come on, indicating something was happening like Trim or GC. So I would say the light coming on might be trim. But to fully test you would need to have the Task Manager open while seeing the LED on, to see no processes running. That was the part the other forum was not doing and I thought it was strange, since anything could trigger the light.

 

That sounds a bit goofy. Have a link?

 

Just wanna commend the OP for starting this thread!!!! I haven't got a Sony but most know my stance on ssds and its nice to see the tests and ideas!

 

She might be referring to this thread, see post #7:

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?64417-Vertex-How-do-I-know-if-TRIM-s-working-on-Windows-7

Its the one I was thinking of in this post I wrote a while back:

 

Yep, it was posted on one of the the other posts here.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...-Intel-drivers-with-TRIM-Support-coming/page3

 

One question to ask...Hope someone has the answer...

If the SSDs are in used condition (i.e. lots of files have been wriiten on and later deleted), and I restore the system with the VAIO recovery tool, and install the new Intel RST driver.

Suppose TRIM is working, will it clear the traces of those previously deleted files?

Thanks

 

Nice, Engadget heard about this thread and the Optimus stuff Nautis and I are working on.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/23/nvidias-optimus-uncovered-in-sony-vaio-z-along-with-trim-suppo/

 

I just saw it too! Congrat on making to Engadget!!

Great work Zoinks, this really is a proof of your valuable contribution to the Vaio Z owners.

Even though I haven't planned on retiring my old Z yet, I am still very excited to see you guys working on fixes to improve the new Z. With the support of TRIM and Optimus, I feel very obliged to jump onto the new Z.

 

zoinks, you're a champ, cheers for all the effort you've put in mate.

this was the sticking point, the silly little issue that sullied an otherwise perfect laptop.... now that point is moot! thanks to intel for fixing these woes.

 

Now if Sony would only send the VPCZ11FHX/XQ

 

Not right away, no. But as you overwrite these areas and then delete them again, TRIM will free them up. So it will slowly start to improve with daily use.

 

I see...So I still used AS Cleaner to clear the traces...

I finally got my Z back from SONY, and once again I did some experiments. I'll post my findings tomorrow as I need to sleep now...

Here shows my most recent disk performance result:

256G Quad SSD in Raid 0 (Intel RST9.6 with write cache off):



Windows still gave me 7.6 instead of 7.9 when I just bought it...