SSD Tips

[madmattd]

So I bit the bullet, got fed up with my pitifully slow RAID 10 array of old Caviar Blue drives (getting about 65-75MB/s average read...slower in practice I swear) and ordered me a solid state drive (OCZ Vertex 2). I've heard a lot of conflicting information regarding their "care and feeding" if you will:

1. turn off indexing on SSD
2. turn off auto-defrag on SSD (Win 7 does this automatically apparently)
3. turn off page file or move to physical drive (performance hit?)
4. turn off prefetching, ready boost, and other accelerators
5. keep SSD usage below 80%

Now, OCZ's forums suggest #1 and 5, but 3 and 4 it says are not necessary and actually recommends against, at least under Windows 7 (2 is taken care of). Furthermore, they tell you to turn off all overclocks (during set up, but seem to imply not to use them period?).

I'm referring to this: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum ... or-OCZ-SSD

I'm just wondering what those of you with such drives do to keep care of them, with its cost, even with the sale I got, I'd rather this thing survive many years. Everyone seems to suggest different things, I know some of you are rather opinionated...

Thanks!

[Stephen]

already posted what to do with ssd's awhile ago

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum ... post442158

use that theres alot more performance increases u can do

[madmattd]

Working on getting it working, I can't seem to get it running in AHCI, Windows 7 install never even makes it to the "click here to begin setup" or whatever it is (right after it loads some files basically). It installed fine in IDE mode, only gets a 7.1 WEI and about 50% rated read speed (quick run with HD Tune). Using the registry mod to change to AHCI merely causes a 3 millisecond blue screen after Windows tries to load for about 5 minutes.

Right now I have the SSD on the GSATA chip in IDE mode, and 2x WD Caviar Black in RAID 1 RAID mode on the Intel ICH9R chip (these were plugged in after installing Windows on the SSD).

I'm going to try installing the motherboard manufacturer's (Gigabyte) SATA/AHCI driver in Windows, then switch the BIOS setting, maybe that'll work. If not, I'll try running it on the Intel Chip in the RAID mode. It is certainly faster than the old physicals, but I know it ought to be better. This is pissing me off though...all indications are that this drive should be rating much higher (mid-7s), and the benchmark speed certainly supports that. Specs are 285R/270W, 250W sustained (in MegaBytes).

[madmattd]

Renaming this to SSD issues.

Any ideas why I am getting under 50% of manufacturer's specs using the same bench test they tell everyone to use (ATTO) when checking speed versus their numbers? I'm getting 125MB/s and 130MB/s Write/Read (attachment). Should be much higher. Similar numbers with HD Tune, I'm not going to keep running benchmarks at this point. I got AHCI running for this drive, it is a tad faster in IDE, but not much. I'm thinking I need to get a hold of their tech support unless I'm missing something really obvious. Oh, and yes they are SATA2 ports (3Gb/s) I am using.

This thing is within 30MB/s of my Caviar Black RAID 1 (mirror)...fail.

[Stephen]

not really sure, specs are speed rated up to, not speed at.

so there not really gonna run at those speeds.

have you tried getting latest chipset drivers and shit

[Mullet]

I really want a SSD.

[madmattd]

not really sure, specs are speed rated up to, not speed at.

so there not really gonna run at those speeds.

have you tried getting latest chipset drivers and shit

Yes, speed up to, but it should at least hit that, and sustained write is rated for 250...

Yea, latest AHCI drivers and such.

And my RAID is still failing, I guess that's what I get for non-official patches, lol. I can live without that at least.

[Godkills]

Try loading crystaldiskinfo and see if the drive has any issues. Make sure it is running in SATA 300

[madmattd]

No apparent issues aside from it thinking it is running at 1C, lol. And it doesn't see my data hard drive, but that might be due to it being on a different controller?

v3.9.3 if it matters.

[madmattd]

Okay, update. I have contacted OCZ, they are a little confused, they say I shouldn't be seeing this on my motherboard. I plugged it into a different motherboard, ran the SAME test, and got 275Write/280Read. Right on specs. So now I'm thinking it must be my motherboard. It is doing odd things these days like randomly changing my FSB (despite having disabled any settings pertaining to that), ignoring O/C settings, blue screening for no reason, etc. This is just icing on the cake.

Too bad there aren't many good 775 boards left, I'm in no hurry to upgrade this awesome CPU. I guess Gigabyte is my next support stop...although I might try re-flashing my BIOS (has the latest public available) first. Maybe they have a fix if that doesn't work...I hope!

[hulkvsspawn]

Okay, update. I have contacted OCZ, they are a little confused, they say I shouldn't be seeing this on my motherboard. I plugged it into a different motherboard, ran the SAME test, and got 275Write/280Read. Right on specs. So now I'm thinking it must be my motherboard. It is doing odd things these days like randomly changing my FSB (despite having disabled any settings pertaining to that), ignoring O/C settings, blue screening for no reason, etc. This is just icing on the cake.

Too bad there aren't many good 775 boards left, I'm in no hurry to upgrade this awesome CPU. I guess Gigabyte is my next support stop...although I might try re-flashing my BIOS (has the latest public available) first. Maybe they have a fix if that doesn't work...I hope!

Yeah if your not on the latest bios, there may be an issue we haven't recongized. The fsb changes on an AMD if cool n quiet is enabled, doesn't intel have a similar setup? If your already on the latest bios, you may just want to flush the board completely of electricity. By that I mean, reset the bios AND take out the battery for a minute and unplug from the wall. Once that's done, hit the reset button while its unplugged and the batteries out.(this will clear any charges that may be left in the circuit(99 times out of 100 this step won't be needed, personal experience: I hit the reset button once and watched my fan turn a quarter turn.)) You'll have to reconfigure your bios but you would have do that anyway if it was flashed. You probably know all this already.

[madmattd]

Yea I had the latest official BIOS installed from a year ago when I needed to turn on Hardware Virtualization, and the f8c BIOS was needed for my CPU to be recognized as capable of that. I flashed with a non-released beta BIOS from Gigabyte, f8h, which didn't fix anything at all. I got identical speeds (within 1-3 MB/s, close enough) as before....I'll give a complete flush a shot, but with the way this board has been acting...time to call Gigabyte. It is still under warranty, it had a 3 year on it when I bought it just over 2 years ago. Unfortunately if I have to send it in I'll be sans desktop for several weeks most likely. Not cool.

And no, the board does not have a FSB stepping function, but it does have a multiplier stepper, which I've kept off since Day 1. And it was definitely the FSB that got switched (it was running at 267 MHz, 333 is stock...). But like I've said, this board has always tended to ignore settings when it felt like it, which has been very annoying. It will boot in at 333 MHz when it is hard set to 400 in BIOS, or in this case, 267 when hard-set to 333. I'm just glad the drive sounds like it is fine.

[hulkvsspawn]

Here's mine. I have no idea what I should be getting or if this is good or bad, maybe Stephen can assist me in that

Matt,
You might want to lead off with "It's still under warranty..."lol
Yeah make gigabyte give you a new one.

[madmattd]

Well I called Gigabyte today, they were pretty useless. I told them of all the issues the board has been having, and the guy said, "well, you can RMA it in and we'll take a look at it." He then proceeded to say that he didn't think anything was wrong, but they would look at it, and I would be 2-3 weeks without a desktop as a result...

I got home tonight and decided to give the Intel ICH9R chipset one more shot with this drive. Son of a gun, it worked! Maybe that BIOS update last night did it, idk, I don't think I tried the Intel chip after updating so I'll blame that. Best of all, I now get within 2 MB/s of rated speeds, so I'm happy now.

Screenie: (single drive by the way )

Now my Windows scores are all awesome 7.4 CPU and RAM, 7.3 on both graphics, 7.7 drive

I'd be willing to be there might still be something off with the board, but if it keeps running fine, I'll leave it be. Time will tell. Thanks for the help guys!

And Hulk, those are some interesting results...read/write all over the map. Not sure how normal or not, but awesome speed peaks over 400 MB/s!

[hulkvsspawn]

And Hulk, those are some interesting results...read/write all over the map. Not sure how normal or not, but awesome speed peaks over 400 MB/s!

That's good that you don't need a new board. You can say it was the update but in my mind, it was the flush lol. Yeah my timings look they have schizophrenia. I'm planning on getting another drive for christmas, so wiping out everything and starting over is no biggie to me.