2x 30GB OCZ Vertex Raid 0: How fast should it be?

[g0dM@n]

I've been using this setup for a while.
Windows 7 Pro x64
Gigabyte 790 UD4P mobo
OCZ Vertex 30GB, 2 in raid 0 for 60GB total, not partitioned
-->running OS, programs, and games
2x2GB DDR3 running over 1400mhz 7-7-7-16 1T
Kaspersky IS 2010 was PAUSED while I ran the test. (just in case)

I have firmware version 1.41 GC (garbage collector) on the drives. I can't use TRIM since I'm running raid and it doesn't work with it, so the GC is my best choice.

When I play L4D2, I'm always the first one loaded when the map CHANGES (like in VS, or if a map vote is called for when I'm already on a server), but I'm not always the first one when I FIRST connect to a server (I'm guessing this could be b/c I'm bottlenecked by the server's map load times?).

In AMD RAIDXpert, when I view each Vertex separately, it shows WRITE CACHE as enabled, and NCQ Disabled (not sure if I should touch that). These I believe were all settings that I never altered. You could also see in the attachment below the setup of the RAID in device manager.

Here is my result. I could swear they used to do like 250MB/sec and now it's at about 140MB/sec read:

[Know Nuttin]

Use ATTO if you want to see sequential read/write speeds.

[EarthDog]

Id imagine them being in the 400MB read range in R0... +1 for ATTO.

[tachi1247]

+1 for ATTO but those numbers look low if I am reading them correctly. I'm doing better with a 60gb single agility drive


http://216.77.188.54/coDataImages/p/Groups/414/414693/folders/304739/2440122hddperformance-atto.jpg

sorry about not cropping the picture, but I already had it uploaded for another reason so this was easier...

[g0dM@n]

Well this is embarrassing.
The first attachment is with Kaspersky IS on. The second one is with KIS paused. I do that b/c I feel like Internet Security software influences benchmarks... maybe I'm wrong, but they are much different if you see below. Either way, the benchmark looks good in certain cases, but not overall...

[EarthDog]

Are you sure GC ran?

[Brolloks]

Firmware has TRIM enabled by default. Those speeds looks pretty bad, what worries me more is that is so inconsistant towards the end, looks like degredation to me.

[g0dM@n]

Are you sure GC ran?

There's no way to know for sure. People say to leave the machine idle and after an hour it'll run... so just a few nights ago I set my sleep time for 2 hours and then went to bed...

If GC doesn't work well, I may have to settle for running these drives without Raid 0... but come on I wanted to get my money's worth!!

Here is a run after a fresh reboot just now and KIS (Kaspersky Internet Security) still on PAUSE:

[Brolloks]

This is my OCZ Vertex 30 G...you should see a consistant read/write from 64kB onwards

[g0dM@n]

Okay, so my problem is Garbage Collector we think?
I was told to use v1.41 GC for Raid configurations, and that the regular v1.41 (with trim) was ONLY if you run non-raid on Windows 7... all other configs are supposed to have 1.41 GC.

This sucks!!

[EarthDog]

GC works just fine...at least on my SUmmit. Confirm the FW you have has GC on it. Then put it in the BIOS overnight/few hours and let it do its thing. AS you know, thats not the ONLY way it works, but its better than guessing if your PC goes into S2/3 mode or w/e it takes to work. It will run GC in the BIOS.

If not, you cna use the Tony TRIM method (can be found at OCZ forum) and clean it up without, but thats a manual process. Personally, I would take an image of what you have now, update your FW to teh one with GC on it, then reload your image.

[Nebulous]

Here's my 2x 30gb OCZ SSD's in Raid~0

[g0dM@n]

Here's my 2x 30gb OCZ SSD's in Raid~0

Yours isn't consistent either. It seems you have a similar problem to mine, no?

EarthDog, I have GC on it, for sure. You say if I turn on the PC and go into BIOS and let the machine sit there that GC will run?

Last night I set the machine to 5 hour before standby, and here are the results (so is it safe to say that GC is not working or what if it's something else - I never set any OFFSET when I installed Win7 b/c I thought that was only a problem on XP):

[g0dM@n]

What stripe size should I be using? I could swear I followed the OCZ guide... forget what stripe size I went with, but I think I followed the recommended one on OCZ for Raid 0.

If I image my 2x30gb raid, should I format and then re-image? I'd like to know how to force them to be CLEAN... this is aggravating me to the point where I just might pop in a 60GB OCZ Agility and be done with RAID 0 forever. I remember having Raid 0 Raptors for YEARS and YEARS and Raid 0 just never stays true except for the first few weeks or months if I'm lucky... I always feel a faster windows boot time with a single fast drive (and no that's not factoring in the RAID BIOS utility - I don't count that).

I've created Raid 0 threads for years on here... why is it that I always come to this? I'd like to ask myself... why do I still bother? For most of you this isn't true, but I almost want to say Raid 0 sucks!!

[Nebulous]

Hey Gman, I don't have the Vertex SSD's mine are OCZSSD2-1SLD30G. Unsure if I have the same problem. Mine have GC already and are enabled prior to setting them up in raid-0.

I don't see any problems with mine as they run perfectly fine unless I'm missing something?

[EarthDog]

Even in R0 you should have pretty consistent results after about 64-128k. I dont run R0 so I cant show you myself, but most I have seen are as described.

For example - 2 vertex's in R0: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=318&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=6

[g0dM@n]

Even in R0 you should have pretty consistent results after about 64-128k. I dont run R0 so I cant show you myself, but most I have seen are as described.

For example - 2 vertex's in R0: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=318&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=6

That benchmark ANNIHILATES my setup.
I upgraded both of my OCZ 30GB Vertexes from the 1275 OCZ firmware to 1.3 and then to 1.41 GC maybe 2 months ago. I had to go to 1.3 first b/c that was what OCZ described or I wouldn't be able to get to 1.4X firmware.

I already had Win 7 Pro x64 installed before upgrading the firmware. To upgrade the firmware I had to run IDE mode and then when I got my firmware on the drives I put it back to RAID and booted right back up into Win 7 with no issues.

Do you think I need to backup image, and then restore image? Would that help? Or should I just re-install windows and everything (this I hate to do).

P.S. I believe OCZ has a v1.5 out now, but I'm not sure if that will be the ANSWER to my problem. In fact, I have a 3rd OCZ 30GB Vertex that I was thinking of using into a 3x Raid 0 config.

[dudleycpa]

Ok call me dumb but shouldn't your Read speeds by faster than your Write speeds?

[g0dM@n]

Ok call me dumb but shouldn't your Read speeds by faster than your Write speeds?

For the bigger file size chunks, yes.

Don't call yourself dumb... my setup SUCKS!!! Don't use it for reference. The RAID-0 Gods don't like g0dM@n... but I have to say I've had much success with Raid-1 and Raid-5. I just ALWAYS have trouble with Raid-0. It was never perfect for me. :(

Someone find me a solution before I scrap Raid-0 forever!! I'm serious... I might just leave it altogether b/c I've invested probably 100+ hours in my time of trying to figure out my R-0 problems over the past several years. I don't think the increase in speed would justify the LOSS of time in trying to get it to work right.

[EarthDog]

Try the bios thing for a few hours and see if that helps clean her up.

Im trying to recall the command that should show if the offset was included. That may be your issue... Its something like "diskpart -i 0" where "0" is the partition selected.

Personally, I would start over, and yeah I hate doing it too...create an image first so worse comes to worse, you can reimage it back on and not lose anything but time...again... lol

Set AHCI/RAID on in the bios before installing...and when you do a fresh install, the alignment will be proper if it isnt already.

[g0dM@n]

I remember the diskpart commands, but I didn't know it was necessary to do with windows 7. When I installed windows, I think it was a fresh install on the 2x 30GB Vertex Raid-0..

Here's what I got (partition 1 is the Win7 diagnostic partition... was I NOT supposed to use that?):

[Evilsizer]

i did skip over a bit of the thread so forgive me if this was answered. did you align the drives? drive alignment is really important for raid setups with ssd's. for single drives win7 does its alignment with no issues but not with raid setups. this is even more so for any raid setup really, esp if you want the most out of any drive.

i just ran atto of my well used raid-0 setup with much older FW that doesnt support either trim or gc. to add to that i havent run any kind of GC or trim program on the hd's at all.

Current:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Evilsizer/ocforums/22010atto60gigraid.jpg

Fresh install:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Evilsizer/ocforums/atto/bignumbers.jpg

notice my speeds are not really that effected at all. considering drive space is still around 50gigs used on 120gig's total current to clean install.



My suggestion would be, if you can do it. Do a fresh install with a drive alignment when you install win7. if you did the alignment what settings did you use?

[g0dM@n]

i did skip over a bit of the thread so forgive me if this was answered. did you align the drives? drive alignment is really important for raid setups with ssd's. for single drives win7 does its alignment with no issues but not with raid setups. this is even more so for any raid setup really, esp if you want the most out of any drive.

i just ran atto of my well used raid-0 setup with much older FW that doesnt support either trim or gc. to add to that i havent run any kind of GC or trim program on the hd's at all.

Current:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Evilsizer/ocforums/22010atto60gigraid.jpg

Fresh install:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Evilsizer/ocforums/atto/bignumbers.jpg

notice my speeds are not really that effected at all. considering drive space is still around 50gigs used on 120gig's total current to clean install.



My suggestion would be, if you can do it. Do a fresh install with a drive alignment when you install win7. if you did the alignment what settings did you use?

I didn't do an alignment b/c Win7 wanted to install the Win7 diagnostic partition which was throwing it off.
What procedure did you follow? I wish I could IMAGE BACK ONTO my raided drives after I format and redo the alignment. I wonder if that's possible.

Should I NOT use the Win7 diagnostic partition?

[Evilsizer]

right but a the start you have some choices. i went into command mode to run diskpar/diskpart to set the alignment. ocz's forum has changed and i am unable to find the thread i used for setting up the alignment for raid-0. i did use a thread on setting the alignment up for XP but this wiki has the same info
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_set_up_Windows_on_a_VERTEX

the main thing is the xp section will help you if you dont know how to use diskpart/diskpar. after that there is one thread with some kind of info on partions im tring to find but found this.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?50376-OCZ-SSD-What-you-need-to-know-in-easy-to-understand-format
this one might help as well
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?55238-Guide-for-Win-Xp-installation-with-Diskpar-%28alignment%29-nLite-Ramdrive-Page-file-Tweaks-Browser-Tweaks-My-Doc-folder-move-and-Print-Spooler-on-Vertex

what needs to be figured out is what settings to use when setting up the partition.




From what i have gathered HD restore programs do not restore to SSD friendly alignments. they go with mechanical friendly partitions weither that has changed now, i dont know.

[87dtna]

HDtach and HDtune do not read SSD's in raid 0 properly.

I have 3 SSD's raid 0, my super talents are the exact same thing as an OCZ vertex-

http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m216/87wagon/hdtune.jpg

http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m216/87wagon/Atto3xSSD.jpg

Hmm just a little bit of difference there eh?

But something is still wrong with your setup. You should be getting like 450 read and 300 write speeds, and also much more in the top end. Did you align your disks before the OS install? 128k stripe? Do you have superfetch, indexing, and paging file turned off?

[tachi1247]

You can check your alignment like this:

type msinfo32 at the run command
click on component/storage/disks

The number it lists under partition starting offset should be divisible by 4096. If it is not then your alignment is off. If it is then this is not your problem.

[Nebulous]

You can check your alignment like this:

type msinfo32 at the run command
click on component/storage/disks

The number it lists under partition starting offset should be divisible by 4096. If it is not then your alignment is off. If it is then this is not your problem.


divisible ? I'm dumber than a bag of hammers when it comes to mathematics unless it's simple. Can you elaborate?

[87dtna]

1048576 divided by 4096= 256

Your partition is aligned fine. Simple

[dyckah]

divisible ? I'm dumber than a bag of hammers when it comes to mathematics unless it's simple. Can you elaborate?

the partition starting offset is '1048576' in your screenshot there, 1045876/4096=256
divisible=divided by

[87dtna]

I beat you :p

[Nebulous]

Not thread jacking as this belongs to Gman, but if my partition is aligned fine, then my ATTO results are nominal in post #12? :confused:

[g0dM@n]

Not thread jacking as this belongs to Gman, but if my partition is aligned fine, then my ATTO results are nominal in post #12? :confused:

Which OCZ SSDs are they?

[Nebulous]

Which OCZ SSDs are they?

These (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227372)

[87dtna]

Here's my 2x 30gb OCZ SSD's in Raid~0

These (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227372)



The solid series are considerably slower than vertex. Those results all look fine except for the 4mb mark.

Did you redo the test? And does 4mb do that everytime?

[g0dM@n]

I left the machine in BIOS for about 7 hours while I slept. Still this setup is junk to me (see below).

If I am to go with a stupid re-install (pardon my anger, but as you can imagine... think of Raid-0 problems going on with me since the first Raptors), what should my procedure be:
Do I use the Win7 diagnostic partition?
If I need to manually set my offset, what should it be set to?
What stripe size should I use?

I really hate doing reinstalls, very very much. I can do it on a ton of systems, but I just have too many settings and adjustments to make on my machine, which is exactly why I always use Acronis True Image (v11). I wouldn't mind restoring an image.

[87dtna]

offset and stripe shoud both be set at 128 for best performance.

[g0dM@n]

offset and stripe shoud both be set at 128 for best performance.

Is my 1024kb offset potentially hindering?
Should I get rid of the Win7 diagnostic partition?

[87dtna]

Is my 1024kb offset potentially hindering?
Should I get rid of the Win7 diagnostic partition?

I'm not sure...

and yes.

Edit- Well according to this-

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157


After I entered all your info it says that your ''Stripe Unit Size ÷ File Allocation Unit Size'' is misaligned but once you set alignment and stripe to 128k it's all good. So yes the 1024k may be hindering performance.

[Nebulous]

The solid series are considerably slower than vertex. Those results all look fine except for the 4mb mark.

Did you redo the test? And does 4mb do that everytime?

Yes and yes, every time.

[evilme]

What I did when setting up my 2x Vertex 30gb raid 0 setup on my new X58A-UD3R. First I used A bench program called AS-SSD ran that and seen I was on 1.4, it will also show if your alin is good or bad and upgraded the drives to 1.5 frimware. I had W7 32 on 1 of the drives, so I had to run a Sanitary Erase on that drive before setting up my raid. Windows 7 aligns partitions by default.

So if you can try to do the http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?67815-This-thread-has-the-1-5-FW-update-for-Agility-and-Vertex-drives firmware upgrade to 1.5 then http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?64453-Running-Sanitary-Erase-from-Vista-W7-Install-DVD Sanitary Erase to erase the drives clean. Do a fresh install of W7 64 bit or whatever. http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_set_up_Windows_on_a_VERTEX is a new guide to use if not sure what to do.

It's pretty messy how they explain something very simple to do. They are explain a alot of stuff that is not needed to be said if you ask me.

[g0dM@n]

Guess what.
I went to OCZ Forum to see what they had to say there. Someone suggested that v1.5 would help and to flash to that and maybe do a re-install.

I've flashed the drives before, so I figured why not. I flash to v1.5 and now I'm done for.
Windows will not load. One drive disappeared from BIOS, so my RAID broke... finally I got my RAID to show up again by power toggling, but Windows desktop will not load... machine crashes during windows bootup, and even safemode crashes during boot.
I tried to run the Windows diagnostic to run a repair, and diagnostics told me it couldn't repair.

It seems that there are tons of people with this issue. Is OCZ retarded? Why would they still have v1.5 flashing instructions if it's screwing so many people over!?! I'm very very disappointed with them. I cannot believe this.

I know it's my duty to back up my data, and although this stinks I will still be OKAY in the end (just tons of wasted time). The concern to me is... is OCZ dumb? Why won't they pull v1.5 from their website??
Check this out:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?67891-VERTEX-AGILITY-USERS-WITH-LOST-DRIVES-after-1-5-Update-please-read-and-post-details-in-this-thread

Very stupid...

[87dtna]

Wow, that sucks man not sure what to do there.

[g0dM@n]

Wow, that sucks man not sure what to do there.
What to do here is to badmouth OCZ for being dumb enough to leave their v1.5 firmware on their website.

[87dtna]

What to do here is to badmouth OCZ for being dumb enough to leave their v1.5 firmware on their website.

LOL.

If you go into the raid utility is the drive recognized?

I thought you always lost all info with a firmware update? So you'd need to re-do everything again.

[g0dM@n]

LOL.

If you go into the raid utility is the drive recognized?

I thought you always lost all info with a firmware update? So you'd need to re-do everything again.

At first the raid was gone. I decided to go into BIOS and enable IDE mode so I could see if both drives were still alive (detected by BIOS). Only one drive was listed.

I power toggled the system and was able to finally get both drives to show up as IDE mode. I went back to RAID mode and got the RAID to show up again. Windows won't boot up... perhaps one (or both) drives drop while loading windows? I've no clue, but this is dumb on OCZs part. I can't blame them for my data loss (that's my own stupidity), but I can blame them for broken drives!!

[Nebulous]

Crap! :eek: I don't even know if I should update the firmware on my drives (if there's any for them) or just leave well enough alone.

Dam Gman, sorry for your loss bro :(

[g0dM@n]

Crap! :eek: I don't even know if I should update the firmware on my drives (if there's any for them) or just leave well enough alone.

Dam Gman, sorry for your loss bro :(

Just make sure:
(a) back up your data
(b) make sure you have a slave drive to use as an OS in case of failure
(c) follow their instructions thoroughly

What I will do next time is image my OS to another HDD (I don't care how slow the HDD is), so that in the meantime I still have a working machine should anything go south.

I was able to restore a 5 week old image to an OCZ Agility 60GB (single drive) that I will use for now.

I really need to try to get my data off of that 2x 30gb vertex raid-0 setup first before re-installing windows on them (if I can) and running SANITARY ERASE.

[Evilsizer]

wow g0d that really sucks, i read about that happening over that OCZ-F. that is why i mainly opted not to upgrade them while os was working fine. i do plan the FW upgrade when i do reinstall from RC to 7-pro.

Neb,
you should be seeing double what i got with my single solid drive.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Evilsizer/ocforums/atto/ATTONvsOIO.jpg
^^was on XP-SP3

the main thing to remember is though to install the latest raid drivers from intel.

[Nebulous]

Thx E, but I'll be danged I can't find any updates for my particular drives and what I do find I'm unsure about as the description is general not specific.

Now I'm more reluctant to update the firmwares.

*Edit*

Well after turning everything off (superfetch, indexing, and paging file) I ran ATTO again. I think this is as good as it's gonna get :-/

[g0dM@n]

Okay well I guess I lost 5-6 weeks worth of settings and whatnot, but that's not too bad.

Remember, I imaged to this drive below... offset is still 1024kb and here are my results
Right now running an OCZ Agility 60GB (single drive in AHCI mode):

[Nebulous]

Hmm, I read on OCZ's forum not to run the SSD's in AHCI mode :confused:

Seriously Gman, That sucker should be screamin'.

[EarthDog]

It says so in Tony's prep thread I thought...

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?67056-Just-what-tweaks-are-needed-in-win7-with-SSD

[Nebulous]

It says so in Tony's prep thread I thought...

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?67056-Just-what-tweaks-are-needed-in-win7-with-SSD

Hmm, I must be losin it then.

[87dtna]

Well after turning everything off (superfetch, indexing, and paging file) I ran ATTO again. I think this is as good as it's gonna get :-/


There ya go! Whats wrong with those numbers? They aren't bad...you should have got the vertex drives though, or atleast the agility's. But still, it's much faster than a spinning drive because of the access time. Your access time is .1ms on any SSD so it's still much better.

[Nebulous]

There ya go! Whats wrong with those numbers? They aren't bad...you should have got the vertex drives though, or atleast the agility's. But still, it's much faster than a spinning drive because of the access time. Your access time is .1ms on any SSD so it's still much better.

Well, I guess you're right. I got these drives in a trade. My first set of SSD's :) I just hope Gman gets his problem sorted out with his drives.

[evilme]

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/4025/attob.png (http://img109.imageshack.us/i/attob.png/)

Is what I have just ran my 2 ocz vertex with 1.5 fw. Raid is about 10 days old now and did the basic tweaks what they had on the site. I just have WoW installed, do some basic web and watch hd movies for now untill I add my last drive.

Just to compare how it degrades... The first shot is today and this is when I first installed them.

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/8262/attoday1.png (http://img35.imageshack.us/i/attoday1.png/)

I like to benchtest once. I like to set it and forget it.

[g0dM@n]

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/4025/attob.png (http://img109.imageshack.us/i/attob.png/) is what I have just ran my 2 ocz vertex with 1.5 fw.

i'm so jealous!

[87dtna]

Than maybe you don't want to see mine :eek:


http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m216/87wagon/Atto3xSSD.jpg

[g0dM@n]

GO AWAY!!! :(

[87dtna]

GO AWAY!!! :(

LOL :santa:

[ChinStrap]

Gman, I have to say, this sucks. This thread illustrates the exact reason I moved to SSDs then back to platter based drives again.

2x vraptors in R0. Short-stroked. They require ZERO babysitting and they are pretty fast for being platter based. While I admit that they aren’t SSDs, they still return some pretty nice numbers and fast load times.

Maybe I’ll look at SSDs again at some point in the future, but the level of babysitting required right now isn’t worth it IMO.

[Parad0x420]

Hmm, I read on OCZ's forum not to run the SSD's in AHCI mode :confused:

Seriously Gman, That sucker should be screamin'.

Every thread I've seen or recommendation was to enable AHCI for TRIM support before installing the OS. At least that's what Corsair recommends doing.

[Nebulous]

Psssstt.......

It says so in Tony's prep thread I thought...

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?67056-Just-what-tweaks-are-needed-in-win7-with-SSD


Hmm, I must be losin it then.

;)

[g0dM@n]

Gman, I have to say, this sucks. This thread illustrates the exact reason I moved to SSDs then back to platter based drives again.

2x vraptors in R0. Short-stroked. They require ZERO babysitting and they are pretty fast for being platter based. While I admit that they aren’t SSDs, they still return some pretty nice numbers and fast load times.

Maybe I’ll look at SSDs again at some point in the future, but the level of babysitting required right now isn’t worth it IMO.

Right now, the way I see it, if you have a single SSD with Win7 and TRIM support, you're golden. All you have to do is enable AHCI, install Win7, and you're set... and I'm running a single OCZ 60GB Agility right now... running like a champ.

I might have to RMA my Vertex SSDs... :(

[EarthDog]

t really still is set it and forget it. Just takes GC firmware and a properly setup raid. Dont hate CHin!!! :)

[g0dM@n]

My windows bootup with this single Agility 60GB is much faster than my 2x30GB Vertex... man that setup was a total waste of time the way it was.

I might give it one more shot, but if I have to "babysit", it ain't worth my time!!

[Headstand]

t really still is set it and forget it. Just takes GC firmware and a properly setup raid. Dont hate CHin!!! :)

That is what I am running, 2x60GB OCZ Agility in RAID0 with FW 1.5(GC). Good speeds initially, I am gonna do a lot of transfer in and deletes, try to fill up drives with stuff then delete. I figure 1 day of that, then ATTO it. Let is run GC for a while, then ATTO again.

[g0dM@n]

That is what I am running, 2x60GB OCZ Agility in RAID0 with FW 1.5(GC). Good speeds initially, I am gonna do a lot of transfer in and deletes, try to fill up drives with stuff then delete. I figure 1 day of that, then ATTO it. Let is run GC for a while, then ATTO again.

I just think it's very stupid that GC will not run ON COMMAND.
I hate that I have to "leave the machine idle"... my machine sucks up 300watts at idle. I can't afford to leave the machine on overnight every few days. That's very stupid.

GC should be able to run on command.

Ideally, I think there should be a program that forces it to run and to have the option to shutdown or standby the computer when done. Maybe it's not possible for the program to know when GC is done (I've no idea behind the true technicality), but there has GOT to be a way to force GC... if there was, I would force it to run and have my machine set to standby after 1 hour.

[Headstand]

g0dM@n, that is what I am hoping. I know they say to be in idle mode, but I want to see if it can be done any other time. I am hearing some people say to do it in the BIOS screen, just leave that up for a while, but I don't know the power consumption during that time.

I am gonna play with them for a while, if I find anything, I will worth while, I will post it.

[g0dM@n]

g0dM@n, that is what I am hoping. I know they say to be in idle mode, but I want to see if it can be done any other time. I am hearing some people say to do it in the BIOS screen, just leave that up for a while, but I don't know the power consumption during that time.

I am gonna play with them for a while, if I find anything, I will worth while, I will post it.

Look, I have water cooling (18w pump and powerful deltas), cold cathode lighting, mechanical SATA, SSDs, 2 optical drives, an HD4890, XFi with external console, etc...
I have a KILL-A-WATT power measure device. It's on all the time measuring my Z-5500 5.1 surround system, my dual monitors, and my PC. I have it hooked up to the wall outlet which then my UPS hooks up to. Everything is hooked up to my 1500VA UPS (the big 37" monitor is just on surge)... but it calculates the total.

If I turn off my monitors and my speaker system, lower my fans, and let the system sit in BIOS, it was something like 250-280 watts, I forget... think about it... that's like having all the lights on in your house when you go to bed. That's completely stupid.

If running SSDs in RAID requires this crap, I will never do it. It's a very stupidly engineered method that makes me frown upon SSD RAID.

For those of you that are okay with this method, you probably aren't struggling financially the way I do... even if I can AFFORD wasting electricity, I've learned a valuable lesson in life the past 2 yrs of my financial struggles. Don't take things for granted.

I know I don't NEED SSDs to function, but my business is IT, so I will always use top gear in that aspect... but as far as wasting electricity, that's what I see SSD RAID as right now.

Babysitting is another thing, like someone else stated here... I know some of you may not be happy with the term, but it's truly not worth my wasted time for a few ms difference in performance.

Seriously, the point of SSD is to create more time for yourself, less waiting time... well, why spend hours in total to make it running right when you only gain minutes in total by its speed?? It doesn't add up to make sense to me.

[g0dM@n]

Okay I ran SE (Sanitary Erase) on both vertex SSDs.
I now want to install windows 7 x64.

So now here's what I've done:
-Cleared CMOS for plenty of time, also removed battery
-Booted my OCZ Agility (spare drive just to boot into windows, this drive is NOT the subject in this thread) in IDE mode, and ran Sanitary erase (from windows) on both OCZ 30GB Vertexes.

So now both Vertex drives should be clean. I'd like to set up my RAID-0 again and start from scratch. What's the BEST METHOD?
I'd like to know the best stripe size, if I should or shouldn't include the W7 diagnostic partition, if I should manually set up my STARTING OFFSET (alignment), and anything else.

I've read places that say if I'm installing W7 that I don't need to worry about alignments and can still use the W7 diagnostic partition and such, but no GOOD answers yet.

[Headstand]

I wasn't arguing, I agree with you, I am trying to find out if there is another way also. I am by no means rich, hell I am in the poverty level compared to most people, and trust me, I know the cost of electricity, Germany is expensive, and the conversion rate is killing us also.

I am trying to help you out, I can't leave my PC on either. I have not tried the BIOS thing, I don't know what my power utilization would be either, but it would be too much for me to handle. I am trying to find out if these things will clean up at all any other way.


As for the Win7 install, I set RAID0 up with 128k stripe, I found it to be the best, but 64k was right there also. I let Windows do a standard install, diag partion and all. That is where I have stopped since I am on night shift for a few days. If you have the time, try that and as soon as you get Windows up, run ATTO and check the #s. If they are still bad at that point, I would RMA them, you may have bad drives.

Other question - they both have FW 1.5 right?

[g0dM@n]

I wasn't arguing, I agree with you, I am trying to find out if there is another way also. I am by no means rich, hell I am in the poverty level compared to most people, and trust me, I know the cost of electricity, Germany is expensive, and the conversion rate is killing us also.

I am trying to help you out, I can't leave my PC on either. I have not tried the BIOS thing, I don't know what my power utilization would be either, but it would be too much for me to handle. I am trying to find out if these things will clean up at all any other way.


As for the Win7 install, I set RAID0 up with 128k stripe, I found it to be the best, but 64k was right there also. I let Windows do a standard install, diag partion and all. That is where I have stopped since I am on night shift for a few days. If you have the time, try that and as soon as you get Windows up, run ATTO and check the #s. If they are still bad at that point, I would RMA them, you may have bad drives.

Other question - they both have FW 1.5 right?
Oh I definitely didn't think you were arguing, buddy. I really appreciate all the help I've been getting here. I'm just aggravated at this stupid procedure, no offense to anyone.

Okay, so as far as v1.5, yes... they both have v1.5 on them. And I checked my Agility, which I just bought like a week ago, and that was SHIPPED with v1.5.

I might pop out my 3rd OCZ 30GB vertex that I have in my laptop and try out 3x Vertex SSD in Raid-0, and just give the laptop the 60GB Agility since the laptop has limited space... still debating, but if I do that, then I'll still have to flash the 30gb vertex from the laptop (it has 1.41GC).

I found a nice W7 tweaking thread here (http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?63273-*-Windows-7-Ultimate-Tweaks-Utilities-*) on OCZ forums.

Still reading it, but haven't found info on Raid-0 procedure.

[ratbuddy]

gOdM@n, your PM box is full :beer:

[g0dM@n]

gOdM@n, your PM box is full :beer:

Dude, you've no idea how often it gets full... !!! Some days I get more PMs than I do txt messages and emails combined... and that's a lot!!
FIXED!

[ratbuddy]

Dude, you've no idea how often it gets full... !!! Some days I get more PMs than I do txt messages and emails combined... and that's a lot!!
FIXED!

I asked a while back for a bigger PM box, no luck though. Glad to see it happens to mods too ;)

/threadjack

[Headstand]

If you have the time, I would either try the 2x RAID0 or even each one seperately to get a pic of how each is acting. Never know, you could have gotten a bad one.

[g0dM@n]

I asked a while back for a bigger PM box, no luck though. Glad to see it happens to mods too ;)

/threadjack
We get a bigger PM box, but it's EXTREMELY necessary since some (or probably all) of us get a high # of PMs on a daily basis.
If you have the time, I would either try the 2x RAID0 or even each one seperately to get a pic of how each is acting. Never know, you could have gotten a bad one.

To be quite honest, most of you will probably say not to, but I'm going to try to IMAGE to the RAID. I hate re-installing windows and everything... it will take me 6-8 hours to get everything back the way I want... that's way too much time.

So I'm going to be trying out 3x Vertex 30GB in Raid-0 with 128kb stripe, and then I'm going to image my single Agility to them. This Agility I'm running right now I just imaged to 2 days ago... it was actually my original 2x Vertex Raid-0 setup's image that I made on Jan 11th of this yr...

Hopefully all this imaging will still work out fine. I've already set up the necessary tweaks where the HDDs don't turn off, no hibernation, and I'll set the system standby to like 5 hours. I'll log off every week once night and let the machine sit for those 5 hours before standby. I'm hoping that does the trick. If I was to do this on a daily basis, I'd say no... already 5 hours is going to cost me ~300watts x 5 hrs = 1500 Watt Hours = 1.5 KWH. KWH is variable for me, but roughly 21-24 cents this past year, so we're looking at 30-35 cents each time I rely on the Garbage Collector. Yes, I'm very conservative these days... not like I was a yr or two ago. Back then I'd love everything on, consuming the whole world.

[Mr Alpha]

Even if I may be a little late I'll go ahead and add my answers to the strip-size and alignment questions. As a value add I'll try to explain why.

The first question is RAID 0 stripe size. In theory you would want the stripe size to be the same as the most common IO size you use. This would likely be 4k (because in windows memory pages are usually 4k, so page ins and page outs end up being 4k as well; this is also why 4k random read and write performance is so important). But there is a problem. You have seen in ATTO results how the read and write speed of SSDs (for hard drives, as well) at low IO sizes are way below the max speeds. This is because the limiting factor isn't the read and write speed of the flash anymore, but the number of IOs the controller can handle. So if you had an IO size of 4k then the RAID controller would break all bigger sized IOs into 4k IOs. This would result in you hitting the IO limit of the controller all the time, and would hamper your big IO performance drastically. On the other hand if you have a really big stripe size, like 4MB, then you would often end up reading or writing to only one SSD since all you need is inside one 4MB stripe. So there is and balancing act to do when choosing stripe size: too small and you max read and write speeds get hampered, and too big and you get almost no use out of the striping. The end result is an compromise with something like 32k, 64k or 128k stripe size. I probably would choose 64k, but what is optimal for you depends on the kind of usage you do.

For the question of alignment: You want a alignment that is a multiple of the SSD page size (4k) as well as a multiple of the stripe size. Windows 7 has a default offset of 1024k, because this is a multiple of 4k as well as many popular stripe sizes. If you're alignment was off the writing a single 4k memory page to the SSD would force the SSD to write to two 4k flash pages, since the 4k flash page is the smallest unit that can be written to (this relates to get around the performance and power usage of early flash where every byte was separately writable; just having erase circuitry for every byte was a huge power hog).

I should also mention that Imaging software can screw up the alignment, so beware.

[g0dM@n]

Okay, so I popped out my OCZ 30 vertex from my laptop, popped it into my main rig with the other 2x 30g vertex... enabled IDE mode, booted to win vista recovery disk, went to cmd, ran sanitary erase off of a USB, and erased all 3 vertex disks.

Turned machine off.

Turned machine back on and went into BIOS, enabled RAID.
Set up a 128kb raid-0 stripe for maximum size (~90gb) on the 3x ocz vertex.

Booted into windows with my single OCZ 120 Agility. Ran Acronis True Image... earlier today I created an image of the Agility onto my 750gb seagate storage drive. I imaged that as FULL DISK (which was the full disk agility) to the 3x raid-0 vertexes. Full disk covers the recovery partition and partition table, so I think it does the 1024kb offset correctly.

After image was complete, I shutdown machine, unplugged the Agility, turned machine back on and went into BIOS. I set the new 3x Raid-0 as the primary boot drive. Rebooted.

Went to load windows and I got the windows load screen and then a black screen where the mouse pointer was moving... waited 2-3 minutes and then got fed up and hit the RESET button.

Now I'm on the windows desktop. I checked with diskpart and my 100mb recovery partition is on a 1024kb offset, so I guess I'm set in that aspect!! The machine said something about new device installed (guess b/c I went from AHCI from the single agility SSD to now a RAID setup)... anyway, I rebooted. The boot time isn't so fast. Maybe I'l let GC run tonight.

I ran HD Tach quick and got 140mb avg read... I'm going to hope that GC will do its job this time around. I now know for sure that the HDD shutdown is OFF so they won't turn off. I'll LOG OFF WINDOWS and let it sit overnight.

If things don't get to the right performance, I'm going with full re-installation (WHICH I HATE).

[g0dM@n]

Last night, I logged off Windows and set standby time to 4 hours... 3x raid-0 128kb stripe of OCZ Vertex 30GB SSDs
The OS now is an image that was restored to the new RAID. I checked dispart and the offset of the 100mb diagnostic partition is 1024kb, and the rest is the C: partition of max size of the RAID, holding the Win7 x64 OS.

Still weird but making progress. I wonder why my write is faster than READ, and why read is so slow (for 3x SSDs)... I think the READ should be around 600+ mb/s, right?

[87dtna]

Last night, I logged off Windows and set standby time to 4 hours... 3x raid-0 128kb stripe of OCZ Vertex 30GB SSDs
The OS now is an image that was restored to the new RAID. I checked dispart and the offset of the 100mb diagnostic partition is 1024kb, and the rest is the C: partition of max size of the RAID, holding the Win7 x64 OS.

Still weird but making progress. I wonder why my write is faster than READ, and why read is so slow (for 3x SSDs)... I think the READ should be around 600+ mb/s, right?

Yes your benchmark should look pretty much exactly like mine. So you got the write speeds there, not sure whatsup with the reads. :confused:

[g0dM@n]

Dude, I really dunno...
I think I might just take another image since this 3x raid-0 image worked after 2 reboots... I'll image this, re-install windows and run an ATTO immediately. If results are still the same, I'll go back to my image... if results are fixed, I'll continue with the darn 6-8hr procedure of setting up everything all over again.

I guess I gotta run sanitary erase and redo the RAID again too... just to make sure the drives are "clean". Will hopefully get to doing this soon, but in the meantime if anyone knows of anything else I could try to fix the READ times, please let me know. :)

[87dtna]

Did you turn off all the standard stuff? Superfetch, paging file, indexing, etc?

I'd do that and give it another run.

[g0dM@n]

Did you turn off all the standard stuff? Superfetch, paging file, indexing, etc?

I'd do that and give it another run.

I turned all of those off on my single Agility before I made the image.
I even disabled defragging, adjusted pagefile to 200mb-200mb (just in case of errors), and maybe a few more tweaks.

=/

And look at HDTach (remember, this is now THREE OCZ Vertex in raid-0 128kb):

[87dtna]

No thats fine, HD tach and HD tune do not seem to recognize raided SSD's properly. I have the same results, worse than a single drive.

[EarthDog]

HDtach/Tune are not to be used with SSD's.

Crystal Disk Mark
ATTO

Writes do look good now...I do wonder about the reads.. Scrap it, set it up right, then reinstall. If it doesnt work, whats your paypal? hehe!

[87dtna]

HDtach/Tune are not to be used with SSD's.



They work fine with 1 SSD, just not in raid.

1-

http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m216/87wagon/hdtune1drive.jpg

2-

http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m216/87wagon/hdtune2drives.jpg

3-

http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m216/87wagon/hdtune.jpg

[g0dM@n]

I DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M SO FREAKIN' HAPPY I CAN'T EVEN TELL YOU GUYS!!

Before I tell you what I did, I'd first like to say that I felt so stupid making this thread. Being that I'm a mod and I work in IT and I've been a pretty good OCer for several years now, I felt stupid not knowing how to figure this out... okay, maybe even dumber that I thought that, but I mention this because I had a damn question to ask you guys in the beginning and I didn't ask it b/c I felt so stupid asking it.

I was going to ask...
"What is NCQ exactly?"
I read up on it but I figured it was disabled b/c it wasn't necessary for SSDs or maybe b/c it wasn't necessary for RAID? "Why would it be disabled by default when I checked it in RAIDXpert?" That's what I thought to myself, so I was embarrassed to ask and I didn't ask.

What's really REALLY funny is I popped in my Vista recovery disk, popped in my USB that has SANITARY ERASE on it, and went into my BIOS to go into IDE mode to do SANITARY ERASE, re-set up my RAID, and run a new win7 install.

While I was in BIOS, ready to pull the trigger, I turned on my laptop and gave it ONE MORE SHOT with google. I came up with this:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?68773-Read-speeds-slower-than-write-speeds

Well, guess what... THAT WAS THE TRICK THAT DID IT!! Enabled NCQ one-by-one on each disk through RAIDXpert, ran ATTO, and kaboom... problem solved!!

I've learned this lesson before, to never doubt the tiniest things, and man do I make that mistake over and over...

To all of you that think you can't image from RAID-0 to single disks and vice versa... I completely accomplished that as well. All this testing I did with 2x RAID-0 vertex, a single Agility, and now 3x Raid-0 Vertex... it was all based on an image that I created on 2x Raid-0 vertex.

Don't be afraid to image your stuff... it was a bit of a pain to get windows to boot... took me a couple of tries, which MAYBE I'll list later, but it works. I'm VERY satisfied.

[87dtna]

YAY! Darn AMD...looks like the ICH10R doesn't suffer from that problem.

[g0dM@n]

YAY! Darn AMD...looks like the ICH10R doesn't suffer from that problem.

Is NCQ enabled by default?

[87dtna]

Is NCQ enabled by default?

Yup looks like it gets enabled automatically. :rock:


Intel FTW :p haha

[g0dM@n]

Yup looks like it gets enabled automatically. :rock:


Intel FTW :p haha

DON'T YOU DARE SAY THAT!! :mad::mad:
If I wasn't broke, I would have been on an i7...
Actually, I did want to give AMD a chance again when their Phenom II X4 came out. I was diehard AMD back in the AXP and 939 days, and went with Intel when the conroe hit (although I held out a LONG time with my 939 Opteron dual core... probably 12 months, longest I'd ever done)

I posted on OCZ b/c they should really sticky that or put it somewhere in BOLD how important NCQ enabled is for AMD... I didn't gain the whole world from it, but it put my drives right where they belong.

My AS SSD benchmark isn't so great, but we're getting somewhere now:

[EarthDog]

WTG!

But AHCI needs to be enabled on any system (someone correct me if i am wrong) before NCQ can be used.

[87dtna]

Yeah AHCI was automatically enabled for me as well.

[g0dM@n]

WTG!

But AHCI needs to be enabled on any system (someone correct me if i am wrong) before NCQ can be used.

Yeah AHCI was automatically enabled for me as well.

I installed with RAID, so not sure how things work with that. My last Win7 manual install was on 2x OCZ Vertex in Raid-0. I've been using that image for everything else, so who knows...

[87dtna]

Looks like your writes speeds are even a little better than mine, but I got you in reads and overall score :p

http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m216/87wagon/asbench3xraid.jpg

[g0dM@n]

Looks like your writes speeds are even a little better than mine, but I got you in reads and overall score :p

http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m216/87wagon/asbench3xraid.jpg

Well my SSDs probably didn't cost as much!!! :)
I'd take READ over WRITE any day though, so I give you props for that!! Are you on 128 stripe?

I'm definitely satisfied... but I never got windows to load SUPERFAST... that's one thing I might have to figure out another time. It does load fast, just wished it would be superfast...

Though I can tell you, even before I figured out this NCQ issue, when I play L4D, I load maps about 3-5 seconds faster than the next person to load... and by even 15 or more seconds faster than others... on average I'm waiting around in the safe house for a good 10 seconds before my team is there lol.

[87dtna]

Well my SSDs probably didn't cost as much!!! :)
I'd take READ over WRITE any day though, so I give you props for that!! Are you on 128 stripe?
.


I hope you are ready to cry! I paid $150 for ALL THREE shipped to my door. Not kidding you, no BS. It was the steal of a lifetime. Oh BTW that also included 3 icy docks!!!!!!! Check my heatware feedback, PIES01 on 12-25-09. Same guy also sold me a 3x2gb tri channel kit of OCZ ddr3-1600 cas 7 ram for $70 shipped! I tell him to PM me before he sells anything :)

Yup 128k stripe.

Ran it again :rock:


http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m216/87wagon/asbench3xraidagain.jpg

[g0dM@n]

87, you are a friggin buzzkill bro!! :D
I know you're messin'... hehe.

Though I doubt I can nail a deal like you, I am curious to know who was dumb (or nice) enough to give you that deal!!

[87dtna]

I edited my post for ya ^^^

[ChinStrap]

Great read Gman, w/ read speed approaching 600MB/s…
I’m not sure what the controller on AMD boards can handle… but 600MB/s is the limit for sata2 (IIRC)

I bet that PC boots in like 1.5 seconds :P

I know people have said don’t run it because it can’t handle SSDs, but can you please run HDTach? That’s would be…. Sweet.

[87dtna]

Actually the theoretical limit for sata2 is 300 mb/s. And as you can see in my atto results, I have already crossed the 600 barrier at 607 mb/s.

[ratbuddy]

Actually the theoretical limit for sata2 is 300 mb/s. And as you can see in my atto results, I have already crossed the 600 barrier at 607 mb/s.

I've always assumed that was per-port though, isn't it? Like with 3 drives your max should be 900?

[EarthDog]

They work fine with 1 SSD, just not in raid.According to benchmark reviews, HDtach and HDTune are made for mechanical hard drives. Something about buffered something or other....

Im going to admit Im just regurgitating info here, but...a logical explanation to the contrary hasnt popped up in my several other references about this info.

Traditional tests such as IOMeter, HD Tach, HD Tune, and Passmark PerformaceTest all use buffered spot-samples for testing and are not reliable for SSD benchmarks. After testing with HD Tach RW for the better part of two years, I know that this tool is perfect for testing Hard Disk Drives, but SSD technology adds an element to all of these benchmarks which render them less accurate. Simpli Software doesn't promote their product for SSD testing, so I can waive the differences I've noticed between controllers, system memory, and drive cache mechanisms to the fact that they've never intended their 'HD' software for SSD products. Regardless, these tests are not suitable for SSD product benchmarks, and do not render an accurate performance profile.

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=270&Itemid=38&limit=1&limitstart=11

Whats weird is I see the same results and they are very similar to ATTO/CDM etc, so not sure... I just trust that review site...maybe blindly?





I installed with RAID, so not sure how things work with that. My last Win7 manual install was on 2x OCZ Vertex in Raid-0. I've been using that image for everything else, so who knows...Corrrection then.. its doesnt work on IDE but does in Raid/Ahci. :confused: :santa:

[87dtna]

I've always assumed that was per-port though, isn't it? Like with 3 drives your max should be 900?

Oh, could be! Never thought of it that way. But I suppose that is kinda obvious now that you mention it LOL :screwy:

[Headstand]

I almost posted "It doesn't work because you use AMD" a couple posts back, but since I am noob, I decided not to. I say that to my dad for anything, just as a joke. He can call and say his iPhone is not working, and I make the AMD comment. :)

Anyway, glad you got it working.

[87dtna]

I almost posted "It doesn't work because you use AMD" a couple posts back, but since I am noob, I decided not to. I say that to my dad for anything, just as a joke. He can call and say his iPhone is not working, and I make the AMD comment. :)

Anyway, glad you got it working.

I would have laughed :clap:

[g0dM@n]

Great read Gman, w/ read speed approaching 600MB/s…
I’m not sure what the controller on AMD boards can handle… but 600MB/s is the limit for sata2 (IIRC)

I bet that PC boots in like 1.5 seconds :P

I know people have said don’t run it because it can’t handle SSDs, but can you please run HDTach? That’s would be…. Sweet.

Just for you... it's going to surprise you in the wrong way lol:

[Evilsizer]

noob! :P

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Evilsizer/ocforums/agility60R0HDTch.jpg


for reals now, i should have noticed you were using a amd sb. i havent read any new news about them getting xfer speeds up with mid/high end ssd's. that would explain why you 2 drive raid 0 was much slower then my slower agility's. there isnt much you can do, about the only thing you could do now. is to buy a add-in raid card to handle the ssd's for full performance. heh, would even be faster then the intel ich with the right raid card. then you would be talking about 200-300 for that kind of performance.

[g0dM@n]

lol, Evil...
Don't look at the HD Tach, though... look at my ATTO benchmarks. HD Tach is way off... doesn't come out right.

I'm hitting 550-560mb read with ATTO, and I think 450 write? Check my previous posts.

[ShakyLootFan]

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/4025/attob.png (http://img109.imageshack.us/i/attob.png/)

Is what I have just ran my 2 ocz vertex with 1.5 fw. Raid is about 10 days old now and did the basic tweaks what they had on the site. I just have WoW installed, do some basic web and watch hd movies for now untill I add my last drive.

Just to compare how it degrades... The first shot is today and this is when I first installed them.

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/8262/attoday1.png (http://img35.imageshack.us/i/attoday1.png/)

I like to benchtest once. I like to set it and forget it.

I am setting up a new box, i7 860 w/ 2 Vertex 30GB in RAID 0, and I am interested in seeing how it compares to my current setup which is an Intel Core2 Quad Q8200 with 4 WD Blue 640GB in RAID O.

Compared to my current setup, your's is faster on the smaller read/writes but, once it hits the 128 and up, my platter system pulls away on the writes topping out at 439MB/sec and reads at 482MB/sec.

I just have a feeling that I might end up being disappointed with the new box and 2 drive SSD RAID and will slap a couple of more drives on it to really get it to giddy up and go.

I am also setting up a box (will be used for machine learning) that will have a large SCSI 15k in RAID 5 and a couple of Intel X25Es in RAID 0. Thank God for my research grant. :)

[EarthDog]

I highly doubt you will be disappointed. For one, SSD's are about 70x faster in seek vs even a Velociraptor (7ms vs .1).

[87dtna]

I am setting up a new box, i7 860 w/ 2 Vertex 30GB in RAID 0, and I am interested in seeing how it compares to my current setup which is an Intel Core2 Quad Q8200 with 4 WD Blue 640GB in RAID O.

Compared to my current setup, your's is faster on the smaller read/writes but, once it hits the 128 and up, my platter system pulls away on the writes topping out at 439MB/sec and reads at 482MB/sec.

I just have a feeling that I might end up being disappointed with the new box and 2 drive SSD RAID and will slap a couple of more drives on it to really get it to giddy up and go.



Thats really fast read/writes for those drives, I've seen 4 caviar black's that didn't have those speeds :confused:

But anyway, like earthdog said even if you have slightly less speed, the access time is what really owns platter drives.

[g0dM@n]

Thats really fast read/writes for those drives, I've seen 4 caviar black's that didn't have those speeds :confused:

But anyway, like earthdog said even if you have slightly less speed, the access time is what really owns platter drives.

But when do you really notice how useful the access time is?

I also noticed that evilme's quote a few posts above, or also linked here (http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6408652#post6408652) didn't suffer as badly as us on the smaller read/write tests, and look at how level his write speeds are. For the small transfer sizes he destroys my 3x Raid-0 setup.
Perhaps that's b/c he's on an intel...

[87dtna]

But when do you really notice how useful the access time is?

I also noticed that evilme's quote a few posts above, or also linked here (http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6408652#post6408652) didn't suffer as badly as us on the smaller read/write tests, and look at how level his write speeds are. For the small transfer sizes he destroys my 3x Raid-0 setup.
Perhaps that's b/c he's on an intel...

Anytime you open an application, it will open faster with an SSD. Or with gaming, I'm always the first to spawn.

I'm on an intel too, I don't know why the small transfer sizes are slow either.

[g0dM@n]

Anytime you open an application, it will open faster with an SSD. Or with gaming, I'm always the first to spawn.

I'm on an intel too, I don't know why the small transfer sizes are slow either.

But once the SSD seeks out for the game files, isn't it just reading it from there so it only has to seek the game files once?

Or... b/c we can't defrag SSDs, it will have the files fragmented and would have to keep seeking files...?

[87dtna]

I dunno...but I can tell you that just 1 SSD was noticeably faster at everything than my two 500gb seagate 7200.11's in raid 0. Read/write times on atto were almost the same.

[Mr Alpha]

But once the SSD seeks out for the game files, isn't it just reading it from there so it only has to seek the game files once?That is not how Windows load files. If it did we would run out of memory in no time. It loads them in piecemeal, only the parts it needs at that moment. If a game has all its textures in a 5GB file it doesn't load that whole thing into memory. Even if you would load the whole thing into memory, you couldn't fit it in the GPU memory. It only loads the specific textures it needs, and almost never do you have the luck to have all the textures you need sequentially in that file. So you have to seek around in the file to find all the textures you need. Add to this that you aren't only loading textures, but you need the models, scripts and pieces of the game engine, as well. Then, of course, there are other processes running that may need to access the hard drive to read or write something, to a log for example. The end result is that you are constantly seeking all over the place. Normal hard drive spend far more time seeking than they do reading or writing.

Another point is that since it is loading things piecemeal the IO sizes tend to be small, so it is the sub-128k IO sizes that are most important.

EDIT: Also what fragmentation does is not that it forces a hard drive to seek, but if that 5GB texture is fragmented over the hard drive the hard drive has to seek farther.

[g0dM@n]

Mr Alpha, that makes complete sense... I'm now more disappointed in my small transfer sizes then. If you saw my latest ATTO, the small sizes are not that great, but I guess that's typical of any HDD or SSD (or raid) setup.

[Mr Alpha]

Often the limiting factor of small IO performance is not the read and write speeds of the hard drive, but the number of IOs the SSD/hard drive/RAID controller can handle.

Here are the IO sizes in Anandtech's StorageBench, which is based on a trace of real world usage:

Light workload:Over 30% of the IOs are 4KB, 11% are 16KB, 22% are 32KB and approximately 13% are 64KB in size.
Heavy workload:Approximately 30% of all accesses were 4KB in size, 12% were 16KB in size, 14% were 32KB and 20% were 64KB.
Gaming workload:Only 20% of the accesses are 4KB in size, nearly 40% are 64KB and 20% are 32KB.

[jason4207]

I've always assumed that was per-port though, isn't it? Like with 3 drives your max should be 900?

Yes, each port gets 300MB/s, but the entire ICH10R tops out in the ~750MB/s range iirc.

I'm not sure about the controller on the AMD board, but in general Intel has lead the pack w/ onboard RAID controllers.

[ShakyLootFan]

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/4025/attob.png (http://img109.imageshack.us/i/attob.png/)

Is what I have just ran my 2 ocz vertex with 1.5 fw. Raid is about 10 days old now and did the basic tweaks what they had on the site. I just have WoW installed, do some basic web and watch hd movies for now untill I add my last drive.

Just to compare how it degrades... The first shot is today and this is when I first installed them.

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/8262/attoday1.png (http://img35.imageshack.us/i/attoday1.png/)

I like to benchtest once. I like to set it and forget it.

Thats really fast read/writes for those drives, I've seen 4 caviar black's that didn't have those speeds :confused:

But anyway, like earthdog said even if you have slightly less speed, the access time is what really owns platter drives.

I will say this... my read/write curves were much more bell shaped than your ssd read/write curve. your ssd curve owns my platter setup under 128 for writes and up to 512 for reads. it isn't unitl the large files that my numbers start to spike.

i'll be finishing my new box tonight and I'll post the numbers for both systems by tomorrow.

[RDot604]

Sorry to bring back an old forum, but im having issues tryin to optimize my Ocz vertex 30gb raid 0 performance. Im gettin decent results, but seeing some other peoples raid 0, mines seems to be lacking. Heres a screen of mine.

http://i699.photobucket.com/albums/vv351/RDot604/OCZvertex30gbraid0attobenchmark.png

[Evilsizer]

for starters system specs would help....

[RDot604]

Gigabyte X58A-UD3R REV 2.0
Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black 1TB
G-skill 6gb ddr3-1333
Intel i7 930
Ocz vertex 30gb x2
XFX ati radeon 5850

[Mr Alpha]

Which RAID controller and what stripe size do you use?

[RDot604]

ICH10R controller and I cant remember what trip size, but how do I find out?

EDIT: Its 128k

[g0dM@n]

All I can say is:
#1 - I had to enable NCQ but that was on an AMD (SB750) setup. I'm not sure if that's necessary with INTEL. I had to enable NCQ in the AMD Raid setup utility (RaidXPert) in windows.
#2 - You could download image your install, then download SANITARY ERASE from OCZ, create a bootable USB stick to run it, reboot into IDE mode, run sanitary erase on both SSDs, re-enable RAID, and restore your image. Yes, I've done this and it has cleaned up the SSDs, partly because GC (Garbage Collector) wasn't doing its job or working @ all. In RAID mode, TRIM doesn't run (though with INTEL's new drivers it might... you'll have to look that up), so you have to resort to GC.

[RDot604]

Man...Im about 50MB/sec off what evilme has achieved in his RAID 0....

[robdav]

Hi all just joined the forum after reading through this thread, and 100's on OCZ forums.

I've got 2x 30gb Vertex setup in raid 0 through a PCIe Raid card with a Silicon Image Sil3132 chipset.

I am getting the same issues that godman was getting at the beginning of this thread.
low read and write figures and in atto write speeds are faster than read.

both discs have 1.6FW installed.

both discs seem to perform pretty well when installed individually (not raid) (220read/150write)

I cant find anywhere to change or enable to NCQ on the raid controller and I have checked alignment and other settings all seem fine.

Any ideas?

if I cant sort this I will RMA one of them and just use the one to boot from.

Cheers

[Evilsizer]

cause that raid chip isnt that strong, not like the intel ICHxR's or going with a $100+ raid card.

[g0dM@n]

Hi all just joined the forum after reading through this thread, and 100's on OCZ forums.

I've got 2x 30gb Vertex setup in raid 0 through a PCIe Raid card with a Silicon Image Sil3132 chipset.

I am getting the same issues that godman was getting at the beginning of this thread.
low read and write figures and in atto write speeds are faster than read.

both discs have 1.6FW installed.

both discs seem to perform pretty well when installed individually (not raid) (220read/150write)

I cant find anywhere to change or enable to NCQ on the raid controller and I have checked alignment and other settings all seem fine.

Any ideas?

if I cant sort this I will RMA one of them and just use the one to boot from.

Cheers

Have you tried using onboard RAID? What board is it?

[robdav]

I've bought a new motherboard with the Intel ICH10R raid controller onboard. My new board is the Asus P5Q Deluxe.

Results are much much better but still not completley correct, esspecially my write speeds.

http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s81/robdav99/sddbench.png

Any ideas?

Cheers

[robdav]

bump

[g0dM@n]

NCQ enabled? What stripe size? Is that bench after a fresh install of Windows?