Re-Image or Reinstall on new SSD?

Hey guys, this may sound like a noob question but oh well, here I go

I have the Asus Rampage3 Extreme which uses the Marvell 88SE9128 SATA3 controller which has some known issues with the Sandforce SF-22xx controllers like the one on my Corsair Force Series GT 120GB SATA 3 6Gb/s SSD (555 MB/s sequential read — 515 MB/s sequential write).

My read/write speeds were about 400's/200's MB/sec so I tried just about everything to resolve the issue (different cables, different ports, multiple driver revisions, I also tried updating the firmware (did not help), BIOS updates, even followed YellowbeardXMS' suggested resolution flow chart with no luck.

So then I backed up the drive by creating an image with Acronis and secure erased the drive and reimaged it. To my dissmay the read speeds dropped even lower, to the 200's. At this point I RMA'ed the drive as it was practically brand new still.

On to my question....

I'll have a new SSD soon and want to know if some of the issues related to my performance drop could have been carried over in the image or not? Do you think reimaging the drive will result with the same performance issues as observed before or was that a fault with the drive its self?

I suppose it wont take long to install the image and find out the hard way but wanted some feed back first because a full reinstall would be a pain in the ***.

The Marvell can't give you full SATA3 speeds. 400/200 is about right for a Marvell 9128 controller.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/ocz-vertex-3-pro-review/13

neo668 said:

The Marvell can't give you full SATA3 speeds. 400/200 is about right for a Marvell 9128 controller.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/ocz-vertex-3-pro-review/13

Click to expand...

+1

The Marvell SATA III chip is slower than the Intel SATA II chip...sad, but true.

There really doesn't seem to be a lot of pressure on anyone to remedy the situation either, so it seems we'll be stuck with under-performing Marvell Chipsets for the forseeable future...

I'm aware of the issue with the controllers but my question was really more geared toward the fact that upon secure erase and re-imaging my read speeds were cut in half... Can that read speed degredation be carried over in the image to the new drive forcing me to do a completely fresh reinstall of Win7-64?

When re-imaged and your speed was cut in half did you check the alignment? I know some versions of Acronis don't keep the alignment when imaging, and a non-aligned SSD takes a huge performance hit.

As long as it is aligned when imaged it should be fine. A fresh install is of course always faster.

It was aligned (Windows 7 64-bit Prem install) when imaged, re-imaging on a secure erased drive should produce an identical alignment... Not sure about the older versions of Acronis but this one has no issues with SSD's (been browsing their forums for quite some time).

The only problem you'd have with re-imaging would be alignment, like Dermen said. Other than that, re-imaging should pose no problems.

I'm not sure how the imaging process works with that particular version of Acronis. I would imagine it would align properly, but it's always good to double check.

King107s said:

It was aligned (Windows 7 64-bit Prem install) when imaged, re-imaging on a secure erased drive should produce an identical alignment... Not sure about the older versions of Acronis but this one has no issues with SSD's (been browsing their forums for quite some time).

Click to expand...

It was probably 12-18 months ago when I used Acronis to image a SSD. It was able to keep the alignment if you selected the right options, but I used the default ones which put the alignment off. I'm not sure if that changed or not as I don't use Acronis any more. The alignment was pretty easy to fix using gparted though.

Once you restore the image to your new SSD I would check the alignment just to make sure. It is pretty easy to do.

Well I got a brand new Corsair Force Series GT 120GB SSD in the mail yesterday and re-imaged it with no issues. I checked the alignment and Acronis did retain the proper alignment but the speeds still suck

I guess I'll just have to wait till I upgrade to a board that uses a different SATA3 controller than Marvell.... I hear the new intel controllers are nice.

Ah - the Marvell controllers kind of suck. I seem to remember some people saying the Intel SATA II controllers were better than the Marvell SATA III. It would take about five minutes to test...