Vertex 2 write problems

[ChanceCoats123]

It has to be an issue with the board if it won't boot in Ide mode. Did you install in Ide mode? IIRC you can't get to Achi mode unless you install the drivers during the install and if you install the Achi drivers, you can't get to Ide mode.

And yes, post to Ocz so we can find out what's wrong too.

 

[Icebl@ster]

Here is the first reply and im not quite sure if this is helpful or not. What do you guys think?
"OCZ seriously needs to post a sticky about not running CDM3 at the default setting. These "why are my drives so slow" posts are far too redundant.

OK Here's the condensed version. CDM3 writes 15 GB's of data, AS write 3 GB's of data and depending on how many Atto's run usually less than 1 GB. You just effectively handicapped your drive by writing almost 20GB's of data to it after you installed your OS. You are running in a full dirty state now and will have to allow quite a few days of minimal usage/logoff time to recover to a settled in state. I would avoid using AS/CDM3 due to the data type used in those benchs. Use Atto or Winsat disk to test if you see any problems.

I would Secure erase and reinstall for a freshened drive. Imaging software is the way to go with these drives for quick recovery since it's MUCH quicker than fresh installs. Also if you have all that stuff running in the background during each test, you WILL degrade the results without a doubt. That is a small drive and you should avoid writing unnecessarily to it. Good Luck"

 

[ChanceCoats123]

To be honest, it sounds like it would hold water, but in my eyes, that's a load of crap. The point of a hard drive is data storage. If you can't successfully write to a drive and then re-write something over it without seeing a huge performance loss, the drive is not doing it's job correctly.

 

[Mr Alpha]

It is true that you will see a performance drop by writing a lot to a SSD and so putting it in a used state, due to the read-modify-write issue of flash. Running lots of write benchmarks will put you in such a state. Three things argue against it in this case: 1) The SandForce controller in the Vertex 2 has pretty good garbage collection and should make the performance drop disappear pretty quickly. 2) The 50 GB Vertex 2 has 14 GB of over provisioning which should help keep this sort of problem to a minimum to begin with. 3) The SandForce controller does data compression and unless the benchmarks all write pure random data, the amount of data that really gets written should be far less, so unless you've run the benchmarks dozens of times it shouldn't have a big effect.

There is also the fact that write seems to be capped at 66 MB/s which leads me to believe there is something that is sitting in between the benchmark and the drive causing a bottleneck. Like a program, driver or bug in the BIOS.

 

[Icebl@ster]

Can somone show me a link to use secure erase on this drive with a usb boot? I really think these guys are wrong and want to make sure i secure erase properly.

 

[Mr Alpha]

Here are instruction on how to use a Linux LiveCD to secure erase.

 

[Icebl@ster]

I ran secure erase loaded up windows 7 and installed updates and ran just the seq on crystaldiskmark and got this in ide mode
164/95
go to change to ahci and guess what...wont boot, run the startup repair utility and it doesnt fix it.

Any ideas? Should i secure erase again and load windows while in ahci and see if my speeds are better or is something entirely going crazy with components?

 

[ChanceCoats123]

Did you install windows in IDE mode? If so you won't be able to boot via ACHI unless you reinstall using the drivers. I personally wouldn't because there hasn't been a noticeable increase in performance using ACHI.

And once again, it's be said, but I would avoid benchmarking the drive for a few days, and then retest. They seem way too low even for a "used" state, but who knows?

 

[Icebl@ster]

The chipset drivers were installed and it wont boot into ahci mode only ide now...
And not quite sure what your next statement means. Give the drive a break and then try the benchmarks?They are definitely low..when i was using the ud3r motherboard i had very similar to this guys vertex 2 100g (in the thread at the bottom of this forum section called OCZ Vertex 2 results!)

Another person responded to my thread at ocz stating he has similar speeds to mine and he is currently using the ud3r

 

[ChanceCoats123]

Yeah, like I mentioned, you can't boot into ACHI now. Once you install with the drive in IDE mode, ACHI is out of the question unless you reinstall. As for the rest, yes. Just use the drive for normal things for a few days and then re-test. Give the cells a break.

 

[Icebl@ster]

I'm confused why can't i change to ahci now? I did it on my previous board and it worked perfectly?

edit:hmmm just did a quick google and it might be something with gigabyte boards that allow it to change from ide to ahci without error?(well atleast this one guy said he could with another gigabyte board)

 

[King107s]

OK, so to reply to your PM with some before and after results I'm not happy to say that I'm seeing the same write speed degredation... Below you will see the bench marks after the fresh instal on 6-10-2010 then to the right current bench marks run today 6-28-2010 (18 days later).

AS SSD Benchmark Results


ATTO Benchmark Results


CrystalDisk Mark Results

 

[Icebl@ster]

hmm very interesting thank you very much king..this puts a significant amount of clarity.
And to everyone else i regedit back to ahci and now my writes are about 100 and according to a user on ocz thats normal difference between 50g and 100g drives although i thought i remembered higher speeds previously

 

[King107s]

Strange that AS SSD and CDM both show a significant decrease in write speeds but theres only a slight change in ATTO....

AS SSD Change		
	Read	Write
Seq	-0.6%	-81.1%
4K	-7.9%	-15.6%
4K-64 T	0.4%	-130.2%
Acc. T	41.8%	5.5%
		
ATTO Change		
	Read	Write
1024	0.0%	-1.6%
2048	3.3%	-6.6%
		
Crystal Disk Mark Change		
	Read	Write
Seq	-0.9%	-84.9%
512K	-0.9%	-76.4%
4K	-8.9%	-15.4%
4K QD32	-1.4%	-63.8%

I'm going to clone the drive wipe it clean and re image it and see if the performance changes.