Guidance on issues with my SSD in RAID-0

[Trivius]

Okay, earlier I had tested my C-drive SSD speeds with Crystal Disk and they are just over 300 for read and over 200 for write (image included below); I am running two, one-year old, Corsair Neutron GTX' in RAID-0, in SATA III on my EVGA X58 Classified 3. Needless to say those speeds are vastly off from where they should be at.

Today I attempted to install and use Corsair SSD Toolbox, but it is only showing a few fields in the drive info area, most of the fields are blank, 0, N/A, and I cannot access any of the features they are all either shaded out or show that feature as not supported for these drives.

In BIOS they used to be set to RAID, but I this morning I had changed that to AHCI upon recommend settings for the Toolbox, which did not help resolve anything.

One issue that has concerned me ever since I installed my Windows 7 (Ultimate, 64bit), is that Windows has always treated my SSD raid, which is my primary drive, as a removable device, running it under a 'Marvell raid VD 0 ATA Device'. I have never been able to figure out how to make it stop doing this or prevent it from using the Marvell driver, uninstall it, install another driver in its place, stop it from being listed as a removable drive, etc.

So now I am wondering if the above issue is the root of my inability to use the Toolbox, along with my poor read/write speeds, or if my SSD have serious hardware issues and need to be replaced (although software shows their condition as good)?

Advice on how to resolve these issues would be much appreciated (e.g., at this point I am wondering if I should copy this drive over to my WD (or if using that Windows backup feature is safer to use), order two new replacement drives, setup a new raid, and copy the files back?)

 

[redduc900]

The drives should be connected to the Intel X58 SB (SATA0 - SATA5), and not the Marvell controller (SATA8 - SATA9) for best performance. The SATA controller mode should also be set to RAID, and not AHCI. And instead of using Crystal Disk to measure the arrays performance, use ATTO...

ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.47
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/atto_disk_benchmark.html

... and disable the Marvell controller in the BIOS.

 

[davidst95]

Hi, sorry be a downer but for every article I read SSD Raid 0 isn't going to give you much benefits, in fact, it my hurt your 4K write time. I had this problem with trying to do Samsung EVO Raid 0. However this was due to the fact that I couldn't enable RAPID mode. Please let us know if you get a good performance increase and I might revisit SSD RAID 0.

David

 

[Woomack]

As redduc900 already said, disable Marvell controller and use Intel. Marvell is SATA3 but with limited performance and often additional issues. On X58 boards it was just a mistake to put there Marvell controller.

Intel ports should provide max bandwidth up to ~280MB/s per port so 2x SSD in RAID0 should reach sequential ~550MB/s read and write. Also random transfers will be much higher than on Marvell controller.

You also shouldn't use Marvell for optical drives as it's causing write/read errors. This issue has been fixed in new controllers. However it should work fine with any HDD so still can be used for additional storage or backup.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Another vote for just forgetting about using RAID 0. Just use a single SSD big enough for your needs on an Intel SATA III port set to AHCI.

 

[EarthDog]

Another vote for just forgetting about using RAID 0. Just use a single SSD big enough for your needs on an Intel SATA III port set to AHCI.

while 4k writes and performance does increase, I'd go single as welln

 

[Trivius]

Lots of great information, thank you.

I originally had it set to RAID, but the Corsair SSD Toolbox requires the setting be AHCI, so I had changed it; however, either setting did nothing toward getting the Toolbox to work for me, all the setting are still disabled or otherwise state my drive is not compatible with any of the features.

In the BIOS for EVGA (X58 Classified-3) what is the setting to turn off the Marvell controller? I am not at home now, and off the top of my head I am not recalling setting such a setting before (e.g., is it an acronym or something to that effect?)

And is the consensus then, that for 1366 boards, RAID provide only a slight increase in performance, but not really enough to warrant the costs of two SSD' for RAID-0?

 

[EarthDog]

You don't need to disable it, just move your sata cables to the Intel sata ports.

As far as raid performance on paper, it doubles just about everything last i recall. But, for the most part, you will only notice if you work with a lot of large files. Otherwise, boot times are almost a wash due to the raid setup in the bios negating any gains made by faster speeds.

 

[Trivius]

I think I already have them connected, the first two red ones, right?

Last night during boot, I did the Ctrl-I which took me to an Intel Raid configuration menu, but the SSD did not show up only my two WD HDD. Also I changed the setting back to RAID in BIOS.

 

[redduc900]

Like I mentioned above, the drives need to be connected to SATA0 - SATA5 (black ports; Intel south bridge), and not the red SATA8 - SATA9 ports (Marvell l 88SE9128 chipset). The Intel south bridge controller also needs to be enabled in the BIOS before entering the Intel RAID config. utility.