33% reduced IOPs performance with intel 160GB G2 SSD drives in 4 months

B

Boltaction

Gawd
Joined
Jun 10, 2004
Messages
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These are screenshots from some testing I did tonight on 3 brand new SSDs, all updated to firmware 02HD and otherwise untouched.

Drive 1:
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/2536/iopsmail21.png
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/461/benchmarkmail21.png
Drive 2:
http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/6751/iopsmail22.png
http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/4843/benchmarkmail22.png
Drive 3:
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/1966/iopsmail23.png
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/5375/benchmarkmail23.png


And my original 160GB G2 SSD that I got back in March:
http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/8783/iopsolddrive.png
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/9159/benchmarkolddrive.png



As you can see, it goes from 15k IOPS to 10K IOPS. This drive was not abused, not filled to capacity, system is mainly for gaming.
 
Could you benchmark again with better benchmarks? CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD are recommended; these are the only benchmarks you should use when testing SSDs. HDTune only tests single queue depth and is not suitable to testing performance of SSDs.

So you got three Intel 160GB SSDs?
1) are they all aligned properly?
2) are you using 'msachi' or 'iastor.sys' driver capable of TRIM? (check with AS SSD)
3) did you ever fill up one of the SSDs more than 75%; if so howmany days would it be filled above 75% capacity? very shortly or prolonged period?

Looking forward to the real benches; then we could draw some conclusions.
Cheers!
 
jay2472000 said:
^^^^^^^^^^^^ is a retarded answer. Assuming a linear decrease in performance in one year would you be concerned if your SSD lost 99% of its performance??
Click to expand...

Assuming a linear decrease in performance would be silly. It's not likely.
 
jay2472000 said:
^^^^^^^^^^^^ is a retarded answer. Assuming a linear decrease in performance in one year would you be concerned if your SSD lost 99% of its performance??
Click to expand...

It's not a retarted answer and I'd like to know the answer also.

PS...Jay, do you have an SSD?
 
Still, monitoring the performance (degradation) over a period of time using the right tools is a worthy investment of time. It is true, though, that minor performance decrease especially in IOps would not directly be noticeable.

Still, there are people with TRIM-capable Intel SSDs with seriously degraded performance, due to erase block fragmentation. This would surely be noticeable in its extreme forms, which happens especially if you keep a reasonably full filesystem with many small writes. The space reclaimed by TRIM would be useless in that case, since none of them might consist of a contiguous free erase block (128KiB).

But you should start using the right tools, first.
 
Hippie, I think were on the same side but you dont realize it. Im saying that the degradation IS something to be concerned about. For someone to reply to the OP that just because you may not notice the difference then one should disregard it is a BAD idea. I merely suggested that if the degradation where linear would the 99% drop in performance be enough for one to care?

And for the record, no, I dont own an SSD. I havent been convinced I need one. I have sat here and read about the firmware bricks, install troubles, performance degradation, etc enough that I wont buy the Hummer of PC parts anytime soon. But for you to suggest that since I may not own said hardware, I may not have an opinion is ludacris.

@ Aldamon, I was using it to make a point. We know any electronic parts suffers "wear and tear" etc. At what point is it a concern? I used a linear assumption because its easiest to understand for most people. I assume you have results that prove otherwise? A longterm study of SSD wear and degradation ?
 
Im saying that the degradation IS something to be concerned about.
Click to expand...

I've been using consumer SSDs for almost 2 yrs. now and I feel it is a revelent question because soo many of these performance stats are way and above what the normal consumer will notice.

I have SSDs, I came from Raptors, Velociraptors, and whatever the fastest HDs were before those.

Seriously Jay, experience is the best teacher, he's not talking 99% degradation, I really don't care if you're convinced to buy an SSD :rolleyes:, and there's a time to read, a time to listen, and a time to learn.

Take that however you want but I consider the question legitimate and as an experienced SSD user, would like to know the answer. :)
 
Old Hippie said:
..... I consider the question legitimate and as an experienced SSD user, would like to know the answer. :)
Click to expand...


ME TOO. Once again, I think were both on the same page yet you dont realize it.

I AGREE!!!!!

But to just wash it away as, "since you wouldnt notice it ; that it doesnt matter", seemed kind of, well, retarded. That occured in post 4 and 5 by the way.

Point is, OP paid for X performance. Now hes getting 2/3X and people are ok with that because "you dont notice" ???

If I paid a large sum of money for a motorcycle that was supposed to do 180 and I only could get it to 120 and the seller told me that its ok because without a speedometer you cant tell the difference, Id be a little peeved.
 
ME TOO. Once again, I think were both on the same page yet you dont realize it.
Click to expand...

I'm asking for an answer to a question, not debating if the/an SSD was worth it or not.
 
Old drive:
asssdold.png

52GB free out of 160GB, used often for torrenting and moving ISOs around but this isn't a SQL server or anything.

New Drive:
asssdnew.png
 
And you don't think the alignment is bad?

You see those things in Red that say "Bad"?
 
How did you install Win 7 ?

From an image ? Possibly an image that was originally an upgrade install ?

EDIT: For more content, yes, if you allow Win 7 to handle partitioning then all should be well with an SSD, always has been for me anyway. You did something different.
 
Which you cannot do, at least not without other fiddling about.

Look for Paragon Partition Manager. Or better yet get a clean install going.

A misaligned drive will suffer degraded performance over time. How much or how fast I don't know, but until you remedy this no one will really have any other advice for you.

Good luck.
 
I'm hoping everybody remembers this simple tip before the last of the month THIS seems to work well with alignment problems.
 
Check these, in the following order:

1. Re-align your drive.
2. Check if any background processes are interfering with the benchmark.
3. Do a TRIM run with Intel's SSD optimizer. Yes, even if you use Windows Vista/7.
4. Check your free space.
 
I installed and ran the app, but it failed to align the primary partition. I have 52GB free, I wonder what's up with that.
 
what the fuck did Paragon alignment tool do to my hard drive

failedalignment.png


I'm going to run intel TRIM, then do it again.
 
Boltaction said:
I installed and ran the app, but it failed to align the primary partition. I have 52GB free, I wonder what's up with that.
Click to expand...

It most likely has to do with the fact you cloned the drive. I'd get a new install coming. I'd use the HDDErase utility and do a proper install. Get it as close to out of the box performance as possible, then start monitoring degredation again. Use Trim if possible. I can't or I would. Trim isn't supported in RAID mode.
 
You don't necessarily have to do a clean install on an SSD, but you do have to pay attention to your alignment. Win7 should do that automatically (on HDDs too, I believe). I cloned my Win7 Enterprise install from my 80GB HDD to my 80GB SSD (size is coincidence, not planned) with EASEUS Disk Copy, and the partition is properly aligned.

Depending on the tool you used to clone it, especially if it's an older version, it may have just copied the partition and screwed up your alignment.
 
I use Acronis TrueImage 12 all the time with my X25-M/80 and have never had any issues like what the OP is experiencing or others here claim cloning leads to. My drive seems to be just fine by the standards posted by several people in this thread:

WAIVW.png


Perhaps the fact that I install 7 to a single partition (no 100 MB boot partition) and always restore my clones over that partition has something to do with it? I've had this drive since October, by the way, so it got plenty of use before Intel TRIM drivers were even available. I did secure HDDErase it a few months ago - whenever the RST/TRIM drivers came out - but I just restored my image right on top of the fresh drive and apparently it's still okay according to this AS tool everyone is recommending.

Hope this helps.
 
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Likely his partitions were already misaligned when he cloned them to his SSD. As you can see, yours are properly aligned and generally you have good performance. The 80GB writes a little less fast than 160GB models (which have double capacity NAND chips; which may be a bit faster). Both have 10 parallel flash channels; you can see your 4K-64 read score being almost 10 times as high (the theoretical max) of the single queue depth 4K test, which can only use one flash channel at a particular time.

The 100MB system partition that Windows 7 uses (mostly for the BitLocker encryption stuff i believe) shouldn't change a thing; that still means the C: partition is aligned.

Note that restoring an image means you write sequentially, that's a lot better than little random writes which is how your system disk gets used over time. So to restore performance you could image your current SSD, perform secure erase and write image again. Even though it stores the same data now, it will be faster due to all data being written sequentially; meaning all data is allocated 'static' on the SSD. Small writes likely will be remapped to another physical location and thus end up as 'dynamically' allocated; which tends to slow down SSDs over time.
 
Doh, forgot I just reinstalled last week and haven't reimaged since then. I did not secure erase for that install though, so these results should be representative. Looks like cloning screws up the alignment after all, BUT it doesn't really seem to have any performance impact, at least not yet:

xLHzh.png
 
It depends on the cloning application. I believe recent releases of Acronis do maintain alignment. That means: if your alignment was good before you cloned it, it will be good after restoring the clone. Likewise, if your alignment was bad, it will also be bad after the cloning procedure.

But some cloning programs may work on filesystem level instead, and simply put all files into a special archive and create partition and boot code themselves and extract the image. This means alignment will not be preserved. If that cloning program creates the partitions the proper way, however, it could also correct bad alignment turning it into a properly aligned partition; which is way cool.

Either way, it's not bad to check your SSD's performance from time to time. If it becomes degraded; then a cloning procedure could restore most of the performance again. A secure erase+reinstall is still recommended. And reserving more spare space by not partitioning a part of your SSD after a secure erase, should provide the best defense against performance degradation over time. So it's a balance between convenience, usable storage space and performance.
 
That Paragon alignment tool worked just fine for me. Thanks to whoever posted it. The only thing I noticed is that it aligned the partition to 2048k instead of 1024k. Guess I'll just have to do without that extra MB :p
 
IMHO it's always better to do a clean Win7 install to an SSD, if for no other reason than to make 100% sure the alignment is set properly, and all the other system settings are properly set for an SSD (aka disabling defrag etc etc). If you clone it, you've got to remember to do those things manually, along with hoping your alignment is ok.

This article is always a good read for a new SSD owner.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

The things to check if you clone would be in this section here...

Windows 7 Optimizations and Default Behavior Summary

As noted above, all of today’s SSDs have considerable work to do when presented with disk writes and disk flushes. Windows 7 tends to perform well on today’s SSDs, in part, because we made many engineering changes to reduce the frequency of writes and flushes. This benefits traditional HDDs as well, but is particularly helpful on today’s SSDs.

Windows 7 will disable disk defragmentation on SSD system drives. Because SSDs perform extremely well on random read operations, defragmenting files isn’t helpful enough to warrant the added disk writing defragmentation produces. The FAQ section below has some additional details.

Be default, Windows 7 will disable Superfetch, ReadyBoost, as well as boot and application launch prefetching on SSDs with good random read, random write and flush performance. These technologies were all designed to improve performance on traditional HDDs, where random read performance could easily be a major bottleneck. See the FAQ section for more details.

Since SSDs tend to perform at their best when the operating system’s partitions are created with the SSD’s alignment needs in mind, all of the partition-creating tools in Windows 7 place newly created partitions with the appropriate alignment.
Click to expand...

Newer technology requires new approaches, HD to SSD is one of those times.
 
Is this a common issue? I thought Intel SSD's were the best and maintained performance.
 
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