SSD Slowdown?

L

Landmine

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 19, 2011
Messages
402
I'm looking into replacing my two Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2 SSDs with a single Samsung 840 EVO 1TB. However, I'd like to address the slowdown issue on my current setup.

Since the 1st benchmark, I've upgrade from Windows 7 Pro to Windows 8.1 Pro and upgraded my Video Cards from 6970's to a single 290X.

RAID0 consist of two Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2
Motherboard is an ASUS Sabertooth P67 (REV 3.0)

1st Image
My SSD Benchmark from May 2012

2nd Image
Benchmark with the same equipment today, 11/26/2013

as-ssd-bench%20SSDRAID0%205.21.2012%206-12-49%20PM.png
as-ssd-bench%20Intel%20Raid%200%20Vol%2011.26.2013%201-29-34%20PM.png


Any ideas on what could cause this slowdown?
 
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To me the start looks slow. I mean the 4K reads on the first graph are not that good for a current day SSD.
 
Sorry, posted the SSD models in the original post.

RAID0 consist of two Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2
 
So you switched OS in the meanwhile and wonder why your performance looks different? :D
 
I can only see one image myself, so I won't be much help. However, I do know that my benchmarks today on my three year old SSD is much slower than it was when it was new and its not because of age. I think SSD's just slow down when you use them or have data on them. I heard that if you secure erase a drive using the manufacturers tools, you can usually bring back the original speeds again, until you write data to them or start using them regularly.
 
Landmine said:
RAID0 consist of two Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2
Motherboard is an ASUS Sabertooth P67 (REV 3.0)
Click to expand...

P67 motherboards don't support TRIM in RAID, as far as I know. That could cause the slowdown. This would not be an issue at all with a single SSD, of course.

A quick Google suggests that the RAID BIOS can be modified to support TRIM in RAID, but I know little about that process, and by going single-drive you wouldn't need to mess with that anyway.
 
Bingo! Looks like classic TRIM to me and one of the reasons why it was kind of ballsy to go RAID 0 since for whatever god awful reason TRIM wasn't supported until recently.


ob1 is also right. Eventually, even with TRIM, performance will start to degrade when you start filling up an SSD with more and more data similarly to that of a regular HDD. Although part of that is why TRIM exists to flush out the blocks and regain some performance back on a somewhat regular basis.
 
So would it be recommended to backup my data, break these out of the RAID0 and do some sort of low level format to the drives?

I've pretty much sold myself on getting the Samsung 840 Evo 1TB SSD and I will run that as my primary.
 
Just curious...how full are these drives........50-75-85%.

Have you added a lotta data since you got them?

Have you enabled write caching and disabled the write-cache buffer?

The 4K speeds don't look kosher even in your first test.
 
Every time you run your little benchmark, you're hammering your SSDs ability to run their garbage collection. Especially if they're half full or more with no over-provisioning. Way to go.
 
75% full

Brahmzy, could you recommend a good resource for better SSD management in the future? Or a list of best practices?
 
FWIW, I had my windows gaming machine act up on what should have been read operations. Really long time to e.g. bring up task mangeler. paging file was already not in use, no fix.

I turned SSD Trim off, then on again, filling the disk with junk, then deleted the junk file between and after those switches. Instant fix, behaves normally now.

I apologize for the lack of forensics, it's just my gaming box.
 
FWIW, the "trick" I did as described 2 posts above worked with 85%+ full drives. Worth it shot, doesn't cost anything.
 
If you are using on-board SATA you will need to install the latest Intel RST drivers that support TRIM in Windows 7/8. Even then it doesn't seem to work 100% especially with boards from a few years ago.
 
ratsting said:
If you are using on-board SATA you will need to install the latest Intel RST drivers that support TRIM in Windows 7/8. Even then it doesn't seem to work 100% especially with boards from a few years ago.
Click to expand...

You also need to have a chipset that supports it as well. I believe the Z77 series was the first chipset to support TRIM for RAID.
 
I have TRIM working on my x58 chipset.

You will need to insert a modified OROM into your current bios to get it working in the P67.
 
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