Samsng 850 PRO Raid0.. After benchmark one of the drives drops to 3GBps in Intel RST

ETHER34L

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Feb 12, 2015
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Hey everyone,

I could not find a thread that existed for this problem, if one exists then I would appreciate the link.

Setup:

Main: EVGA Z97 Stinger-Wifi
Drive: 2 x Sammy 850 PRO 128GB in RAID-0

After a fresh install on these brand new SSD's in a 128k striped raid, the system is running smooth. When drivers, updates were finished I naturally moved on to benchmarks to verify that the RAID is working as intended.

The initial benchmark only came out to sequential R: 540MB/s W: 480MB/s.

This was a bit of a shock, as the last SSD Raid setup I had was 2x OCZ Solid III's in RAID-0 on X79 and I was getting consistent sequential read speeds of over 1000MB/s. As my current drives are way newer, faster, and 'apparently' better quality, I new something was wrong.

Through Intel RST control panel, I noticed that the RAID was reporting all is well and after running error verification on, it all came up clean. I did notice however that the first drive in the raid was reporting a 6Gb/s interface but the other drive was reporting only a 3Gb/s interface.

I read somewhere that disabling intel hot plug in the SATA config in BIOS could help.
I did this and (whether it was contributing to the problem or not) on the next boot Intel RST was reporting 6Gb/s interface on both drives.

GREAT! I thought.. Back to the benchmarks!

What I got was sequential R: 1040MB/s W: 470MB/s...

That can't be right. I looked back at Intel RST and the second drive in my array was again reporting a 3Gb/s interface. Must have dropped down after the read test was complete before the write test, because sometimes the interface works throughout the tests and gives me write speeds of over 950MB/s. Now everytime I do a cold boot (not windows restart) the drives report 6Gb/s speeds and CrystalDisk will bench expected speeds for a few tests, before dropping to single drive speeds. When I look in RST it always degrades to a 3Gb/s interface on the second drive.

Is this possibly an issue with Intel RST Raid drivers? Or is it likely a bad SSD?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

ETHER34L

Reputable
Feb 12, 2015
2
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4,510


Hey popatim, thanks for the response, I have already tried two different ports as well as new sata3 cables with no luck.

I have been messing with this for hours and seemed to get it working.

I just uninstalled IRST and then uninstalled (and deleted the files) of the Intel Raid Controller in device manager. After a few reboots the original raid controller driver was installed, but the computer started randomly locking up and freezing. I managed to reinstall the latest Intel RST driver and now for some reason It's working. I just completed a benchmark without the SATA issues occurring:

11001763_10153184275871209_6514155953294304150_n.jpg


Compared to my original:

10968574_10153184275866209_7383339817927356320_n.jpg


Intel RST Control Panel has been reporting both drives running at 6Gb/s finally. Trying not to bump, or breathe on it too hard..