Ssd raid 0 poor benchmarks

[anime]

I can not get my raid 0 of two 30gig OCZ vertex ssd's to go above a sequential read time of 250?
I have the latest firmware update. I have all the tweaks applied. I have a fresh install with format and Sanitary erase. (multiple times) What ever I do I can not get it into the 400 mb/s little alone a 300 mb/s.
Can someone give me some insight as to what the problem could be?
They are on ports 0 and 1.
Before I put the drives in RAID 0. I tested one of the drives it was getting 200mb/s read time.

All the benchmarks are based off of "CrystalDiskMark" on HD tune bench mark it would only get 120mb/s

I did a fresh install current space being used is 8.02 gig


Windows 7 64-bit
p6t motherboard
h50 heatsink
i7-920 cpu
enermax infiniti 720w
4gig dual channel memory Corsair xms3 1600mhz
(2) 30gig OCZ Vertex ssd RAID 0 firmware ver. 1.5



I do not know if I am missing any important drivers. Or anything like that

thank you very much.

 

[sub mesa]

Expensive hardware RAID for a simple RAID0 array? LOL! Dont waste your money please. Even the most expensive hardware RAID are slower than software RAID when it comes to random IOps benchmarks; Areca ARC-12xx seems limited to 70.000 IOps.

There can be several reasons your RAID0 is not functioning properly:
- you have a 'bad' partition (misaligned) starting at 31.5KiB offset
- you have multiple partitions on the RAID; and the second partition is not properly aligned
- the selected stripesize is too low (< 128KiB)
- you defragmented your SSD at least once during its lifetime (you need a full zero write to regain performance)
- you performed inadequate benchmarking (low queue depth)

If you want some serious advice and really solve this issue, you must do some work yourself:
- explain your setup in more detail (enabled the 'write caching' option in Intel drivers? How did you create the partitions? Can you check for the partition offset, etc)
- post proper benchmarks performed at the filesystem level, for example HDTune Pro's "File" benchmark. The normal HDTune benchmark only tests raw disk access; without using read-ahead which your filesystem does use to allow parallel I/O processing.

If you can do that, i might be able to help you out with some specific advice.

 

[anime]

I have my stripe size at the largest value of 128KB



I created my partition in the Windows 7 install. I just clicked new partition -> format -> install
Is there another way to make a partition on a drive?

I did do a defrag on the free space.
How would I do a full write zero?

where do I go to enable the write caching for intel drivers?

What program would I use to find alignment information and partition information about my drives?

This bench mark is with a 2mb block size

This bench mark is with 8mb block size
http://img94.imageshack.us/i/hdtunebenchmarkintelraii.png/

System info that might be useful to you
http://img716.imageshack.us/i/63877009.png/

 

[anime]

Best answer selected by anime.

 

[anime]

According to the ssd alignment calculator http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157
I put all my info in and it said it was aligned.

 

[sub mesa]

Please download HDTune Pro evaluation and run the File benchmark (its on one of the tabs). This will test on the filesystem level and will give you 'real' scores other programs would get also. The raw read results HDTune produces are only usable for plain HDDs; not for RAID-arrays and such.

So if you test with HDTune Pro and run the Filesystem benchmark, you should get proper scores. If you enable write caching, then also the normal raw read benchmark from HDTune will get a boost. Some of this boost is bogus and does not translate to actual higher performance. So be careful when judging!

HDTune is a very basic benchmark; not really suited for RAID-arrays for numerous reasons. So when enabling 'write caching' (try device manager properties of the Intel RAID controller) - it only appears to increase sequential performance significantly, while right now you're seeing incorrect/meaningless low scores because the benchmark is insufficient.

Just download HDTune Pro and you'll see.

 

[anime]

File Benchmark 128kb block size


File Benchmark 8mb block size


Random Access


Benchmark 128kb blocksize


Cache write is on
http://img704.imageshack.us/i/90421477.png/

Atto benchmark

 

[sub mesa]

Hello! It looks like you got some higher results with the File benchmark, which is real performance as it uses the same API as other applications will use.

Still, results as somewhat disappointing. With RAID0, there is no reason a good setup would not get twice the sequential transfer speeds, and at least a decent boost to (multiqueue) random IOps.

Could you run the File benchmark with some different settings? Increase the file size to 2048MB and set the delay to a high value. I'm assuming its in seconds, then 10 second delay between tests would be appropriate. If its in msec, it should be 10000.

Could you also explain what 'tweaks' you applied? It could be one of these will actually hamper performance.

 

[litlefox]

Did you run diskpart? Did you install Microsoft Matrix Storage? Did you enable write caching and disable write cache buffering?

From the sounds of it you went in to this doing very little research.

OCZ forums, not tom's. Seriously.

Start fresh, follow this guide letter for letter:

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...chmarks-Provided)&highlight=ich10r raid guide

I'm getting 450 reads and 240 writes off the slower 60gb Solid 2 Series in RAID0, 30gb Vertexes should just hit 500 reads.

 

[anime]

Here is the new benchmark.



I did a write zero on both the drives and re partitioned them with the 128kb offset.

Thank you Sub Mesa for all of your help.

The link foxy posted was very helpful.

 

[litlefox]

Much better.

Here's my ATTO from the 2x Solid V2's RAID0

 

[anime]

Much better.

Here's my ATTO from the 2x Solid V2's RAID0

http://i889.photobucket.com/albums/ac93/litlefox/SSDFresh-1.jpg

How do you keep the performance from degrading. Is there any software you would recommend.

 

[litlefox]

If you're running FW 1.5 it'll keep itself in decent shape. Otherwise you'll want to look into Tony Trim.

 

[anime]

If you're running FW 1.5 it'll keep itself in decent shape. Otherwise you'll want to look into Tony Trim.

Yeah I have the 1.5 firmware on both drives. Do the defrag programs that are suppose to be for SSDs work with out messing up your ssd; because I have come across a couple of defrag programs where they have an ssd mode. Should I stay away from these?