Slave drive going slow

grab a program such as HD tune and run some bench marks. post the results and we can check them out. you dont need to defrag that often either.

does this happen all the time or is it only after you dont access somthing on the drive for awhile? is the drive spinning down alot?

HD Tune Pro: Intel Raid 0 Volume Benchmark

Test capacity: full

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 0.0 MB/s
Transfer Rate Maximum : 37.9 MB/s
Transfer Rate Average : 0.5 MB/s
Access Time : 916.0 ms
Burst Rate : 34.9 MB/s
CPU Usage : 5.2%

-----------------------------------------------------------------

HD Tune Pro: Intel Raid 0 Volume File Benchmark

Drive D:

Transfer rate test

File Size: 500 MB

Sequential read 2589 KB/s
Sequential write 1918 KB/s
Random read 1 IOPS
Random write 0 IOPS
Random read (queue depth = 32) 3 IOPS
Random write (queue depth = 32) 31 IOPS

-----------------------------------------------------------------

HD Tune Pro: Intel Raid 0 Volume Monitor


Block size

Number of I/O operations
Block size Read operations Write operations
0.5K 0.0% 0.0%
1K 0.0% 0.0%
2K 0.0% 0.0%
4K 0.0% 0.0%
8K 0.0% 0.0%
16K 0.0% 0.0%
32K 0.0% 0.0%
64K 100.0% 0.0%
<=64K 100.0% 0.0%
>64K 0.0% 0.0%

Maximum speed
Block size Read speed Write speed
0.5K 0.3 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
1K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
2K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
4K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
8K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
16K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
32K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
64K 241.6 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
<=64K 241.6 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
>64K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s

Median speed
Block size Read speed Write speed
0.5K 0.3 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
1K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
2K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
4K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
8K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
16K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
32K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s
64K 0.0 MB/s 0.0 MB/s

Position
Position percentage
0% 100.0%
1% 0.0%
2% 0.0%
3% 0.0%
4% 0.0%
5% 0.0%
6% 0.0%
7% 0.0%
8% 0.0%
9% 0.0%
10% 0.0%
11% 0.0%
12% 0.0%
13% 0.0%
14% 0.0%
15% 0.0%
16% 0.0%
17% 0.0%
18% 0.0%
19% 0.0%
20% 0.0%
21% 0.0%
22% 0.0%
23% 0.0%
24% 0.0%
25% 0.0%
26% 0.0%
27% 0.0%
28% 0.0%
29% 0.0%
30% 0.0%
31% 0.0%
32% 0.0%
33% 0.0%
34% 0.0%
35% 0.0%
36% 0.0%
37% 0.0%
38% 0.0%
39% 0.0%
40% 0.0%
41% 0.0%
42% 0.0%
43% 0.0%
44% 0.0%
45% 0.0%
46% 0.0%
47% 0.0%
48% 0.0%
49% 0.0%
50% 0.0%
51% 0.0%
52% 0.0%
53% 0.0%
54% 0.0%
55% 0.0%
56% 0.0%
57% 0.0%
58% 0.0%
59% 0.0%
60% 0.0%
61% 0.0%
62% 0.0%
63% 0.0%
64% 0.0%
65% 0.0%
66% 0.0%
67% 0.0%
68% 0.0%
69% 0.0%
70% 0.0%
71% 0.0%
72% 0.0%
73% 0.0%
74% 0.0%
75% 0.0%
76% 0.0%
77% 0.0%
78% 0.0%
79% 0.0%
80% 0.0%
81% 0.0%
82% 0.0%
83% 0.0%
84% 0.0%
85% 0.0%
86% 0.0%
87% 0.0%
88% 0.0%
89% 0.0%
90% 0.0%
91% 0.0%
92% 0.0%
93% 0.0%
94% 0.0%
95% 0.0%
96% 0.0%
97% 0.0%
98% 0.0%
99% 0.0%

Programs
Program Read I/Os Total read Write I/Os Total write
Firefox 14719 90.2 MB 16321 72.5 MB
Plugin Container for Firefox 11562 767 KB 11562 1.5 MB
HD Tune Pro 11711 730 MB 0 0 KB
avp.exe 12278 32.9 MB 1353 57 KB
lsass.exe 29 31 KB 5 1 KB
Host Process for Windows Services 44 62 KB 13 440 KB
System 95 367 KB 7446 23.6 MB
Host Process for Windows Services 17 704 KB 234 223 KB
wmpnetwk.exe 1037 2.5 MB 8 31 KB
Host Process for Windows Services 20247 401 KB 33 2 KB
Host Process for Windows Services 1 1 KB 0 0 KB
Host Process for Windows Services 7 37 KB 0 0 KB
services.exe 3 1 KB 3 1 KB
Host Process for Windows Tasks 2 1 KB 2 1 KB
Host Process for Windows Services 1 4 KB 0 0 KB

Statistics
Parameter Read Write
Total transfer 731 MB 0 KB
Total I/O operations 11697 0
Maximum speed 242 MB/s 0 KB/s
Maximum IOPS 540 0
512 I/O operations 0% (2) -
512 Median speed 270 KB/s -
1K I/O operations 0% (0) -
1K Median speed - -
2K I/O operations 0% (0) -
2K Median speed - -
4K I/O operations 0% (0) -
4K Median speed - -
8K I/O operations 0% (0) -
8K Median speed - -
16K I/O operations 0% (0) -
16K Median speed - -
32K I/O operations 0% (0) -
32K Median speed - -
64K I/O operations 99% (11691) -
64K Median speed 30 KB/s -
<=64K I/O operations 100% (11697) -
<=64K Median speed 30 KB/s -

this test was done on a raid-0 of platter drives? these resaults are very very slow.
do you know if the drives are in good health? have you ran diagnostics on them to make sure one is not failing?

check to make sure proper controller drivers are installed, i assume this is on the onboard controller; are there any other raids running on this controller? how many drives are pluged into this?

if they were IDE drives id suspect they were running in PIO mode instead of UDMA o.O

The hard drive in question is roughly 1 month old.
It was a brand new 500gb HDD SataIII 6.0gb/s.
When it was first turned on it was FAST!! and I can't say that enough...and just randomly started going slow...
How/where do I check/install on board controllers??

HD Tune Pro: M4-CT064M4SSD2 Health

ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status
(01) Raw Read Error Rate 100 100 50 0 ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count 100 100 10 0 ok
(09) Power On Hours Count 100 100 1 972 ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count 100 100 1 82 ok
(AA) (unknown attribute) 100 100 10 0 ok
(AB) Program Fail Count 100 100 1 0 ok
(AC) Erase Fail Block Count 100 100 1 0 ok
(AD) (unknown attribute) 100 100 10 4 ok
(AE) Unexpected Power Loss Count 100 100 1 0 ok
(B5) Program Fail Count 100 100 1 6291544 ok
(B7) (unknown attribute) 100 100 1 0 ok
(B8) End To End Error Detection 100 100 50 0 ok
(BB) Reported Uncorrectable Errors 100 100 1 0 ok
(BC) Command Timeout 100 100 1 0 ok
(BD) (unknown attribute) 100 100 1 52 ok
(C2) Temperature 100 100 0 0 ok
(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered 100 100 1 0 ok
(C4) Reallocated Event Count 100 100 1 0 ok
(C5) Current Pending Sector 100 100 1 0 ok
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable 100 100 1 0 ok
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count 100 100 1 0 ok
(CA) Data Address Marker errors 100 100 1 0 ok
(CE) Flying Height 100 100 1 0 ok

Health Status : ok

you check controller drivers by going into device manager and making sure the proper drivers are there. maybe go to intels site and download new ones. have you tried another sata cable?

or tested this HD in another system?

I see several things in question:

1.) 64gb mSata drive (intel srt active) - I this as a cache drive for the HDD?

2.) If it is a cache, that answers why it is in RAID. Otherwise I'd have you check your SATA port setting in BIOS to be ACHI, not IDE. RAID is ACHI for single drives by default.

3.) Don't refer to the drive as a slave drive, it's a second drive. Slaves are for IDE/PATA drive. SATA does not have slaves.

4.) If is is set up as a cache drive, and even not, do you have the latest chipset driver installed? Intel just did an update. You didn't mention your motherboard.

GA-Z68XP-UD3 is my motherboard.

The 64gb SSD is an mSata set up with Intel Smart Response Technology. So I believe it's a cache for the system if I understood correctly. Could be wrong.
I've tried new SATA cables and different ports, no change in performance.

You didn't list a HDD. What is the mSATA drive acclerating?

Try removed the cache set up , and see if the hard drive is fine without it.

64gb SSD mSata set to cache both the:
64gb SSD OS drive
500gb SATA Storage drive

I just disabled caching from the mSata drive and my burst read speed went from 32 mb/s to 330 mb/s.

I am confused, isn't the caching supposed to increase performance.

You don't need to cache to OS drive, it's already an SSD!

I understand that, but it was explained to me by a smarter friend that it would be like running SSD's in RAID 0. Which is stupid fast, but it doesn't appear to work that way.
What I want to know, is why did it slow down my other hard drive my 90%?

anyone got any ideas why/how this happened?

if it caches data that is not needed then the cache is rendered useless... that being said im not sure if it requires data to be in said cache before it will read it? perhaps thats what its doing. causing extra I/O overhead by cacheing all data prior to read/write.

I run 3 SSD's in raid-0 and when i turn on cache my burst speeds go up considerably, however my real world performance is sliced by almost 60%. I never run any SSD's with windows cache due to the degraded performance in day to day computing. I do however recommend using a controller card with built on cache if you are going to run SSD's in a raid.

The whole system is utilizing "INTEL SMART RESPONSE" that I've read is supposed to enhance everything 4 fold.
I thought I understood it better than I actually did.