Read Write Speeds SSD vs. 3 TB HDD

[Worf101]

I just did my first major rebuild since I bought the venerable AMD FX60 dual core many, many moons ago. I wouldn't have upgraded now but the MSI mobo finally kicked the bucket so here I am. As part of my new build I replaced my 2 500 Mb Samsung HDD's with a 256 Plextor SDD and a 3TB Seagate Cuda. Now I've done a lot of the Win 7 SSD Tweaks, and flashed to the latest firmware for the SSD and bios for the Mobo. However when I run performance tests on my HDD's the Seagate has consistently faster reads and writes than the Plex SSD. I'm completely at a loss to explain this. I'll post the actual figures and the name of the testing software when I get home still I don't understand this at all.

Worf

 

[rolli59]

That does not make any sense since no mechanical HDD can even come close to max out the SATA 3GB interface while the fastest SSD's are close to max the SATA 6GB!

 

[Dereck47]

Your motherboard has 4 SATA ports. Two of the ports are SATA 1.0 (1.5Gb/s), and the other two are SATA 2.0 (3Gb/s).

You probably have your SSD connected to one of the SATA 1.0 ports (SATA_RAID1 or SATA_RAID2). With your SSD connected to one of these ports you will get maximum Read/Write speeds of 150MB/s.

Connect your SSD to port SATA1 or SATA2. See page 2-3 of your motherboard manual for the location of these ports.

Also, the port any SSD is connected to needs to be in AHCI mode for best performance.
Your motherboard does not support AHCI mode so that will reduce the performance of any SSD.

 

[Worf101]

Your motherboard has 4 SATA ports. Two of the ports are SATA 1.0 (1.5Gb/s), and the other two are SATA 2.0 (3Gb/s).

You probably have your SSD connected to one of the SATA 1.0 ports (SATA_RAID1 or SATA_RAID2). With your SSD connected to one of these ports you will get maximum Read/Write speeds of 150MB/s.

Connect your SSD to port SATA1 or SATA2. See page 2-3 of your motherboard manual for the location of these ports.

Also, the port any SSD is connected to needs to be in AHCI mode for best performance.
Your motherboard does not support AHCI mode so that will reduce the performance of any SSD.

I thought so too but I downloaded Plextools for SSD's (it's mostly worthless drivel) and it shows that I'm getting 6GPS throughput on my SSD so I'm still confused. I made sure I had put the SSD in a SATA 3 port and used a SATA three cable. Here are my system specs. Should've posted this first!

SAMSUNG Black Blu-ray Combo SATA Model SH-B123L LightScribe Support - OEM

COOLER MASTER Silent Pro Gold Series 800W ATX 12V v2.3

XFX Double D Black Edition FX-777A-ZDB4 Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB 128-bit GDDR5

G.SKILL Ares Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX

AMD FX-4100 Zambezi 3.6GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 95W Quad-Core Processor

Plextor 256 M3 256 MB SSD Hard Drive

Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Worf

 

[Dereck47]

Under your profile it states that your motherboard is a ASUS A8V Deluxe.

 

[Worf101]

Under your profile it states that your motherboard is a ASUS A8V Deluxe.

LOL I guess I better change my profile!!!!! God what a Maroon! I guess I oughtta come back more often!

Worf

 

[Dereck47]

Connect your SSD to port SATA6G_1 in AHCI mode.
Benchmark your HDD & SSD with ATTO software and report back your results.

 

[popatim]

install AMD's RaidXpert and run it. Select your SSD from the drives listed and then on the settings tab make sure NCQ is on. Your drivewrs disk may have had an older AHCI drive on it which would default to having NCQ turned off.

 

[Worf101]

Thanks for the suggestions. Some replies:

I down loaded the latest driver suite from ASUS and flashed the bios before I installed the SSD drive.

I'm running NTI's SSD Performance Analyser (don't know if it's any good or not but it's all I had). The data is as follows


Write speed:

Plextor: Average - 288.5 MB/S Max - 375.0 MB/S

Seagate 3TB: Average - 316. 34 MB/S Max - 400.0 MB/S

Read Speed:

Plextor: Average - 370.04 MB/S Max - 428.57 MB/S

Seagate 3TB: Average - 330.45 MB/S Max - 425.53 MB/S

As you can see the Seagate beats the Plextor handily in Write speeds and is within shouting distance on Read. I don't get this at all.

I will try the other solutions you suggested and report back.

Thanks...

Worf

PS I'm not running any sort of RAID setup so I'm not sure what RAIDexpert will show me but I'll try it.

 

[popatim]

I see the problem. The benchamarks file size is too small and your reading and writing to the HDD's cache and not the drive itself.

edit - your HDD should read/write about 100mb/s and has a cache of 32 or 64mb.

 

[Dereck47]

I see the problem. The benchamarks file size is too small and your reading and writing to the HDD's cache and not the drive itself.

edit - your HDD should read/write about 100mb/s and has a cache of 32 or 64mb.

You're right. Seagate's Data Sheet says the drive should Read/Write 156MB/s.
http://www.seagate.com/files/staticfiles/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/barracuda-ds1737-1-1111us.pdf

 

[popatim]

Wow, thats even faster than I thought! Nice speedy drive there.

 

[rolli59]

Yep the file size explains it. If mechanical HDD had that speed there would be no need for SSD's