SSD in SATAII not SATAIII

[cball1311]

Hello all,

I, for the life of me, cannot figure out why my SSDs will not configure to SATAIII. I have been trying to figure this out for quite some time and can't get them to use SATAIII transfer rates.

Here is what I am working with:
GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3 rev. 1.0 / Phenom X4 925 OC'd 3.5 GHz
16 GB G.Skill Ripjaw 1333 DDR3 RAM
MSI GTX460 Cylcone 1GB GDDR5 OC'd (had two in SLI, one died yesterday, darn)
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM SATAII HDD
2 Intel 330 60GB SATAIII SSDs
Corsair 750W PSU
Windows 7 Home Premium OS

Here is what I have done to try and get them to work in SATAIII

BIOS Setup:

1. Reflashed the BIOS to latest (F9) from GIGABYTE.com
2. AHCI SATA interface
3. Enabled SATA3.0 Support

SSD Setup:

1. Installed SSDs on SATA ports 0 and 1 (Ports using SB controller not Marvell)
2. Used brand new Rosegill SATAIII cables

OS Setup:

Fixed the AHCI interface in registry (HDD was in IDE on OS install)
Installed the latest chipset drivers

Extra:
I tried to use just on SSD and install OS. Had no problems their. Used CrystalDisk Info for specs, still showing SATA/300 (SATAII)
Made sure that the SSDs had the latest firmware which they did.


After all my trials and tribulations, I am lost on what to do or try next. Any further insight or help would be helpful. Thanks.

Here are some pics from CrystalDisk Info

 

[Dereck47]

It' possible that the Transfer Mode reported by CrystalDiskInfo is incorrect.

Benchmark your drives with ATTO software. If your maximum Read/Write speeds are less than 300MB/s then it's confirmed that you're only getting SATA II speeds.

All 6 ports on the SB controller are SATA III, so you might want to connect the drives to 2 other ports and see if that helps.

 

[cball1311]

Thanks Dereck47 for your reply. Here are my ATTO benchmarks and they are falling short of 300MB/s

I will change the ports here shortly and report back soon.

 

[Dereck47]

Yeah, you're definitely only getting SATA II speeds.

Hopefully changing SATA ports will work.

 

[cball1311]

You nailed it Dereck47. That is crazy. I would have never assumed that the ports (should be all the same) would have made the difference. Connected my HDD on Port0 and SSDs on 2 & 3 and IT WORKED!! How or why would this happen like this. I am pretty good with PCs (not so much SSD) but that would have been the last thing that I would have thought of.

Here is another question.

I am getting another 1TB HDD for the holidays. I want to setup a RAID 0 for performance (SATAIIs). I know that if I change the BIOS to RAID in the controller settings, I am going to loose TRIM support and the like (Intel SSD Toolbox). Would you suggest running my SSDs in RAID 0, as well, as my OS drive? Will there be a big performance hit? I ask this because using one 60GB as an OS drive doesn't leave a lot of headroom once the OS is installed. If I run in RAID I will have, theoretically, double that?

Thanks so much for the help.

 

[cball1311]

Best answer selected by cball1311.

 

[Dereck47]

Yeah, 60GB is pretty small for your O/S, programs, & games.

I have 2 60GB SSDs (Vertex 2) that I have had in RAID-0 for 3 years with no issues.

You will lose TRIM but just Log Off (not Shut Down) overnight once every other week or so to allow idle Garbage Collection to maintain drive performance.

Backup your RAID to your 1TB HDD (which is what I do) and you should be ok.

 

[cball1311]

Thanks a million Dereck. Just out of curiosity, I set them up in RAID just to see what benches I would get. If it wasn't for your help I wouldn't have been able to accomplish this,

Not too bad with a couple of Intel 330s 60GB.

I haven't really engaged in RAID setups and SSD so this is fairly new. I understood the concept but never had the "hands-on". Once again, thanks and happy holidays.

 

[Dereck47]

No problem! Nice benchmarks results.