c300 underperforming, need advice please

jubilee · 8 Mar 2011 at 12:25

hello.,
im new to ssd's but i think that something is wrong with this c300 64gig ive recently installed, its the boot drive on a new win7 64sp1 msi 870a-g54 system..., by wrong i meen i havent done something right

....., it has got a sata3 white/cream cable plugged into the same coloured port and TRIM is enabled. the read speeds are in the right area but not the 350ish mark, however the right speeds seem way off..., in terms of usability, it feels fast and responsive. AS sdd reports a 31k cluster offset/allignment @ 4k cluster.., i dont know what this meens but it reports as 'bad' could this be important?, the pic should explain more than i can,
thanks for your time

Chiribo · 8 Mar 2011 at 12:50

Is it just me or is that not running of AHCI? My 4K read speed is nearish yours, but write is much better (65MB/s) although I do have the 128gb version.

In terms of your W7 install. Was this a fresh install of a disc or in fact a clone image put back on the machine?

kleox64 · 8 Mar 2011 at 16:22

Use AHCI and also correct your alignment to fix your 4k scores.

manishpatel80 · 8 Mar 2011 at 19:49

As SSD say 31k - BAD means you drive is not aligned. You will need to format the drive with windows 7 setup and then install all the stuff again. Then will sort it out. I have the same problem and this was the only solution.

jubilee · 9 Mar 2011 at 01:23

i installed fresh on the ssd using the win7 install disk and created the partition with that., a little research has told me that win7 sets up an solid state drive correctly?, what dose a 31k - 4k cluster thing meen and what affect does it have on performance? (sorry to sound like a newb, ive been messing with pcs for 15 years but this is my first ssd

) .. well spotted Chiribo, it is not running on AHCI, when i enable it in raid options the comp hangs on the initial windows screen, in safemode it resets while loading something like 'atipice64.sys'.., ive tried installing the ATI sata/AHCI driver, but CCC autimaticaly goes through the install process without letting be pick 'manual' as aposed to 'automatic', then tells me instilation is complete without installing anything.., anyone any ideas?..., this is more anoying than trying to get a 33k modem to work in win95....

DragonQ · 9 Mar 2011 at 01:33

Alignment is your biggest problem by far. If you installed Windows 7 to the raw drive space it should be aligned properly. Since it's not, I guess you formatted it manually during install or something?

I'd start again if the installation is fairly new anyway. Do a secure erase using whatever tool Crucial provides and install Windows 7 to the raw drive space. Then do a Windows Experience Index run and all should be well.

drunkenmaster · 9 Mar 2011 at 05:17

Yup, of all drives the Crucial is seemingly the most important controller around at the moment to get aligned correctly. As in, I'd reinstall windows because lifes easier that way, also make sure when you reboot just before installing windows you set AHCI as the mode for your sata ports in the bios.

AHCI is what these drives need to fly as without it the command queuing basically doesn't work.

Sequential is easy, almost nothing uses it in day to day use, pointless metric, 4k random is base performance it basically doesn't get slower than that, keep in mind "normal" hdd's get 0.5mb/s in general there, thats where SSD's fly, and the 64thread, or queue depth is where AHCI comes in, essentially the driver rearranges reads/writes so its doing more work and your speeds should be about half way between the 4k random and the sequential.

You can fix AHCI anyway without a reinstall you need to google something along the lines of "changing to AHCI in windows" some link will tell you to make a couple very minor registry changes, it essentially forces Windows to activate the AHCI driver service. When you reboot windows and change to AHCI mode without turning the service on as windows loads theres only an IDE driver installed, no AHCI one and it won't look for one, quick registry change, reboot, change to AHCI and it will boot fine.

Jesus, this was a pain to find

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2944/10

look at the first and second benchmark, its the SAME benchmark, the top one is basically unaligned, or how most formatting tools/os's set up a drive, the bottom is aligned, look at the performance difference.

Sandforce controller goes up around 3x the performance when aligned in writes, the Crucial controller under 6gb/s mode went up almost 10x, aligned is stupidly important.

Marse · 9 Mar 2011 at 17:50

You could try Paragon Alignment Tool 2.

It was avaialble for free some time ago and somewhat to my surprise its worked faultlessly when I've used it on my C300.

The instructions are easy to follow.

A few minutes as against a clean install.

jubilee · 10 Mar 2011 at 13:16

thanks for all your help, after a fresh install of windows with AHCI enabled and a newly created win7 partition things have dramaticaly improved...., wright speeds are 10X better in some cases..., thanks again...

next problem, how to make it english

..... /jk

Mr Krugga · 10 Mar 2011 at 16:19

jubilee said:
thanks for all your help, after a fresh install of windows with AHCI enabled and a newly created win7 partition things have dramaticaly improved...., wright speeds are 10X better in some cases..., thanks again...

next problem, how to make it english ..... /jk

Sprache = Language

doggo · 10 Mar 2011 at 17:18

jubilee said:
thanks for all your help, after a fresh install of windows with AHCI enabled and a newly created win7 partition things have dramaticaly improved...., wright speeds are 10X better in some cases..., thanks again...

next problem, how to make it english ..... /jk

Those results look about the same as I'm getting on a fresh install of 7 64bit on the same SSD.

From reading on here it appears the best way to install is to only have the SSD connected and let Windows do it's own thing, then attach any other drives later.

Mr Krugga · 10 Mar 2011 at 20:09

doggo said:
Those results look about the same as I'm getting on a fresh install of 7 64bit on the same SSD.

From reading on here it appears the best way to install is to only have the SSD connected and let Windows do it's own thing, then attach any other drives later.

That's because Windows 7 creates system partition or something similar on other drives as well, if you've got them plugged in that is.