Agility 3 SSD Raid 0 performance issues?

Trisdov · 16 Nov 2011 at 12:18

Hi Guys

i have what i think is an issue with my drive's i have x2 Agility 3 60gb drives

i have the asus P7P55D-E mobo, originally i wanted to use these two drives in the 6gb/s Ports to raid them, but apparently i cant as i tried every bios setting there but the raid tool would not show up when i was using "Ctrl + i" at post, as soon as i put them into the lesser 3gb/s sata2 ports Bingo....it worked

thats my first question....does raid 0 work on SATA 6Gb/s ports??

settling for second best i thought id bash on and setup a raid on the SATA 3GB/s ports and set the stripe size to 128k....installed windows 7 quite fast i must say, however upon bechmarking it im not sure im getting the performance i should be for x2 drives rated around 500Mb read/write in a raid 0 setup

look at this link from OCUK thes guys are having the same performance if not better from x2 vertex 2 which is half the read/write speed??

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18212489&highlight=raid+6gbs

the 3 screens below give my disk speeds ther are 3 screen as i upgraded RST drivers then enabled write back cache ( see red writing below each post)

Any Helpers??? im going mad....................

Trisdov · 16 Nov 2011 at 12:31

this is an ATTO screenshot

Trisdov · 16 Nov 2011 at 12:37

this is ATTO With Write cache enabled......better i think?

still not that wat i was expecting TBH

Trisdov · 16 Nov 2011 at 16:50

ok so ive reacherced a little more, and found it to be not as bad as i thought although i think these figures are still low as in theory i can have 600MB/s combined, i know its unrealistic to get the full 600 but id ecpect at least 500+

Sata 2 = 300MB/s transfer?
Sata 3 = 600MB/s transfer?

if so i still think these figures are low...

Surveyor · 16 Nov 2011 at 17:07

Trisdov said:
ok so ive reacherced a little more, and found it to be not as bad as i thought although i think these figures are still low as in theory i can have 600MB/s combined, i know its unrealistic to get the full 600 but id ecpect at least 500+

Sata 2 = 300MB/s transfer?
Sata 3 = 600MB/s transfer?

if so i still think these figures are low...

The maximum real world speeds are more like:

SATA 2 275-280MB/s
SATA 3 550-560MB/s

Trisdov · 16 Nov 2011 at 17:17

thanks buddy, you'd still think those figures are low for the setup ?

am i concentrating on CDM to much? as at ATTO seems not to bad

anyone have any ideas for why im having trouble with setting RAID 0 on 6GB/s ports?

Surveyor · 16 Nov 2011 at 17:23

Trisdov said:
thanks buddy, you'd still think those figures are low for the setup?

If no one's answered I'll have a look later at home.

I'm unable to see the images you posted at the moment.

Surveyor · 16 Nov 2011 at 18:56

Trisdov said:
am i concentrating on CDM to much? as at ATTO seems not to bad

OCZ's maximum quoted speeds are based on the ATTO benchmark which presumably means the other benchmarks are lower.

If you look in this thread you can see that the ATTO benchmark is a lot higher than the AS SSD Benchmark.

As your ATTO benchmark shows read speeds of nearly 550MB/s, and write speeds over 500MB/s, I'd say the drives are working as well as they're going to on SATA 2.

Trisdov said:
anyone have any ideas for why im having trouble with setting RAID 0 on 6GB/s ports?

Looking at the specs. for your motherboard the Marvell SATA 3 ports don't support RAID.

Trisdov · 16 Nov 2011 at 22:55

Top man, i was thinking of the same conclusion as yourself, but wanted a real opinion to settle the score...

raid controllers are something ive never really dabbled in, i will of course have a look and try to pick the best option but have you any recommedations?

Thanks again buddy

Surveyor · 17 Nov 2011 at 00:04

You're welcome but I don't quite understand what you mean by this:

raid controllers are something ive never really dabbled in, i will of course have a look and try to pick the best option but have you any recommedations?

Are you looking to buy a RAID controller card?

Trisdov · 17 Nov 2011 at 13:14

yes, if my board cant support it, i will buy a RAID controller card......on to review sites i guess

hedgey · 19 Nov 2011 at 10:24

raid ssd on sata2? fail. get a £20 sata3 card.

Surveyor · 19 Nov 2011 at 11:04

hedgey said:
raid ssd on sata2? fail. get a £20 sata3 card.

A £20 SATA 3 card will use a crappy Marvell Controller (or similar) and the OP will likely be no better off.

hedgey · 19 Nov 2011 at 11:08

crappy marvell? c300 256 is marvell and its certainly not crap. i used a sata3 card before I had a sata3 mb, and it gave me the exact same 350mb/s.

hedgey · 19 Nov 2011 at 11:14

i think his problem is he's using raid without trim hence the drop off in writes.

Surveyor · 19 Nov 2011 at 11:25

hedgey said:
crappy marvell? c300 256 is marvell and its certainly not crap. i used a sata3 card before I had a sata3 mb, and it gave me the exact same 350mb/s.

I didn't say that SSD's using a Marvell controller were crap.

The cheap SATA 3 expansion cards using a Marvell controller are usually pretty crap.

They're two different things.