2x 60GB Phoenix Pro Slower than 1x 60?

[krazyscotsman]

I just bought 2x 60 GB Phoenix Pro drives for a RAID 0. The performance was definitely faster than mechanical drives but much slower than I was expecting. After reading about the lack of trim support in RAID, I started thinking this might be the problem. So, I disabled the RAID and reinstalled Windows 7 Home Premium on a single 60 GB Phoenix Pro SSD. The benchmark performance was still slower than advertised but much faster, about 2x, than the RAID 0. I'm not sure if I have my system configured incorrectly or what.

I have a Intel i7 2.8GHz, Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, 6GB RAM, 2x Phoenix Pro SSD 60GB, 2x Nvidia GTX 470 SLI. I plugged the SSDs into the Marvell SATA III ports at 6GB/s as it supports RAID 0. I plan to use the Intel SATA ports for a RAID 5 storage using mechanical drives. I don't have the mechanical drives installed so this is definitely not the problem. I also have ACHI enabled on the Marvell ports.

I'm not sure if I should try to re-configure the RAID or run the single SSD. I'm surprised how slow the RAID 0 was!

My other concern is how do I maintain the speed of the RAID without trim support? Does the drives support Garbage Collection? I heard that even on RAID Garbage Collection works. The other option I saw is to use the following maintenance guide - http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...-not-need-this

What could be wrong with the performance of the SSD / motherboard? Do I need to disable features of Windows 7 such as Superfetch since Windows 7 doesn't see the RAID as SSD drives? If I need to disable some features, could you please point me to what I need to disable?

David

[vaca]

I think the performance difference is vary with different chipsets.
I'll test it and reply you later.

[Onslaught2k3]

I just bought 2x 60 GB Phoenix Pro drives for a RAID 0. The performance was definitely faster than mechanical drives but much slower than I was expecting. After reading about the lack of trim support in RAID, I started thinking this might be the problem. So, I disabled the RAID and reinstalled Windows 7 Home Premium on a single 60 GB Phoenix Pro SSD. The benchmark performance was still slower than advertised but much faster, about 2x, than the RAID 0. I'm not sure if I have my system configured incorrectly or what.

I have a Intel i7 2.8GHz, Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, 6GB RAM, 2x Phoenix Pro SSD 60GB, 2x Nvidia GTX 470 SLI. I plugged the SSDs into the Marvell SATA III ports at 6GB/s as it supports RAID 0. I plan to use the Intel SATA ports for a RAID 5 storage using mechanical drives. I don't have the mechanical drives installed so this is definitely not the problem. I also have ACHI enabled on the Marvell ports.

I'm not sure if I should try to re-configure the RAID or run the single SSD. I'm surprised how slow the RAID 0 was!

My other concern is how do I maintain the speed of the RAID without trim support? Does the drives support Garbage Collection? I heard that even on RAID Garbage Collection works. The other option I saw is to use the following maintenance guide - http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...-not-need-this

What could be wrong with the performance of the SSD / motherboard? Do I need to disable features of Windows 7 such as Superfetch since Windows 7 doesn't see the RAID as SSD drives? If I need to disable some features, could you please point me to what I need to disable?

David

the "consolidate free space" option with perfectdisk (not sure about others) is basically the same thing as TRIM anyways. With files that are still on the hard drive viewable by the OS TRIM doesn't automatically get rid of those for you. TRIM is trivial at best and you still have to do your part in properly conditioning the drives (don't excessively write to the drives, etc). Striping SSDs on to fake raid onboard controllers can sometimes bring diminishing returns. Windows has a purely software raid configurator that some say is better than most onboard chipsets. Your next best bet is to shell out some cash on a REAL raid controller (some as low as $30-$40 for only two drives supported on the card and as high as $5000 if you want to raid50 up to 24 drives together). Consider your options as fake raid controllers (by some) have been rated the worst-performing. Makes you think if their AHCI controller works fine on its own??? :-D

[Schwanke78]

If you plan on buying a Raid controller make sure you get a decent one with its own memory cache. Also Raid-0 configuration can be tricky but in most cases a Raid-0 array will outperform a single drive. I took my Raid array out for one reason only, when I did a BIO's flash I lost the order of my drives. Since I didn?t want to start from scratch I just took it apart and run a single SSD. To be honest it boots just a tad slower than the Raid-0 disk did. But also to answer another question if you are running the latest Firmware then it does have Garbage Collection. You may also want to look at the new Intel ICH10 chipset drivers with Raid-0 trim support. Now I am not sure if this is just for their drives or how to make it engage the trim IE operation system controlled.