Pheonix Pro 120 Slow Performance on HP Elitebook

[Gabe501]

Hi, I bought my Pheonix Pro 120 GB from newegg last week. Havn't had too much time to mess with it till today. This is my first SSD and it does definately seem much faster than a regular HD and Windows gave it a 7.8 in WEI. However, I don't think it's performing up to advertised specs and I would like it to perform like it should for $250. I am getting very slow write speeds and also very slow random 4k read and writes compared to everything else I've seen.

Here are some tests (sorry no screenshots):
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CrystalDiskMark 3.0 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
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* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 199.273 MB/s
Sequential Write : 75.644 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 186.871 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 77.877 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 12.771 MB/s [ 3117.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 25.010 MB/s [ 6105.9 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 121.940 MB/s [ 29770.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 83.584 MB/s [ 20406.2 IOPS]

Test : 500 MB [C: 46.6% (52.0/111.7 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2010/10/14 17:01:45
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)
AS SSD Benchmark 1.5.3784.37609
------------------------------
Name: FM-25S2S-120GBP2 ATA Device
Firmware: 2.1
Controller: msahci
Offset: 103424 K - OK
Size: 111.79 GB
Date: 10/14/2010 5:02:45 PM
------------------------------
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 201.31 MB/s
Write: 73.61 MB/s
------------------------------
4K:
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Read: 13.48 MB/s
Write: 27.44 MB/s
------------------------------
4K-64Threads:
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Read: 119.78 MB/s
Write: 53.95 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
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Read: 0.269 ms
Write: 0.335 ms
------------------------------
Score:
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Read: 153
Write: 89
Total: 319
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HD Tune Pro: FM-25S2S-120GBP2 Benchmark

Test capacity: full

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 84.0 MB/s
Transfer Rate Maximum : 161.5 MB/s
Transfer Rate Average : 135.1 MB/s
Access Time : 0.260 ms
Burst Rate : 147.7 MB/s
CPU Usage : 4.4%


I've done the tweaks mentions on this forum and seems to help a bit but I think my performance is way below what it should be. I'm also getting warning under "health" in HD tune 4.6 saying some 1856 bad sectors has been replaced? Could this be a bad drive?

Here are my specs for laptop if it helps:
HP Elitebook 8540w
i7-Q820
8gb ddr3
Intel Mobile QM57 Chipset
nvidia quadro fx 1800m

This isn't a cheap laptop I just don't understand why the low performance. HD is in AHCI mode according to the bios and chkdsk says 4096 bytes in each allocation unit (4k block size?). Got all the latest drivers from HP and Intel. Any help would be appreciated Thanks!

[G.SKILL]

Hi mate

HD tune show wrong message, we have already confirm sandforce.
they will fix this issue.
we hope next firmware will done.
sandforce always recommend ATTO or iOMETER, I think it is because QD value.
please use our tool to let your SSD performance back

[Gabe501]

Hi Thanks for your reply.

Any idea when the next firmware will be coming out? Also which tool were you talking about for restoring the performance?

Thanks,
Gabe

[G.SKILL]

Hi Gabe

We hope the new firmware can be coming out in Novemeber. We will post it once it is done.

To get the performance back, please use HDDerese tool. Here is the link of the tool and the application process: http://gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=5690

The most important thing is that apply this tool will erase all of your data within the drive, including your OS. Please make sure you get back up of the data before applying it.

Thanks