Port 0 / Sata III Speeds Dropping To Sata II Speeds

Ok people. Time to find out just how wide spread this really is.

I for one had major drop outs. No matter the config, my OCZ vertex drives all drop speed on sata port 0 but all kept right in line with sata III speeds on port 1.

What i would like to know is this... How many people are having this problem.


Drops port:
1: Johnksss
2: DanXbix
3: Shiandy

Does not drop port:
1: Steviejones133
2: Tetsussaiga
3: Mr. Fox

 

Port 0 drops sata3 speed for me also but it seems after boot or while run crystaldiskmark etc. Even after all tweaks. have not tried moving to port1

 

Im running my c300 on port 0 and havent had any dropouts to sata II speeds - its always (everytime I have benched it with CDM) showed sata III speeds.

 

I haven't had any drop outs with the Chronos on port 0 benching CDM.

 

i was getting drops to sata 2 on my ssd and if i remember correctly it was a faulty motherboard that was causing the issue. but this was when the m18x first came out.

 

No problems here with Port0 or Port1. (My data drive is a Seagate Momentus 750GB that is a SATA 2.6 drive.) John and Dan - as you both have the unlocked A03, do you experience the same issue using a stock Dell A03, A04 or A05 BIOS?

 

Thanks guys! Keep those answers coming.

 

Maybe its just the mobo thats been the problem all along as Amo said - I think his dropouts were cured by a mobo replacement. John, did you have a mb replaced?

 

That's what I was thinking steviejones133. That it's a motherboard/on board chip issue. This will be the first thing I test when I get the new setup.

 

Lets hope you don't have the same issue again bud. Fingers crossed for you!

 

I do love my raid now! And with esata...Backing up a raid array is a snap.
Anyone know where to get internal drive bay? I only use the DVD drive for loading stuff and sometimes burning. Would much rather put in a 3rd hard drive.

 

Im guessing that DR650SE could point you in the right direction for the caddy for the optical drive.....he's done the same to the R2, right?

 

Mr Fox running unlocked A05 and also did it on A05 oem

 

heres mine but intel RST reporting 3gb/sec i hope its not motherboard

 

Yes, that's right.

When it says 3 gb, that's when you run a short test to see if it will keep the higher speed. Should top out at 270 MB max or so.

 

I know that John has already tried this, but Dan... use the attachment to disable LPM on Port0 and Port1. My M18x will not run SATA 6.0GB/s unless I have LPM disabled. Maybe this will work for you. If it does not, it seems you and John may be experiencing the same issue.

 

Hey MrFox I have already applied LPM registry. When running crystalmark and do the 5run 50mb test. After the very first run I get read speed if 480ish (sata3) then on 2nd read you can see in the intel rst sata drops from 6gbs to 3gbs. Will try using windows AHCI driver and see if fixes. Maybe is these OCZ drives (fw2.15) that have problems. Upgrade SSD time ��

johnksss yeah after running another test after droping to 3gbs its stating read 260mbs are you running yours in port1 now?

 

It might be the OCZ drives. Sandforce has had some ups and downs. If you or John lived close to me we could slap my drives into your machines and see how they work. Wish we could do that.

 

yeah its seem maybe a issue with OCZ maybe. switched it to port1 and all is ok
did not drop speeds

 

John and Dan - this is sort of a long shot, but just to be sure we don't accidentally overlook something relevant, what driver are you using for the SATA RAID Controller? Here's mine...

 

Hey Peeps,

I've got no idea how fast my SSD read/write speeds are supposed to be.

http://www.corsair.com/ssd/force-se...20gb-sata-3-6gbps-solid-state-hard-drive.html

They seem quite low to me but then again they could be normal for my particular SSD.
The info saids that I'm supposed to max out at 550Mbps read and 510Mbps write speeds. I am currently running at about half that. I was hoping to at least get close to 400mb something......

I must say that it is plenty fast atm and feels super snappy. OS boot time is about 15 secs or less.

Any info or ideas peeps? Is this the right transfer speed rate I should be getting for my SSD? It just doesn't seem quite right to me.

Cheers.

 

yup 10.8.0.1003 I think i may sell this SSD and get a Crucial C300 256gb SSD

 

reborn2003 that looks like sata2 speeds also. Are you running drive in port0?

 

Yep I'm running it in drive port0.

I have just tried Fox's LPM reg fix and swapped it into port1.

Still seems to be Sata2 speeds. hmmmmmmmmmmm..............

Could it be because I am running in RAID mode and not AHCI. I forgot to change it to AHCI before I installed windows.

Cheers.

 

Fox where do I get these new drivers. I also believe you had a set of newer Intel mobo or chipset drivers posted up last time.

Cheers.

 

I think these are the ones Mr. Fox has - Intel RST via Intel.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...hnology&OSFullname=Windows+Vista*+32&lang=eng

 

Thanks Stevie!

Still no luck. Stuck on Sata II speeds.
Come join the NBR F@H guys..........your Nvidia CUDA GPUs are extremely welcome! LOL

Cheers.

 

I could be wrong, but I think what you guys are experiencing is looking like a trend with OCZ drives and may be a Sandforce firmware bug. I have not seen anyone suffering from this issue with a Crucial, Intel or Samsung SSD.

I think Dan's idea of getting a Crucial M4/Micron C300 is a good one, but I'm basing that entirely on observations that I and others that own these drives have not experienced the issue.

Thanks for posting the link, Steve. I get all of the latest Intel drivers directly from the Intel Download Center... chipset, RST and wifi. I just downloaded an updated Ultimate-N 6300 driver from Intel yesterday.

 

I had same problem, I said had because I've now gone back to my HDD.

I just had constant problems with the SSD, lockup's, BSODS, I gave up

 

Shiandy - I am assuming it was the OCZ Vertex 3 in your sig that was acting so naughty... correct?

 

Yep, indeed.

 

i dont know if anyone else is having this problem, but when my ssds in raid 0 get to around 80% full, i start getting failed array on one of the disks. then when i resest the array all is fine, and then the other one will fail, but they only fail when i am testing my performance with crystal disk mark, when it gets to random write 512k

 

Maybe something up with CDM, have you tried using another tool like AS SSD or ATTO - see if the problem persists?

 

Yep, tried this as well. No go.

2.13 seems to be really stable. I never had an issue with it.
And when you run it on port 1, it never ever has an issue.

I had an m4 crucial already. It did the same exact thing on port 0..

Had this issue with multiple drives, but all work fine on port 1. And that's in any mode.

Tried all types of drivers. Including the new bios rom driver Da_G made. (Rom version 11.0) It still dropped speeds on port 0, but never on port 1
I will be running these drives in raid 0 on my desktop setup later today. To see if that's the case.

You're running in sata II speeds...

I'll let you know after I run my raid test on the desktop. I still think it's the motherboard not liking some drives. Maybe having to do with the temp sensor. (speculation of course)

Any tool will cause it to happen.

 

I'm not sure where to go from here, brother John. Sounds like you've covered all the bases very thoroughly. Must be something up with the mobo as suggested earlier in the thread.

I wonder if we can get Dell-Bill_B or DELLChrisM to have someone in engineering look into this to see if their tech support call logs are pointing to an emerging issue or if it is just a random malfunction for a few folks that need a mobo replacement.

I will send a PM to both of them to see if they can forward a link to this thread to someone.

 

Well, running test now from the desktop point of view now. And just as suspected... It's running fine at 6 gb with no drop outs in raid 0.

 

Gotta be the mobo then....

 

From my desktop. after 30 minutes uptime.

 

I'm not an expert on this, but I have a question...

I see the burst rate is holding an average of 5.3GB/s. On RAID0 shouldn't the burst speed be greater than 6.0GB/s? I've seen posts of some that are getting around 9.0GB/s SSD burst rates on a SATA3 RAID0. I'm wondering if you are really getting SATA3 speeds (versus SATA2) on the desktop considering it's in a RAID0 configuration.

 

Im not doing any tweaking or adjusting or going for numbers. This was just a set raid 0 and run as is. To prove that the drives are fine. Running at 6 gb 100 percent of the time.

agility 3 drives in raid 0 3 gb

 

Ok, if it helps I too had the same exact issue, both with single drives and RAID0, however it was port 1 that kept dropping to SATA 3 speeds hence my RAID 0 would default to RAID 0 speeds.... it was very annoying...

That said, it looks like this is a software issue, I was able to resolve it with the LPM fix and a lot of help from these threads: (the first one is my thread)

Intel 510s 250gb RAID 0 - Very low performance

Intel 510 SSD Seen as 3Gbs Drive (I know this may not be related at all, due to this guy having different systems, but for all we know, it may be some one offs with certain drives, this seems to be an Intel related issue that was fixed with a firmware update)

 

Yep, tried all of those fixes...
Now when this new machine comes, I will just throw in my drive on port 0 and see what happens. since it's already set and ready to go. When i put it on the desktop, it took 6gb in raid fine and dandy. Even with coming out of the M18X. A few driver changes from the os and it was up and running fine. So im pretty sure it's the motherboard in some way. At least in my case.

 

It has to be motherboard and only effects port0 even after all tweaks. We need DellBill to have a look at this. The m18x is the flagship model and as expected most would like the very best out of their machine. Would be interested to see if one has ordered one with a SSD directly from dell and which port it is installed on and if it gets sata3 speeds.

 

I can answer that. None. Why? Because the SSD's from dell are only sata II Drives.

 

I am wondering if the two ports that support 6.0GB/s are not permanently set as Port0 and Port1 for some reason or if any of the ports are capable with only two at a time being able to run at 6.0GB/s simultaneously. I wonder what controls or decides which of the two ports get to run at full speed, and if maybe something got borked on your mobos or BIOS settings somehow? Not sure if I am asking my hypothetical question in a clear manner...

Mobile Intel® HM67 Express Chipset

 

Good question...But in my case...It sure isn't the os.

side note:
There were times i couldn't even install the os because port 0 would drop out and then the os install would just freeze up or just sit there.

 

Actually, the LiteOn drives are sata III - I recall Amo saying he had one from Dell, maybe he can confirm but I am pretty sure they are Sata III drives.

EDIT:

From the "parts list" -

PVGPX 256GB SSD-S3, 2.5", Liteon Vangogh

 

What what?? They now have sata III drives?

Then we really need them to test this as well.

Pulled from dell website:
Help Me Choose
Hard drives store all saved content in your computer. Choose a higher capacity drive to store all of your games, photos, music, and movies.
Single Drive

500GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s [Included in Price]
750GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s [Add $150.00 or $5.00/month1]
500GB 7200RPM Solid State Hybrid [Add $150.00 or $5.00/month1]
256GB Solid State Drive SATA 3Gb/s [Add $400.00 or $12.00/month1]
Alienware Recommended
Raid 0 Performance

1 TB RAID 0 (2x 500GB) 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s [Add $175.00 or $6.00/month1]
1TB RAID 0 (2x 500GB) 7200RPM Solid State Hybrid [Add $250.00 or $8.00/month1]
512GB RAID 0 (2x 256GB) Solid State Drive SATA 3Gb/s [Add $800.00 or $24.00/month1]
Raid 1 Protection

750GB RAID 1 (2x 750GB 7200RPM) [Add $250.00 or $8.00/month1]

Still don't see it though...

 

Yeah John, they have been available for some time...I recall as I helped Amo with his purchase a while back with my rep. and he had "Dell issue" Raid 0 SSD's

The parts are on the 1st post of the owners lounge - check it out mate.

The other SSD Dell sell is a Sammy PM810 Sata II - quite odd really as there is no way on earth you get to choose which one they put in your rig at time of order.

 

Yep, I checked the Dell web site about 30 minutes ago and they don't list anything but SATA-II 3.0GB/s SSD. It would not be the first time there was a typo on the order configuration page. They don't even say what brand of drive, so who knows.