[Corsair Extreme x64] SSD write performance degradation / Health is dropping fast

[toyo]

Hey people. Please excuse my protocolar exposition; I cannot be bothered to re-formulate the post I've made on the Corsair forums. Please understand I'm trying to fix this for almost 48 hours with very little sleep and I'm almost brain-fried :P

Hello.

I've got this TRIM-enabled 64 GB SSD (see sys specs for details) from a friend. Although the performance should be 220/135, I saw it reviewed on the web and it reached more into 240/170. Being my first SSD, I started reading and reached the conclusion that since this SSD was used for some MP3s for a short while (98% life on Crystal), I should run a Secure Erase and install Windows 7 after that. I successfully achieved just that, following the nice Parted Magic guide. I'm using the SSD on Port 0 of a ICH10R SB, latest Intel drivers. Port I hosts the storage Samsung 1T drive. I'm mentioning these details, since I tried HDD Regenerator and it said that I'm using 2 drives on the same ATA channel.

After installing Windows 7 SP1, performed ATTO tests and it looked OK (225/165). I have attached the relevant pics.

I then proceeded to update the OS, and ran ATTO again... write performance dropped from 165 to 100!!!

Obviously, even knowing that I am stressing the SSD, I ran the test for a few times just to be sure - same figures. The writes seem to reach a 105 MB/s plateau and there's nothing I could do to make it better. Tried the usual tweaks too, disabling almost every useful service for a HDD with no results.

I have even securely erased the SSD a second time, just to see the writes jumping to 165 again, however, it only took a reboot to reach the 100 MBps plateau.

I've read this degradation is supposed to happen in time, but it doesn't seem to be the case here. I've run tests even while booting from another HDD, as I have read that running the tests on the OS SSD might reduce the numbers.

Note: this is a "refurbished" SSD. Meaning, from my knowledge, that it was on a firmware upgrade visit at Corsair. The firmware is v2.0.

Please let me know how to make this work properly. I understand there should be measures in place to avoid this write degradation that should be taking place in time happen almost instantly.

It would be awesome of any of you could help making this drive work as advertised.

Documentation:

Interpreting SMART Data on Corsair SSDs

Review I (check ATTO pic)

Review II (even wilder performance...)

[HX1]

On the degradation, what is supposed to be the culprit that causes this to happen in time?

[toyo]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/8

http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com//article.php/3841741

You can google "SSD performance degradation" too.

Sorry, but I could never explain it as good as in the articles. This is the first SSD I have ever hold in my hands... I read a lot these days but there's a lot of info to swallow for what's supposed to behave like a very fast HDD ;)

[HX1]

Okay then ( without being an expert :P ) going by the links info.. I would state(guess) that in fact the reason that the drive is slowing down is simply because ..

1. Your erased your drive.. therefore you wrote data and overwrote data for the entire drive... therefore registering that there is data everywhere... Damage done.. ( BUT truly not actual 'damage' ) Noted as safe below..

2. Once you have a clean installation, if you infact, run the tool twice and it tests in the same area or close to the same it is or may be registering this data in the same way.. This would cause more operations than necessary which causes the degradation..therefore adding two reads and one write which actually takes exactly a third more time.. than before...

3. I would be willing to bet that this speed may be random, fluctuating between old and new data .. giving and average speed between the two overall.. and I would not really think there would be much to worry about and may be something that is simply a part of owning an SSD.. read speeds should not be effected.. and only would occur when writing data. Turning of 'Writing last read time' would be a good idea if not already done by default in 7..( or atleast making sure that it is not turned on..) This would prevent a write each time a file is read.. thus slowing it all down..

Now the problem with this explanation would be that when you account for it initially running at 165.. writing new data to the drive though should render good results until you delete files and then write data to the same page.. a good block level shredder could occasionally restore speeds or help maintain write speeds..theoretically...

All of this is conjecture however but seems to make perfect sense in the way of explaining it and the math seems to work out as well... especially when it has been erased twice and is a refurbished model once already used...

:dunno:

You have however gotten a generation behind from what I read.. BUT it was the best drive of choice in its time and range.. so I think you probably made a good decision there.. There was a warning about problematic firmware though.. but good stability and such... only difference is better speed with newer models..

This may help as well... also on this page something about repartitioning..

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/269591-32-maintain-performance-raid0#t1856439

[johndoe]

search for updated firmware for the drive and flash it if available (needless to say, backup first :D)

a lot (if not most or all) of the currently on the market SSD drives have firmware updates available to make those drives perform on par with reference specs (which they were not doing when they made it to the customers' hands)

[Maxhedroom]

I'm somewhat of an SSD guru myself....currently running 4 Vertex 2s in raid0 and have a first gen. Ocz Apex as a scratch disk. Before I can give you any meaningful advice, I need to know which controller your SSD uses...i.e. Indilinx, JMicron, SandForce, Tosh and so on. Off the top of my head I have a few questions. Are you in IDE or AHCI mode? Are you using the default ms driver? If your system is Intel based, you need to be using the latest Intel RST driver available for your motherboard from your mobo's website or Intel. Make sure your alignment is correct....if you let Windows format your drive at installation then your good to go. You can check alignment/ahci or ide mode/ and drive just by launching the as_ssd benchmark (it's free...,just google it). As long as your alignment is 1024 or any multiple of that number, your good to go.Let me know which controller that ssd uses and I can give you more detailed advice. Also, make sure the drive isn't more than 70 percent full as that can also impact speeds. Formatting/erasing or secure erasing will not harm your drive at all, so don't worry about that.

[toyo]

HX1, the Secure Erasing thing is to bring it back to factory settings, recommended by Corsair ;) I'll read more on your other stuff.

OK, now for Maxheadroom:

- Controller: Indilinx Barefoot

- AHCI (Mobo is Asus P5Q with latest BIOS - P45/ICH10R)

- Using latest Intel RST: 10.6.0.1022

- drive is 27% used

PS: I'm using the latest firmware.

[HX1]

Good to know... one day maybe I will own one and read more.. :P Editing post for future reference.. :thumbsup:

[toyo]

It's amazing they don't have an in-house tool to do that (factory reset). Instead, you have to download a Linux mini thing named Parted Magic (which is actually really worth a check) and work from there. The whole secure erase lasts 2 secs...

[johndoe]

maybe with a good enough tool already in existence they felt duplication of effort in creating another tool would be pointless ;)

[mara-]

I never had SSD, but your may try Optimize option for SSD in Diskeeper.

Cheers ;)

[Maxhedroom]

Sorry I took so long to reply...I forgot about this thread. :rolleyes:

All your settings/driver and mode look fine. I wish it was an ocz drive as they have a wiper tool that basically cleans up your nand without need for a secure erase. Indi's are known for their very robust background garbage collection as well. I'm not sure if the wiper tool from ocz will work on a non-ocz drive. You'd do good to check out the Indilinx section at the Ocz support site. There is absolutely no better place on the next for indi info (or any indi or sandforce based drive) bar none....just don't let on that your using a corsair drive...the Ocz equiv. for your SSD is a Vertex 60GB. It's been a while and I'm VERY rusty on my indilinx skillz...lol...it's been a while. I'll have a look as well. I am known as Zaxx there (same avatar), I'm a regular there...aka an ssd junkie to the fullest. :D

Gimme a little time to brush up and I'll get back to ya. fwiw, there are several factors that can affect your speeds seeing as your really not far off the mark. TTYS bro...;)

Gen1 Vertex like your is the first section on this page: (Tho you may shit yourself when you see the level of support Ocz offers... ^_^ )

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?233-OCZ-Flash-Support-And-Discussion-Forum

Remember not to let on you have a Corsair or they'll try to perform an exorcism on you. Don't post screen shot thats reveal your brand OR fw version number. Just give the bench numbers if you post.

edit...Oh, also make sure you've ran WEI followed by a reboot so Windows will recognize that your using an SSD

[johndoe]

@Zaxx :D, aren't OCZ drives of very poor quality / reliability? I've been meaning to go the SSD route myself but holding back (dunno why, for the next generation of SSD drives maybe?) but anyways, from user feedback that I've read on various websites, I've reached the conclusion there are a lot of unhappy/unsatisfied OCZ SSD customers out there with DOA drives and drives dying very quickly to poor customer support. Also, there was an SSD model OCZ released which even deviated from the industry standard 2.5 inch dimensions i.e., it wouldn't fit into quite a few laptops' 2.5 inch drive bays :blink:

[mara-]

I would also like to hear opinions about OCZ quality as I was planning to buy one. Thanks.

Cheers ;)

[toyo]

WEI is 7.3 for the drive, by the way. I kinda decided to just go with what I have and let the drive idle sometimes for a (longer) while without tests and big writes so the GC/TRIM can kick in and refresh it. Maybe I'll gain some performance. Especially since I got no useful feedback fro the Corsair forums, if at all. Of course, I'm following both threads with great interest.

Mara, you might get more help if you open a separate topic asking for advice on your future acquisition.

In a future when I'd have the time and determination necessary, I'd like to see a thread for SSD-related advice and optimisation come into existence...

[toyo]

After a few days of practically no computer use, I remembered to give it a test again. The results were much better, not at the level of initial performance (as some writes were still performed) but much improved. The secret, in my opinion , is this:

- if you write on the SSD like crazy, like a OS/apps install, benchmarks etc., the write performance really goes down.

- if you let the SSD be quiet (the PC must be open, so I suggest leaving it at the log on screen so there's no other activity), TRIM/GC (garbage collection for those that didn't hear about this yet; also read here) kicks in and it slowly restores the write performance.

In the end, I declare myself very happy with the drive and how it performs; it's also very nice to be able to learn about new technologies. I'm just beginning to understand the SSDs.

Note: check the Cell Wearing that happened when the drive was idle, compared to the previous post #7...

[mara-]

So, your cells degraded a bit, right? How much cell wearing can be expected in SSD life?

Cheers ;)

[toyo]

The cells can only withstand a limited number of writes, I think it's something like 5.000-10.000 for MLC based NAND like this Corsair.

This wear levelling thing is supposed to spread the writes (that cause the degradation) uniformly on all the cells, so they would ideally wear all at the same rate, extending the life expectancy of the drive. Otherwise, some cells would be written on more often, and the drive would "die" faster just because of a few cells. I understand this cell wearing implies some writes/data moving itself, so it all depends on how efficient the wear algorithm is.

The drive has a SMART health attribute that sits now at 98% for this drive. It should estimate the remaining lifetime from the amount of previous writes. However, I read that this SSDStatus tool is not always accurate and just useful for estimating how things are standing.

[Maxhedroom]

Crap...I keep forgetting about this thread! :doh:

@Zaxx :D, aren't OCZ drives of very poor quality / reliability? I've been meaning to go the SSD route myself but holding back (dunno why, for the next generation of SSD drives maybe?) but anyways, from user feedback that I've read on various websites, I've reached the conclusion there are a lot of unhappy/unsatisfied OCZ SSD customers out there with DOA drives and drives dying very quickly to poor customer support. Also, there was an SSD model OCZ released which even deviated from the industry standard 2.5 inch dimensions i.e., it wouldn't fit into quite a few laptops' 2.5 inch drive bays :blink:

That's a pretty flase rep. I must say. Ocz is the top dog in the consumer SSD market. Their customer support is worlds better than any of the competition if they even offer online support that is. Sure your gonna see some negative feedback here and there...but you can't assume that all the drives are bad becuz of some bad units, esp when they are selling well over 10,000 drives a month at last mention. :blink: The support forums are known as THE best repository of information for all SandForce powered SSDs...as well as SSDs in general. They have a pretty active site with a huge percentage of guests viewing around the clock...these are usually people looking and/or researching the SSD scene. I go by 'Zaxx' on the Ocz forum.s I know I might sound like a bit of a fan boy but I've been running SSDs for almost 3 years now...I jumped on back when they first became available. Atm, SandForce equipped SSDs are the #1 rated sata2 and sata 3 SSDs on the market and Ocz is the primary vendor of SF...that's why they always get to launch new hardware before and of the other makers, they are tight with SF. Soon even Intel will start using SF as well and are considering buying SF! And with all the latest nand chip technology coming constantly, SSD are getting cheaper and faster every time a new controller or nand is developed. Pretty cool stuff for hardware people like me.

Sorry to ramble on guys...but I'm an SSD and hardware junkie...you can tell by my profile. :D

http://www.nsaneforums.com/user/37431-maxhedroom/

[toyo]

My drive is now at 95% without me doing much writing (just 125 GB). It seems in line with what I have seen at other Barefoot drives, including the first Vertex. From my rudimentary calculations, it seems I have approx. 9333 GB to write on the SSD before probable failure (might occur even faster). This would be approx. 450 days of "normal" 20 GB writes/day use.

I have asked in the Corsair forums how is this in line with their advertised 100+ years of "mean time between failures" life expectancy for the Extreme SSD series, but I got no official responses until now. I have seen that other newer models, both SF and Intel, write a few TB of data before getting to 99% - well, good for them.

Even with TRIM, it seems that the 1st gen drives will not enjoy a long life.

I have personally moved everything that I could away from the SSD, like the pagefile, the TMP folders, the browser cache and temp, shutdown superfetch and prefetch, all in an attempt to prolong its life. I was even too paranoid to install my CS5 and audio apps, so I go back to my previous OS I have cloned on a HDD when I need PS or something. For me, it's much more important to use the SSD until I can upgrade (this would be a totally unknown variable)...

[Maxhedroom]

I wouldn't worry much nor would I trust someone's lifetime write algorithm...I've never seen an accurate one...also I have never seen even one drive run out of good nand to write to. Durability was a worry with 1st gen drives without trim, garbage collection or 'economic' write patterns. Starting with the Barefoot, that's pretty much a thing of the past. We've got guys on the forum still running old Vertex 5 and 6 drive arrays in their servers and they post like new benchmarks still. You can search the Vertex forums and you'll find many many in depth threads started by people afraid of wearing out their nand...to sum it up, likely the only way you'll use up your Vertex would be to stick it in a busy server and hammer the hell out off it for 2-3 years straight. ;)

Edit:

Here is a thread about lifetime writes from another SSD app....they cover the subject big time...lol

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?75085-SSD-life-utility-new-utility-to-estimate-SSD-lifetime&highlight=lifetime

[toyo]

Yeah, I read that thread. Seems like that ssdlife app is not really properly coded. I'll give it a run later, although it just seems to read the Health parameter like all others, which is calculated by the SSD itself. I'm curious if it will estimate the same as me.

One thing: I sure hate having a counter that goes down with normal use. I hope this "impending death" thing will change in the next generations, I prefer not seeing my electronics as consumables.

[Maxhedroom]

Lol...I agree. Honestly tho...unless your drive is defective, the only way you'll exhaust all of your PE cycles any time soon would to stick it in an environment that hammers the hell out of it for an extended period of time. We have seen cases of a 'run away' health meter before on the forum but most of them were just fine after the health was rated critical...and we did have one guy who's drive did die as predicted but that was a defective SF drive. Like I said before, I've never seen a case where someone had exhausted all their nand and their drive was now read-only as a result. Hope to set your mind at ease if I can. ;)

Oh...forgot to mention...Drive health and/or 'life left' numbers take into account more than just the nand wear level...there are other parameters involved as well. If your drive was a vertex you could request a destructive flash that would clear the smart data and let it recalculate so-to-speak. Don't know if Corsair offers destructive flashes or not. :unsure:

[toyo]

The drive seems to be happily functional for now :) I hope to keep it like that as long as I can, as I greatly enjoy the huge I/O improvement, especially the reads. I'm a pretty destructive environment myself :P when in a testing/benching/OS restoring/paranoia mood...

I read about the destructive flash thing; have no idea if Corsair has such a feature in first gen drives. Have no idea what's the exact algorithm for calculating drive health, I asked for related details in the Corsair forums but they wouldn't answer at all, even though I was as polite and mannered as possible.

I'm not very worried; I'm just annoyed I cannot use the SSD as I would use a HDD, i.e. install OS and all the apps until I almost run out of space, because I have all these thoughts... "This app will cache here... this app will frequently have big updates... this app writes a lot of temps file to the SSD... This app is huge... Installing all these apps will reduce the space available for over-provisioning a lot and wear levelling will not be such efficient... etc.". As a SSD owner, I'm 100% that you faced all these questions yourself.

If I knew for sure I could upgrade when it fails, I really wouldn't care and would just use it, with as little tweaks as possible (I'd probably wouldn't mess with the temp folder and pagefile and superfetch/prefetch like I did now...).

But thank you very much for being a SSD conversation partner here on nsane and sharing your knowledge. I'm pretty happy I was offered the possibility to learn about this great evolution in storage technology that is the SSD; I was sure it would be just a fast HDD, but seems I was very wrong, these things are a whole new concept...

[Maxhedroom]

My pleasure. Yeah, it's kinda fun watching and trying out a new technology...esp something like an SSD which makes that instant speed increase addictive. You have even more smiles to come when you decide to upgrade to a Vertex 2 or 3. I went from my old Apex to a 60GB Vertex 2 thinking I might notice a small difference...nope, it was muuch faster. For SSDs being a boot drive, the #1 factor that makes the biggest difference in speed and responsiveness is how many IOPs are generated for 4k random writes. The barefoot Vertex could muster ~4,000 - 5,000 IOPs where as the SandForce driven Vertex 2 hits about 50,000. And the Vertex 3 is of course even faster. Hang in there tho...SSD prices are steadily coming down as they continue to shrink the nand size further and further and the competition also gets heavier at the same time also driving down the prices.