SSD...I think I did it wrong

ryanjoachim

So I bought a 128gb Kingston SSD last week, and finally got it set up during the weekend. I set my SATA controller to AHCI, did a fresh Win7 Ultimate install, and waited for the magic to happen.

I must have missed something somewhere, because I don't see much of an increase in speed. The SSD I got isn't one of the newest or fastest out there, but I was still expecting a decent performance increase over my old 250GB 7200 RPM hard drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139135&Tpk=SNV425-S2%2f128GB

Is there something I didn't do, or need to do, that will help increase performance? I also have 3 other SATA hard drives connected to my controller...is it possible there's a bottleneck there?

On3s&Z3r0s

Where were you expecting to see the increase? I think in most cases the noticable improvement is a decrease in boot time assuming the SSD contains your boot partition. Otherwise, assuming you've got a decent amount of RAM and aren't thrashing the page file I wouldn't expect a huge improvement elsewhere. Not to mention, a 7200 RPM HDD could be pretty quick to begin with.

I put an SSD in a laptop and cold boot time was about the only place I noticed a big gain (also in firing up some of the bigger Microsoft apps but to a lesser extent). But they are nice and quiet at least.

AsSiMiLaTeD

I noticed an improvement across the board when I put my Intel drive in, and it's not the fastest kid on the block either. Places where I noticed performances gains were boot up times, loading times for programs like Photoshop that used to take some time to load, and in games where there are loading screens between stages - loading times in changing zones in Borderlands has gone from almost a minutes to just a few seconds, as an example

megasat16

Bought Intel SSD a few months ago for a friend to swap out his old 7.2K 3G SATA drive.

After cloning the drive, I timed both boot time and program loading time in Win XP.

SSD cuts boot time by almost half (takes about a min to boot than his previous record of 1m and 50s).

SSD cuts program loading time by at least half depending on what programs you are using.

So, SSD is the way to go but remember not all SSD is created equal. I bought Intel after reading a lot about SSD comparisons.

Next, I want to time the SSD against SAS 10K / 15K and regular U320 15K/10K SCSI.

renowilliams

ryanjoachim wrote: »

So I bought a 128gb Kingston SSD last week, and finally got it set up during the weekend. I set my SATA controller to AHCI, did a fresh Win7 Ultimate install, and waited for the magic to happen.

I must have missed something somewhere, because I don't see much of an increase in speed. The SSD I got isn't one of the newest or fastest out there, but I was still expecting a decent performance increase over my old 250GB 7200 RPM hard drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139135&Tpk=SNV425-S2%2f128GB

Is there something I didn't do, or need to do, that will help increase performance? I also have 3 other SATA hard drives connected to my controller...is it possible there's a bottleneck there?

Did you do a firmware update on the drive,prior to installing the operating system. I had an update when I bought my intel ssd. Check on Kingston's site to see if there is an update.

Jstas

SATA is serial ATA. The thing about ATA, even with the old spinning drives with 33/66/100/133, if you had a controller with a single 133 disk on it and a single 100 disk on it, you would have to wire both drives to support the slowest device on that bus channel. Therefore your computer would never see the full benefits of the ATA 133 because that 100 was hobbling it by limiting the speed on the bus.

It's not necessarily as common now but older SATA controllers cannot always support multiple bus speeds on a single controller. So even if you have a lightning fast drive on the controller, if you have slower devices on that same controller, your access speeds on the drive may be much faster but data transmission and communication may be hobbled by the different devices.

Check in the System Management Console or the Device Manager and find the info on your SATA controller. Then go to the site of the manufacturer and look for the info on it. If you do have the issue I wrote about above, best thing to do is move anything slower off of that SATA channel so that just the SSD is on it. You'll likely see an improvement.

Another issue might be that your SATA controller is older and cannot support the full performance of the new drive.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Without getting too much into the weeds...

If you need a drive TODAY I'd grab either the Intel or the Corsair Force series, and I'd start at 80GB on either one, with the 120 being even better (smaller drives aren't just smaller, they don't perform as well). There are faster drives out there, but they're either more expensive or not as reliable.

If you can wait, hold out until the drives with the new Sandforce chip hit the market (aka Vertex 3) and see how they fair.

Given the price on the Kingston, I'd return that and get the Corsair F120 for another 30 bucks, it's a much better drive.

ryanjoachim

Jstas wrote: »

SATA is serial ATA. The thing about ATA, even with the old spinning drives with 33/66/100/133, if you had a controller with a single 133 disk on it and a single 100 disk on it, you would have to wire both drives to support the slowest device on that bus channel. Therefore your computer would never see the full benefits of the ATA 133 because that 100 was hobbling it by limiting the speed on the bus.

It's not necessarily as common now but older SATA controllers cannot always support multiple bus speeds on a single controller. So even if you have a lightning fast drive on the controller, if you have slower devices on that same controller, your access speeds on the drive may be much faster but data transmission and communication may be hobbled by the different devices.

Check in the System Management Console or the Device Manager and find the info on your SATA controller. Then go to the site of the manufacturer and look for the info on it. If you do have the issue I wrote about above, best thing to do is move anything slower off of that SATA channel so that just the SSD is on it. You'll likely see an improvement.

Another issue might be that your SATA controller is older and cannot support the full performance of the new drive.

That's some great info, thanks. I remembered the speed discrepancy of the ATA drives, but didn't realize it had carried over to SATA. I'll try disconnecting all my other drives first, and see if it helps, and I'll also check and see if there's a firmware update available.

Boot time in general was cut in half, and some programs do to load a bit faster...but other programs have no change at all. Games should be loading faster, but I haven't seen that in WoW yet. I haven't installed any other games yet. Windows only gives my drive a 6.8 score, which puts it behind my 2 year old RAM and Q6600.

AsSiMiLaTeD

John, are you using the words 'channel' and 'controller' interchangably? If so that makes sense, although I've never heard those terms used like that. I've never personally seen a controller that would run at the speed of the lowest connected device, but I'm sure they exist and that could be his issue.

If you're referring to channel in the sense I've always heard of as in a single port on the motherboard, then AFAIK you can't have have more than one drive on a channel anyway, so that shouldn't be an issue. I'm sure it's possible in a server setup, but I've never seen a consumer desktop motherboard that will allow more than one drive on a single sata channel, or port.

Your point about it being an older controller with a slower speed also makes sense, although most are at least ATA 100 and most regular drives top out in the mid 60s in terms of speed, so he should still have seen some kind of increase in performance.

ryanjoachim

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

Without getting too much into the weeds...

If you need a drive TODAY I'd grab either the Intel or the Corsair Force series, and I'd start at 80GB on either one, with the 120 being even better (smaller drives aren't just smaller, they don't perform as well). There are faster drives out there, but they're either more expensive or not as reliable.

If you can wait, hold out until the drives with the new Sandforce chip hit the market (aka Vertex 3) and see how they fair.

Given the price on the Kingston, I'd return that and get the Corsair F120 for another 30 bucks, it's a much better drive.

Returning it is an option, as I kept my previous boot drive intact. I hate returning things though, so I'll wait till I can be sure it's an issue with the drive and not my old hardware.

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

Your point about it being an older controller with a slower speed also makes sense, although most are at least ATA 100 and most regular drives top out in the mid 60s in terms of speed, so he should still have seen some kind of increase in performance.

If it makes any difference, when transferring files from my 7200 RPM drive to my SSD, I was maxing out at 42mb/s.

AsSiMiLaTeD

ryanjoachim wrote: »

That's some great info, thanks. I remembered the speed discrepancy of the ATA drives, but didn't realize it had carried over to SATA. I'll try disconnecting all my other drives first, and see if it helps, and I'll also check and see if there's a firmware update available.

Boot time in general was cut in half, and some programs do to load a bit faster...but other programs have no change at all. Games should be loading faster, but I haven't seen that in WoW yet. I haven't installed any other games yet. Windows only gives my drive a 6.8 score, which puts it behind my 2 year old RAM and Q6600.

You probably won't see much faster load times in MMO games like WoW because so much of that is server-driven.

AsSiMiLaTeD

ryanjoachim wrote: »

Returning it is an option, as I kept my previous boot drive intact. I hate returning things though, so I'll wait till I can be sure it's an issue with the drive and not my old hardware.

Makes sense. I can tell you though that even with everything else fixed, you'll still get better performance out of the Corsair or Intel drives, over time, without spending much more money, just in case that matters.

On3s&Z3r0s

ryanjoachim wrote: »

Windows only gives my drive a 6.8 score, which puts it behind my 2 year old RAM and Q6600.

Keep in mind too that those benchmarking scores take write performance into account.. The cheaper SSD's can have write performance that's as bad or worse than a decent HDD (which also might explain fairly anemic performance when transferring files), so if you're only interested in seek/read to improve load times for apps and games, then I wouldn't focus too much on the score. It sounds to me like the drive isn't defective at all, but there are definitely differences in terms of speed, realiability, heat, etc. between the manufacturers. If you were going to return it because other drives might be a better value, then I wouldn't sit on it too long.

ryanjoachim

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

Makes sense. I can tell you though that even with everything else fixed, you'll still get better performance out of the Corsair or Intel drives, over time, without spending much more money, just in case that matters.

I understand that. I went for the cheaper drive because I don't do much besides game and use Dreamweaver. Getting an extra "20%" in performance for another $50 (or w/e) isn't really that useful in my case. However, I'm not against spending more money for something that will last me a long time, which I know the Intel drives have a great track record with.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Yep, right out of the box the Intel and Sandforce will be a little better, but they age very well and will hold their performance over time. I'm not trying to push one way or the other, just offering my perspective. I'm also with you and don't like to return things.

Best Buy has the Corsair F120 for $239 and Microcenter has the Intel 120 for $229, just for reference

renowilliams

+1 on what Assimilated is saying re intel holding performance over time. I have two intel 80 gig X-25M in a raid. I just tested my read at 530M/sec and write at 170M/sec. I have had these drives for over a year. They are cheaper now as well. I have been very happy with their performance.

Ideally if you can get two drives and raid them,you will see a significant performance increase. By the way, my windows performance index is 7.9.

megasat16

Jstas wrote: »

SATA is serial ATA. The thing about ATA, even with the old spinning drives with 33/66/100/133, if you had a controller with a single 133 disk on it and a single 100 disk on it, you would have to wire both drives to support the slowest device on that bus channel. Therefore your computer would never see the full benefits of the ATA 133 because that 100 was hobbling it by limiting the speed on the bus.

John, I agree SATA is Serial ATA but it doesn't share the common bottleneck of the slowest device in the chain as in ATA. For e.g. an 133MHz Parallel ATA drive and 66MHz ATA drive sharing the same bus will have bandwidth (bus speed) limited to that of 66MHz.

But since SATA drives do not share the bus like in ATA, you got the advantage of full bandwidth of SATA drive.

Sherardp

I have an Intel X-25M 80gb in my current rig also. I noticed improvement right away in just loading software alone to include the OS. The Kingston should perform well, and should be comparable at least. I would bench it to see what your getting for read/writes. I also have the new Crucial 128gb SSD mounted in my newest build but it supports Sata 6 and has insane speeds, expect to see Intels newest drives with Sata 6 support in March.

I would also suggest firmware updates as mentioned also.

ryanjoachim

The issue with the 80GB SSD is that I'm already using between 55-65GB of my 128GB SSD right now, and I haven't even started replacing most of my programs and games from the previous install.

cokewithvanilla

hope you bought it from buy.com and not newegg. It's been $119 at buy.com for the last few weeks

ryanjoachim

cokewithvanilla wrote: »

hope you bought it from buy.com and not newegg. It's been $119 at buy.com for the last few weeks

http://www.buy.com/prod/kingston-128gb-ssdnow-v-series-sata-ii-2-5-solid-state-drive/q/loc/101/214308841.html

It shows as $217.74 for me.

Sherardp

ryanjoachim wrote: »

The issue with the 80GB SSD is that I'm already using between 55-65GB of my 128GB SSD right now, and I haven't even started replacing most of my programs and games from the previous install.

I'm only using 30gb on mine, but I don't put all my programs on there either. I use it for OS, MS office, and other critical programs. Everything else goes on a WD Caviar Black 750gb drive. YMMV.

ryanjoachim

Well, that's odd...Kingston uses the Intel 25-M firmware for their SSD.

Sherardp

Flash that badboy then and you should see some improvement. I flashed mine right out of the box though. What versios OS are you using? Vista/Win 7? 32/64 bit?

ryanjoachim

Sherardp wrote: »

Flash that badboy then and you should see some improvement. I flashed mine right out of the box though. What versios OS are you using? Vista/Win 7? 32/64 bit?

Win7 Ultimate 64-bit

renowilliams

+1 on what sherardp is saying. Flash it and there will be an improvement. Also ensure all windows 7 updates are done.

Polk user

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/windows-7-and-ssds-just-how-fast-are-they/2902?tag=mantle_skin;content

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/windows-7-and-ssds-setup-secrets-and-tune-up-tweaks/2910?tag=mantle_skin;content

cokewithvanilla

ryanjoachim wrote: »

http://www.buy.com/prod/kingston-128gb-ssdnow-v-series-sata-ii-2-5-solid-state-drive/q/loc/101/214308841.html

It shows as $217.74 for me.

Ah, looks like the sale is off. it was 119 w/ rebate for the last few weeks. They had a lot of kingston stuff on sale.. 8gb ram for $70... ect.

JimKellyfan

I would only go SSD as a stock replacement.

cokewithvanilla

JimKellyfan wrote: »

I would only go SSD as a stock replacement.

whacha mean by that?

Like adding it when buying the computer? I wouldn't do that... almost all computer manufacturers charge about double the price for a ssd at the moment... since it is practically the easiest part of the computer to upgrade, why pay that much extra?

nguyendot

ryanjoachim wrote: »

Returning it is an option, as I kept my previous boot drive intact. I hate returning things though, so I'll wait till I can be sure it's an issue with the drive and not my old hardware.



If it makes any difference, when transferring files from my 7200 RPM drive to my SSD, I was maxing out at 42mb/s.

That's actually ridiculously slow....42mb/s is way on the low end.

I can transfer from one desktop to another desktop at 90mb/s via gigabit... thats limited by my network not the hard drives and I'm only rocking 7200rpm 1TB drives in them. I'd imagine internal SSD to another internal drive would be even faster. These aren't speed demons. I'd check elsewhere in your system, it seems you have a bottleneck.