SSD performance as BOOT Drive

[le2key]

Hi, I recently bought an OCZ Vertex 4 256gb and currently using it as a boot drive. Everything is dandy, boots up real quick and system seems a lot snappier.

I decided to do some benchmarks (AS SSD) for kicks and to my dismay found that the sequential read/write speeds are in the mid 100mbs, way lower than the advertised/reviewed 500mbs.

I benchmarked my older, empty SSD (Adata S596 turbo in SATA2) and found that everything was in line with the advertised/reviewed speeds. So I'm wondering if the low seq speeds is due to me using the drive as a boot drive or is there something wrong?

As far as I can tell, I've updated/installed all the necessary drivers/bios/utilities. (Controller settings @ AHCI)

I've figured there are three things going on:

1. The drive is dirty from all the window updates/installation and needs to go through trim/garbage collection.

2. SATA3 is working improperly.

3. Using the drive as a boot drive heavily reduces sequential read/write speeds.


Any help at all would be appreciated, really scratching my head here.

[Entilza]

Im using this ssd as a boot drive, with older Sata 2 and I am getting good performance as much as sata 2 can offer =P (273mb/s read 266 write)

Did you install firmware 1.5? It's destructive from 1.3 -> 1.4 be careful.

Try crystal DiskMark?

[le2key]

sheaa i already updated the firmware to 1.5, and i was getting worst seq speeds with crystal diskmark thats why i tried AS SSD; dang this is just whack.

[Entilza]

Ouch hmm you try another Sata 3 port? make sure its in the 6gb port..

I do have the 128gb drive though so not sure...

Defrag the OS Drive before u try again?

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by Entilza

Ouch hmm you try another Sata 3 port? make sure its in the 6gb port..

I do have the 128gb drive though so not sure...

Defrag the OS Drive before u try again?

Uh........ you don't defrag a SSD drive

[le2key]

i sort of figured it out, i'm getting 270mb/s on the sata2 ports almost twice as fast as the sata3s. apparently the marvell chip on my current MB is crap - gonna head over to OCZ for optimized settings.


thanks

[AkG]

Yeah. The Marvell chip is indeed crap AND you SSD was not getting the TRIM command. So your drive went into a classic degraded state. A sanitary erase will get it back out of it. Then restore from backup. Usually a destructive firmware update will do the same...but use the OCZ toolbox, sani erase it. Quick format it and then restore from backup....and you will be golden...as long as you use a port that can pass the TRIM command.