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Hero VII - *extremely* slow disk writes - SSD / RAID0

LotusExige
Level 7
Title sorta says it all. For quite a while I've seen issues where my disk utilization would spike to 100% and basically bring the system to it's knees. Any moderate disk writing would do this and the system would be almost unusable until the operation finished. After doing a lot of reading I grabbed Crystal Disk Mark to get some benchmarks to compare to a friends system (identical build save for he's not doing RAID). To make the numbers easy I'm getting around 700 mb/sec read times but a horrible 8-10 mb/sec writes. It's like a 100x difference between the two.

I've tried the following with no luck
- Disable write caching
- Verified all drivers are current
- Verified BIOS was current
- Made sure I'm using the Intel SATA ports and not the ASMedia ones (disabled those in BIOS as a test)
- TONS of research

I setup the RAID0 array in BIOS with 2 240GB (PNY XLR8 240GB drives, both identical). At this point I'm totally stuck and hate to admit it but I have no idea where to go next. It's extremely frustrating as otherwise it's an amazing machine, specs are:

Core i7 4770K 3.5Ghz
32GB 1867 MHz Ram
Nvidia Titan Z 12GB video card
2x 240GB PNY SSD drives
Bluray / HD-DVD burner

What am I missing? I feel like there's some silly check box somewhere that I haven't checked, I did poke around in BIOS but didn't see anything that jumped out at me. Any input would be greatly appreciated as it's so frustrating to have such a high end machine that's capable of so much yet have one silly thing like this bottlenecking it like crazy. Fortunately it's not affecting gaming too much since games are almost all read operations (and that's screaming fast).

Thanks for any ideas!!!

Ross
7,740 Views
17 REPLIES 17

LotusExige
Level 7
Just a little bump as I'm still completely baffeled as to what's happening. Anyone? I *really* don't want to have to rebuild this machine but if I have to I suppose I will.

schurmann
Level 7
Did that happen since you build the array or is getting worse over time?
What os are you using?
Meanwhile you can do:
Check if some program is writing to the drive
Check if trim is enabled
Optimize the drive
Check the ssds smart status

Thanks for the input, very appreciated. Here are the answers:

Did that happen since you build the array or is getting worse over time?
- Hard to say but I think since I built it.

What os are you using?
- Windows 10

Check if some program is writing to the drive
- None that I see in task manager or system resources

Check if trim is enabled
- Yup, just verified

Optimize the drive
- Yup, done. But when I do so it returns almost instantly with no errors on screen or in the logs

Check the ssds smart status
- Checked and good


Any other thoughts??

-Ross

schurmann
Level 7
Did you installed the intel raid driver? Use the one from the asus support for your mobo

If you mean the "Intel AHCI/RAID Drive" from the Asus driver page yes, I sure have. I'm going to install it again right now just to be sure.

I also installed the Rapid Storage driver, "IRST_V14.5.0.1081_WHQL" as well and will do that again.

Next? Thanks much for the assistance...

-Ross

schurmann
Level 7
This one "Intel AHCI/RAID Driver Path for Windows Win7 32bit & Win7 64bit & Win8 32bit & Win8 64bit & Win8.1 32bit & Win8.1 64bit & Win10 64bit" Version 14.5.0.1081&13.1.0.1058

I use the following settings on the iRST:
5602356024

Just verified that's the driver/version I'm using and it is. However my iRST app looks different, I don't have the performance tab you have. Here's a shot

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schurmann
Level 7
Try turn on the Dynamic Storage Accelarator in the status tab and see if the other settings are shown. Change the settings to the above to see if it helps (even after a fresh install using the default driver and without changing the settings i never had such wr slow speeds). Are your drives new?

Well unless I'm blind I have no such option or way to enable. I am making sure to run this as admin

And yes, new drives - well new as of this past May when I built the machine.

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