Warp write slowdown solution

[DOA]

How about some no BS replies.
Has any one found a good method to bring these drives back to full performance?
There will be no Trim command ever as I understand it. but there are many ways to restore performance besides the Trim command. Hopefully a Patriot rep will talk to his engineers and give us a step by step. I think it will have to wipe the drive to make it as new - but that is better than a slow driver forever.

[AGlobalThreatsK]

What OS is installed? What tweaks have you done/any kind of abnormal setup? What programs have you installed and what do you have running in the background? Antivirus? What size drive and how much space is free?

[DOA]

Machine is a Gateway FX, have to use Vista64 or Win7 as far as I can tell, not a full set of drivers for XP or OSX. Vista 64 fully updated.

Pair of 64G Warps in raid 0, very fast when new. 52 Gigs free.

Gateway excess junk is unstalled.
WoW, MSWord, MSExcel, Firefox, IE8, K-Lite video codecs to play movies, Zone Alarm, AVG Free, iTunes and some high def movies/TV series.

When they first slowed on writes they were 22G free so I tried to wipe them as per Anandtech. Removed, put in different computer, ran program to wipe (writes zeros to entire drive). Put things back together and there was no improvement.

All suggestions appreciated.

[earls]

How slow are they?

You probably did yourself a disfavor by filling the entire drive with zeros.

Boot in safe mode and run the benchmark.

[DOA]

Since I don't run in Safe Mode and Benchmarks can be misleading I will post the reason I think they are slow first.
Average of five times getting my WOW char into Ulduar alone from a fresh reboot. I let Vista fully load (about 15 seconds sitting at desktop) and start WOW, my logon is automated via G15 keyboard to the variation from logon should be small. Likewise I interleaved the SSD, Raptor and USB runs to minimize connection time differences. I am physically removing the raid drives and changing from Warp to Raptors. OS is the same and WoW is copied from the USB drive to each raid.

Free Agent Pro USB drive 55 seconds
2xWarp Raid 0 (Intel raid controller) 47 seconds
2xRaptors Raid 0 (same controller) 45 seconds

When new the Warps were closer to 37 seconds.
HDTune pegs the Warps at 108.5 min and 193.3 max with 173.7 avg
USB Drive 8.5 min and 80 max with 59.9 avg
Raptors 137.4 min and 174.5 max with 157.5 avg
So by benchmark the Raptors are slower, but IRL the Warps have measurable slowing effect on the game loading. I can also notice it when transitioning instances I solo, the Warps are slower to load the instance than the Raptors. They were noticeably faster when new.

[AGlobalThreatsK]

How slow are they?

You probably did yourself a disfavor by filling the entire drive with zeros.



I'm going to have to agree with that one. The drives cannot be wiped or trimmed so doing something to try and accomplish that most likely hurt you instead of helping you.

How many processes do you have running at all times?

How often do you restart the computer? You said "I let Vista fully load (about 15 seconds sitting at desktop) and start WOW", so I assume that means the test results you posted are done shortly after booting up.

I believe earls wanted you to benchmark in safe mode because then you wouldn't have all your programs running in the background, constantly reading from and writing to the drive. This would be very helpful to determine exactly where and why the Warps are slowing down.

What tweaks have you done?
Have you disabled any services?
Have you disabled anything from startup?
Are prefetch and superfetch still enabled?
Did you disable automatic defragmentation?
Is hibernation enabled?
Is the paging file on the SSD raid?
Is indexing still enabled?
Are write-caching and advanced performance enabled?

My personal laptop is a modified Gateway FX P7801u so I am very familiar with the hardware. Is yours an i7 desktop, core2duo laptop, or other?

[DOA]

This is a Gateway P-7805U so very similar.
CPU is stock P8400, 4 Gig ram, nVidia 9800m, two Patriot Warp 64G in raid 0.

What tweaks have you done?
Nothing really, reg hacked the permissions nag in the OS

Have you disabled any services?
56 running services, none disabled.

Have you disabled anything from startup?
iTune's Bonjour was causing trouble, stopped it.

Are prefetch and superfetch still enabled?
Prefetch and Superfetch off

Did you disable automatic defragmentation?
Auto Defrag was disabled, but SP2 turned it back on so it has run.

Is hibernation enabled?
Hibernation and sleep while plugged in off.

Is the paging file on the SSD raid?
yes

Is indexing still enabled?
Indexing off in Intel raid manager.

Are write-caching and advanced performance enabled?
Write-caching on, advanced performance off.

I really appreciate the help, but this is getting off the point.
How do I restore the drives to original performance? If they are permanently degraded I need to talk to Patriot about that situation. I would never buy a HD that was advertised as a certain speed that degraded over time and could not be brought back to original spec, would you? This drive was advertised as being a certain speed and is well under its projected end of life.

[AGlobalThreatsK]

That is a lot of SSD activity. There is no trim feature for the warps so you cant exactly 'restore' them. However, there is a lot more you can do to at least increase your current speeds to try and help the problem.


I would never buy a HD that was advertised as a certain speed that degraded over time and could not be brought back to original spec, would you?

Lots of other manufacturer drives with the same issues.

I have other brand gen2 SSDs that cannot be wiped or trimmed also, but the fact of the matter is they need a proper setup and the problem soley comes from the writes.

The only way to compete with SSDs that CAN be trimmed is to put 100% of the writes OFF the SSD. EWF is an example, you will have the exact same experience as a SSD that CAN be trimmed. But obviously EWF is not for everyone due to the changes on the C: drive being discarded on shut down.

[DOA]

So what is the next step?
Certainly the controller and drive can be wiped, other manufacturers have that ability. All data is gone but at least the drive is restored to like new performance. Which is the reason I tried it with mine but we need a firmware change to tell the controller it has "new" media.

http://mydellmini.com/forum/dell-mini-9-discussion/7531-hdd-erase-wiping-solid-state-drive-drive.html

That link covers the discussion. We have programs to zero the drive, but nothing to tell it to use all available memory. i.e. restore to new condition. Perhaps there is a setting like a CMOS jumper?

[AGlobalThreatsK]

Certainly the controller and drive can be wiped, other manufacturers have that ability. All data is gone but at least the drive is restored to like new performance.

There are many other manufacturer SSDs with the exact same issues as I just stated. They cannot be wiped, trimmed, or "restored" to like new performance by filling the drive with 0's. If you're thinking of a drive that can be wiped, trimmed, or "restored", you are not thinking of a drive that is comparable to the Warp V2.

The next step is to either change your software setup, or change your hardware setup.

Windows Vista wasn't designed for SSDs (You can clearly see that especially if it auto-defragged the Warps), and the only change you posted that you've done to accomodate the SSD was turning off Prefetch and Superfetch. There is A LOT more you can do but it depends on what you want to do.

[earls]

There is no firmware upgrade for the JMicron JMF602B controller featured in the Warp v2 SSD drives.

The thread you linked is about erasing the drive for security, not performance.

[DOA]

So it sounds like replacement time if I want original performance back.

I agree Vista is not made for SSD's, but from what I have read Win 7 is far from ready as well. The good news may be that Microsoft has announced they will support them and sometimes they tell the truth.

[Foolsaeon]

I have one of these warp v3 256gb ssd. I have looked the past couple of days to find a solution to make this drive workable. Extreeeeeeemly bad performance, especially the write speed.

HAS ANYBODY GOT A SOLUTION TO MAKE THIS $500 drive USABLE or can we expect that we are stuck with it?!?!?!?!?!

[earls]

RE: Foolseaon, no one has any idea of what you're talking about.

[SeaTrane]

I feel your pain but whats done is done.The controllers dont support any kind of cleaning. I have always kept this in mind when it comes to computer hardware.. Never buy 1st generation, do a lot of research and ask a lot of questions, before you buy.