Torqx2 partitioning

[Jojo]

What I am asking is not if you are booting from your Torqx 2 drive. What I am asking is do you always have the other HDD's plugged in as well?

Of course I do. Why would I not have them plugged in? Don't you think it would be a real pain to shut down the system, crawl under my desk, open the case and then fish around inside the case to physically plug in a SATA cable or a power connector each time I wanted to use a drive?

For a 64GB Drive, these have never been tested to be used in this manner (with multiple partitions).

What does 64MB have to do with whether multiple partitions work or not? Have you actually tested file copying between multiple partitions on ANY of your drives? If you don't support multiple partitions on SSD drives, then you should prominently note this in your advertising and on the box/documentation.

May I ask is there a reason why you have multiple partitions?

Because that is how I like to organize my system and data. Again, if Patriot does not/cannot support multiple partitions, then this needs to be clearly documented.

[Patriot_Ben]

WHY would doing 2 read and 2 write commands simultaneously be any different from what would happen on a regualr revolving drive or result in any different performance?

And since you still don't seem to really have a handle on whether or not multiple paritions area no-no on SSD drives (or only YOUR drives?), I would think you want to discover that answer by doing the testing in your lab first, instead of shipping drives back and forth between me and you with all the paperwork that would be involved in exchanging drives.

Because you're putting extra load on the sata controller and the ssd controller which is communicating with the nand chips. It's similar to when you're moving let's say for example; 1 large file that is 3GB, compared to 50 files equaling 3GB's. The sata controller and the ssd controller has to address each of the files individually and attempts to do it at the same time. In this case, that one file would transfer faster as the hardware in which the lanes that the data has to transfer through, becomes more congested. In this case the controller of the drive needs to address both partitions.

I don't know for certain if this is specific to this particular controller, but we can see if we can provide a different drive that will not exhibit this behavior upon testing.

[Jojo]

Because you're putting extra load on the sata controller and the ssd controller which is communicating with the nand chips. It's similar to when you're moving let's say for example; 1 large file that is 3GB, compared to 50 files equaling 3GB's. The sata controller and the ssd controller has to address each of the files individually and attempts to do it at the same time. In this case, that one file would transfer faster as the hardware in which the lanes that the data has to transfer through, becomes more congested. In this case the controller of the drive needs to address both partitions.

I don't know for certain if this is specific to this particular controller, but we can see if we can provide a different drive that will not exhibit this behavior upon testing.

I just repeated my previous test I had done using the 700MB AVI file but with more detail. Perhaps this will help you.

-----------
Copying the file to the SAME partition on a Seagate SATA II 320GB rotating disk took 22.3 seconds.
Copying the file to the SAME partition on the Patriot TORQX2 SSD took 29.2 seconds.
The SSD result was 24% slower even giving that the SSD did not have to move a physical head around like on the rotating disk.

Copying the file to the SAME partition on a Hitachi SATA II 1TB rotating disk took 15.1 seconds.
Copying the file to the SAME partition on the Patriot TORQX2 SSD took 29.2 seconds.
The SSD result was 48% slower even giving that the SSD did not have to move a physical head around like on the rotating disk.

Copying the file to a DIFFERENT partition on a Seagate SATA II 320GB rotating disk took 23.4 seconds.
Copying the file to the DIFFERENT partition on the Patriot TORQX2 SSD took 30.7 seconds.
The SSD result was 24% slower even giving that the SSD did not have to move a physical head around like on the rotating disk.

Copying the file to a DIFFERENT partition on a Hitachi SATA II 1TB rotating disk took 21.5 seconds.
Copying the file to the DIFFERENT partition on the Patriot TORQX2 SSD took 30.7 seconds.
The SSD result was 30% slower even giving that the SSD did not have to move a physical head around like on the rotating disk.
----------

I would have expected the SSD to be much faster than any rotating disk. Instead, it was slower in all cases, whether copying from/to the same partition or from/to different partitions. Since the SATA mobo controller was the same for each test, being unable to AT LEAST EQUAL the rotating disk numbers would seem to point to a problem somewhere in the design of the Patriot SSD/Controller.

I am still not convinced that multiple partitions on the SSD is the problem because the results copying to the same or different partitions on the SSD and the Seagate drive are each about 1-2 seconds difference.

[Patriot_Ben]

Jojo,

There will be scenario's aspects of the Torqx 2 that will not be as fast as the mechanical HDD. Unfortunately there's nothing we can really do about this issue. That's just the nature of the technology when dealing with controller to nand chips compared to platter HDD's. For example you might get the benefit in faster boot times or faster overall sequential read/writes.

I'm sorry to hear that the drive is not meeting your performance expectations. Again, at this point we can replace the drive for a different drive if you want to go this route or return it with the reseller.

[Jojo]

Jojo,

There will be scenario's aspects of the Torqx 2 that will not be as fast as the mechanical HDD. Unfortunately there's nothing we can really do about this issue. That's just the nature of the technology when dealing with controller to nand chips compared to platter HDD's. For example you might get the benefit in faster boot times or faster overall sequential read/writes.

I'm sorry to hear that the drive is not meeting your performance expectations. Again, at this point we can replace the drive for a different drive if you want to go this route or return it with the reseller.

I cannot return the product to Newegg because I do not have the original packaging, which they are quite strict about.

Your information above is not very helpful Ben. Did you have any success duplicating the issues in your lab? We haven't established if the problem is with this particular drive or the TORQX2 line in general.

As to replacing the drive, what are you willing to do? Replace this with another 64MB TORQX2? Or a different size TORQX2? Or another of your models of SSD? What would you recommend?

[Patriot_Ben]

I cannot return the product to Newegg because I do not have the original packaging, which they are quite strict about.

Your information above is not very helpful Ben. Did you have any success duplicating the issues in your lab? We haven't established if the problem is with this particular drive or the TORQX2 line in general.

As to replacing the drive, what are you willing to do? Replace this with another 64MB TORQX2? Or a different size TORQX2? Or another of your models of SSD? What would you recommend?

I ran a quick test on a 128GB Torqx 2 and did a quick format of Windows XP3 with 2 partitions and the results were similar. It was about 2-3 minutes transferring a 20GB folder and about a third of that transferring the 20GB from folder to folder within the same partition. Therefore, I can concur that creating multiple partitions did slow the drive down. I did not however get it chance to compare it to other rotational HDD's.

After troubleshooting the issue of your 64GB Torqx 2, it looks like the benchmarks check out.

I will pm you the direct e-mail address of our RMA Manager to contact. He can take care of you and let you know what your options are. He would be the best person to assist you in the matter going forward since it would be an RMA matter.

[Jojo]

I have received the replacement SSD and I want to ensure that I set this up correctly.

I have been reading about the supposed importance of "alignment" (which I don't fully understand yet).

WHY is it important to have the beginning of the 1st partition aligned on some boundary (I'm reading that it should be some EVEN number like 1024)? How/why does doing (or not doing) so impact performance? WHY does the SSD I/O controller care what the alignment is?

Finally, there doesn't seem to be any FREE and easy way to position the start of the partition. I have tried to do so using Easeus Partition Manager Pro and Acronis Disk Director. Neither gives me the flexibility to pad out unallocated space so that the first partition will start on some nice boundary. They both seem to limit the unallocated space number I can choose to 7.84MB (which when I look at the actual starting address, comes out to be on an odd boundary).

If alignment is so critical a performance and life extending issue, why don't you (the manufacturer) provide a utility to hep the user create this alignment?

[Patriot_Ben]

Alignment is important because rotating discs are divided into physical sectors. In a nutshell, if you are using an older OS like Windows XP, it'll install the OS to match the physical sectors of the rotational HDD. This can be done through the command prompt using diskpart.

You can generally use any kb divisible by 4 such 1024kb.

To do it using this method you'll another boot drive with Windows and plug in the ssd as secondary.

-Run or open diskpart.exe...
A Dos Prompt should come up with Diskpart> _ (blinking)

-Select the disk by typing "select disk 0" or "select disk 1" hit enter.

-Type Clean and press enter (This will format the drive and bring your drive offline)

-Type 'create partition primary align=1024' press enter
A message prompt should appear saying "DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition."

Your disk should now be aligned and you can go ahead and format the drive.

To check whether the alignment was successful, open diskpart again.
-Type list disk
-Select Disk 0 (or applicable drive)
-Type List partition and hit enter, as long as this number is divisible by 4 you should be good.

Here's more info on this:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...alignment.html

[Jojo]

I wound up doing a CLONE disk operation from Acronis True Image 2012. Based on the DISKPART info below, it appears that the alignment is correct (1024 boundary).

============
DISKPART> select disk 3

Disk 3 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 18 GB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Extended 38 GB 18 GB
Partition 3 Logical 14 GB 18 GB
Partition 4 Logical 24 GB 32 GB

=============

I've had the new SSD installed and working since Saturday. I have done some performance testing and the new drive is testing faster than the old TORQX2. Hopefully I will not see deterioration.

Thanks for your help, Ben!

[BadIntentions]

Performance Deterioration is normal on all SSDs to a certain extent. You can minimize it by leaving the computer to idle (turned on, but not doing anything) at night, which lets the drive perform garbage collection for stuff TRIM misses.

You will also inevitably experience deterioration as the drive becomes more full. This is a limitation of all SSD technology (including 150,000 dollar SDRAM based devices).