Vertex 2 performance degradation

[birthdaymonkey]

I've got a Vertex 2 50 GB, which has never had less than 10 GB free space. It seems to have gotten slower over time (been installed two months, very little benching): programs don't install in lightning speed like they used to, and my WEI score declined from 7.7 to 5.9, then back to 7.3 (after I updated to the 1.32 FW).

Is there any way to activate the GC on this drive or manually TRIM? Running Win7 64 with AHCI enabled on an Intel P55.

 

[Emulex]

you know trim just baloons a file to use all disk space to put some pressure and trim should be activated naturally. ?Have you upgraded to the latest beta intel RST? they gave a little more oomph from folks that have tried it.

you should not need to do anything at all with that configuration and your score really shouldn't drop nor it be noticeable to the eye.

 

[SickBeast]

Can you use the Intel RST driver with an OCZ Vertex 2? Will it work on an AMD motherboard as well? I just did a bit of digging and it says you can do it on an Intel motherboard with an OCZ SSD.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

Intel RST driver... I assume I should google this? Would it not install with the chipset drivers on my P7P55D?

 

[groberts101]

Sandforce uses throttling algorithms within its Durawrite process and 10 gigs of free space can easily be degraded if the proper maintenance is not done consistently.

Clean up all the trash and logoff idle the machine to allow some recovery through garbage collection time. Trim does not allow full fresh speed recovery with these controllers and GC has the final say when the system is in low activity states(hence, the recommended logoff idle).

Avoid benchmarking an install with limited free space like that and allow logoff idle time of about 10-20 hrs per week for consistent results.

If you're really serious about regaining full speeds?.. then secure erase(NOT reformatting) is the ONLY way to reset the controller to fresh states since it wipes the internal mapping/Durawrite process. Unfortunately with limited space like that it will settle right back in a few weeks anyways(especially if you "test" the speeds by using benchmarks to write synthetic trash to the free space). Good Luck with it

PS. be sure the W7 power options are set to never let the drive shutdown(in advanced settings) and use S1 sleep modes to keep the necessary power to the drive for GC to work uninterrupted.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

Sandforce uses throttling algorithms within its Durawrite process and 10 gigs of free space can easily be degraded if the proper maintenance is not done consistently.

Clean up all the trash and logoff idle the machine to allow some recovery through garbage collection time. Trim does not allow full fresh speed recovery with these controllers and GC has the final say when the system is in low activity states(hence, the recommended logoff idle).

Avoid benchmarking an install with limited free space like that and allow logoff idle time of about 10-20 hrs per week for consistent results.

If you're really serious about regaining full speeds?.. then secure erase(NOT reformatting) is the ONLY way to reset the controller to fresh states since it wipes the internal mapping/Durawrite process. Unfortunately with limited space like that it will settle right back in a few weeks anyways(especially if you "test" the speeds by using benchmarks to write synthetic trash to the free space). Good Luck with it

PS. be sure the W7 power options are set to never let the drive shutdown(in advanced settings) and use S1 sleep modes to keep the necessary power to the drive for GC to work uninterrupted.

Thanks for the tips. I don't really want to secure erase the drive; I can live with lower than best-case speeds. I'll try logging off my machine at night instead of just letting it idle at the desktop. I've also freed up some space, so I've got about 14 GB free out of 47 formatted capacity, about a third of the drive's total space. I thought the Vertex 2 drives with less available space (50 as opposed to 60) were supposed to be better at this sort of thing than the extended drives...

 

[groberts101]

the regular versions are better than the extended's for sure, but I was just hinting/pointing you in a positive direction, is all. I tend to be over the top on most that I do and these things are no different since there's ample opportunity to practice overkill. lol

Sounds like you're hip to the maintenance otimizations now and you should be just fine.