Intel 510 SSD Seen as 3Gbs Drive

[idata]

I just built a system on an Asus P8Z68 Deluxe motherboard that includes two Intel 510 256Gb drives. One is drive C and the other is drive D on ports 0 and 1 respectively of the Intel controller. I am not using the Marvell controller. I was dissapointed in the Primary Drive WEI score so I opened the Intel RST Management panel and noticed the C drive is reporting a SATA Transfer Rate of 3Gbs while the D drive is reporting a 6Gbs transfer rate. The only difference between the two drives is the C drive is running the PWG2 firmware while the other one is running the PWG4 firmware. Does anyone have any thoughts on what may be holding this drive back?

[idata]

After I got my replacement Intel 510 SSD 120GB, the random freezing issue seemed to have stopped. However, the Intel 510 SSDs are still randomly going back and forth as 3Gbps and 6Gbps drives. Both drives are now running PxG4 firmware.

[idata]

Hi,

That's good news!

Could you let us know what firmware your two drives have now? And can you remember what firmware the returned drive had?

Cheers,

Ian

[idata]

Originally I had hoped it was a firmware conflict issue. After Intel sent me a new replacement Intel 510 SSD 120GB drive with PPG4 firmware, at first I had posted it was fixed cos I checked the speed a few times and it was 6Gbps. However, after running Windows Update and installing other programs, I felt the install speed was slower and when I check again, it still had unstable random switching between 6Gbps and 3Gbps with my Intel 510 SSD 250GB with firmware PWG4.

At least the random freeze up with the Intel 510 SSD 120GB appeared to be fixed. I guess it was caused by a faulty/corrupted sector which I found using HDTune Pro. The new replacement SSD was scanned thoroughly and result was perfect. I haven't froze up in a couple of days of installing programs and patching.

I will move one of the SSDs into a laptop, since the SSD speed is okay at 6Gbps with only one Intel 510 SSD configuration.

[Vegan]

Remember that SSD is not so fast at writes. If the speed is jumping around it suggests the signal is being degraded somewhere along the line

[idata]

I have tried using 4 different SATA3 cables that came with the Asus motherboard, 3 different Vizo SATA cables, 2 different Amphenol SATA3 cable that came with Intel 510 SSD, all had 6Gbps with one SSD configuration and as soon as I put 2 Intel 510 SSDs into the system, the drive randomly jump back and forth between SATA3 and SATA2. Fresh boot up will be SATA3 mode, but most of the time in SATA2 mode. Signal degradation does not explain why single SSD configuration is fine and problem only occurs when I have two SSDs configuration.

When in SATA3 mode I can get sequential reads faster than 450MB/s, in SATA2 mode it drops to like 280BM/s.

i7-2600 w/ Thermalright Archon

Asus P8P67 Pro2 X Asus GTX460 DCU TOP 1GB4 X 4GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 1.5vIntel 510 SSD 120GB + 250GBHitachi 7K3000 HDD 1.5TBCoolermaster Silent Pro Gold 800W

Please note that I may not be a pro system builder, but I have build over 20 PCs for myself and my friends over the years. I have ruled out most of the possibility of hardware conflict by cross checking/interchanging different components. I am forced to conclude it's a controller chip driver issue or SSD firmware issue.

Since Intel refuse to address the problem, I will temporary move one of the SSDs to upgrade one of my laptops until a proper fix is provided by Intel.