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]

I thought my speeds were great but those are amazing! As usual with Intel there are anomalies: your 4k marks are a bit lower but ypur earlier write speeds are much higher!

I've also leanrt a lot from this discussion thread - the main thing being that you can get a heck of a lot more help from the community the you can from Intel! Thanks to everyone who has contributed and I will keep following this even though I've moved to RAID.

[idata]

I wanted to report back to let everyone know that I am now in 6Gbs bliss. I last week I replaced my PWG2 drive with a new PWG4 drive and I have been running at 6Gbs on both drives ever since. Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions. I am now thinking about what these drives would be like in RAID 0!!!

[idata]

That's really good news! So it would seem that having different firmwares is the cause? I had suggested this to Intel but they dismissed it as a possibility. Maybe now they may look into it properly? Did you swap the drives at your own cost or was it an exchange? I think I may now contact Intel and insist they replace my PPG2 with a PPG4. Although I an currently using RAID I may want to change back to AHCI in the future. So Mario, if you are reading this, expect a call when I get hack to the UK next week! Bannon, I think you'll be impressed with the RAID speeds - they're pretty amazing! Any chance you could make one last post showing a benchmark in RAID? I'm glad it's worked out for you.

[idata]

I had recently added an Intel 510 SSD 250GB (PWG4 firmware) to my system and this problem started acting up too.

My setup:

CPU : i7-2600

Mobo: Asus P8P67 Pro (1850 BIOS firmware)

RAM : 4 X 4GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 1.5v

SSD : Intel 510 SSD 120GB (PPG2 firmware) + Intel 510 SSD 250GB (PWG4 firmware)

GPU : 2 X Asus GTX460 DCU TOP 1GB

PSU : Coolermaster Silent Pro Gold 800W

I have iRST 10.6 running and the latest INF driver installed. The drives are randomly going back and forth between 6Gbps and 3Gbps. When I only have the 120GB installed, it is fine. So now I have a very expensive Intel 510 SSD 250GB as paperweight.

ticketno:[8000319062]

[idata]

Hi,

Really sorry to hear that you've got this problem too! I went back to Intel and said that even though I am using RAID I wanted the issue fixed so I could use AHCI if I wanted to. That was about 4 weeks ago and I have contacted them at least 4 times to ask for my drive to be replaced. Every time they avoid answering the question and just say that they are looking ito it. I finally contacted the retailers who I bought the drive from and explained the problem to them. The retailers have asked me to retun the drive and they will contact Intel to see what is going on. They reckon Intel will respond quicker to them and even if not, they will replace the drive.

So I recommend gettig in touch with your retailer and telling them about all the cases reported here with this problem. I think Intel have been pretty useless so far. Perhaps they are working on a firmware update but there is no excuse for it to be taking so long. I certainly won't be recommening intel drives after this.

All the best,

Ian