Intel 730 SSD Poor Writes

[DHerl1]

I just got a 240GB 730 a couple days ago and I'm very disappointed with it. It seems like it is "stuck" at SATA II write speeds.

Either that or the drive just performs very poorly.

System:

Asus P8Z77-V

Intel 3770K

Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB

Intel 730SSD

WD Black 2TB (data)

System is not overclocked, running Windows 7 64bit. New build, new installation, using most recent drivers from Asus.

See how the write speed never exceeds 3GB/s? (Yes I am using one of the Intel 6GB/s ports on the motherboard)

So I tried different drivers, all sorts of things, re-installed the OS a couple times and this is all I get.

I then image the system, replace the drive with a 2.5 year old OCZ Vertex 4 SSD, restore the image onto it and get this:

Note that all I changed was the drive, used the same cable and everything, restored the image containing the same drivers, no changes were made in the BIOS.

(Obviously it is not my motherboard or BIOS at this point).

A couple months ago I built almost the exact same system for an employee of mine.

Only difference is I got her the non-"K" 3770 CPU and a Intel 530 instead of the 730.

She let me borrow the drive, I imaged her drive as a backup and restore "my" image onto it in my system.

(same system image used in both screenshots above)

I like that drive

So my question is, should my brand new 730 in the top screenshot really perform so poorly or is there a problem?

Thanks for any help or suggestions you can give me.

Dave

[DHerl1]

Here is the drive in a completely different computer.

This is the computer in my office, I have been using it with no problems for a couple years.

Very similar specs because I built the new system for redundancy, if I had a problem with my office computer I wanted to be able to swap them out quickly.

ASUS P8Z77-V PRO

Another Intel 3770K

Corsair Vengeance RAM, this time 16GB

Same poor results.

I simply put the drive in the older system and it booted right up.

To be sure it wasn't a driver problem or some other issue I then used diskpart from a windows 7 disc to clean the drive, reloaded a clean version of Windows 7 64bit and ended up with the same results.

The drive is defective.

Dave

[jbenavides]

Hello Dave_H,

We would like to recommend some actions you can try before considering the drive as defective:

1. Confirm that the drive is running at SATA 3 speeds.

1. Open https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/18455/Intel-Solid-State-Drive-Toolbox Intel® SSD Toolbox and click Drive Details.
2. Scroll down to Word 77 and check the "Coded Value Indicating Current Negotiated Serial ATA Signal Speed". This should be 3. Here's a picture from a drive running at SATA 2 speeds:

2. For testing and benchmarking we would advise you to usehttp://sourceforge.net/projects/iometer/ IOmeter. Also, we would like to the see the results if you increase the Queue Depth in ATTO to 10 (the maximum allowed).

1. IOmeter is preferred since it allows you to set the Queue Depth to 32. That is the value we use for testing and development.
2. You would want to run some sequential, 100% read and 100% write tests with the transfer size set to 128KB. For detailed instructions about running the test in IOmeter, please check the reply from Aleki_intel on January 15th, 2015 in the following forum that was created for a similar situation:

[DHerl1]

Thank you very much Jonathan for taking the time to try to help me.

Toolbox:

Atto Queue Depth 10

Attached are a couple results from IOmeter.

I was not sure how long to run it, I choose 3 minutes each. I also selected 3 of 4 cores (I have hyperthreading off in the BIOS)

I'm very sorry if I missed any settings, I'm not familiar with that tool.

I'll run some more when I get a break later tonight.

Dave

[jbenavides]

Hello Dave_H,

We analyzed the test results, and noticed you are using a "Transfer Request Size" of 128 K for random tests, you should use a Request size of 4 K. For sequential tests, 128 K should be OK.

Please run the Random test with 4 K request size and let us know the results.