How exactly is your SSD setup? I don't think I've ever seen #s that high for a sata II SSD installed normally.
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Mac Pro 1,1 Feels Sluggish - shouldn't be. How to diagnose?
- Thread starter Sean Dempsey
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How exactly is your SSD setup? I don't think I've ever seen #s that high for a sata II SSD installed normally.
I'm sorry I meant ON the SSD, not on a different drive. Since that is the drive that is testing so slow.
I know "they" say, that "with Mac OS there is no need to re-install, like with windows" I have seen differences, and I still do periodically (like when I install something, or many somethings I should not have) just seems easier and sets my mind at ease knowing whats installed for sure.
The Mac Pro has a SATA III drive not a SATA III bus..I'l be more clear next time I apologize. Here is the BM for the MP w/Icy slower just not as slower as I remember. Though I did just zero out the drive so that may have something to do with it
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Tesselator did that math in another post somewhere, and I looked over his shoulder to check his math, cause that's just the kinda guy I am, that the speed of a SATAII bus is 300MBps, on each of the 6 ports. So far one SSD will not saturate that port by itself.
So what you see for my numbers is 2 Crucial 128GB M4 SSD's RAID0 striped.
This effectively doubles read and write speeds (not quite double but close).
But if you really want to see some amazing numbers ask Tesselator to post his tests.
In the RAID0 arrangement, I can run trim, and this morning I used restore to roll back from a choice to install the WRONG utility, yet once again
So I can attest both those functions worked for me with this arrangement.
Now before anyone jumps me for this, YES, RAID5 would be better because as each drive drops out over time, I would only need to replace it and it would be repaired by RAID, but I am very frugal and a RAID card is not in the...cards...for me
Got it! Now it makes sense, thank you.
My MacPro1,1 results with a 240GB OCZ Vertex3 LT OEM SSD (2.06 firmware): write = 180.8MB/s and read = 245.8MB/s
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Weird! I get better than the above for reads and writes with a 3TB Seagate rotational HardDisk drive. I get between 175 and 185 for both R&W in BlackMagic with W usually being about 5 or 10MB/s faster than R. Other benchmarkers clock them at 180 to 192MB/s R&W...
That some people are getting such low speeds from an SSD is a stumper.
I wonder what the explanation is...
That some people are getting such low speeds from an SSD is a stumper.
I wonder what the explanation is...
Weird! I get better than the above for reads and writes with a 3TB Seagate rotational HardDisk drive. I get between 175 and 185 for both R&W in BlackMagic with W usually being about 5 or 10MB/s faster than R. Other benchmarkers clock them at 180 to 192MB/s R&W...
That some people are getting such low speeds from an SSD is a stumper.
I wonder what the explanation is...
It may have to do with trim. When I set mine up as concatenated drives it wouldn't allow trim, and within 2 weeks performance was down to those very levels. I was surprised that the R+W was slower than each drive alone had gotten, and slower than one of my rotational drives too
Hmm, so TRIM is the explanation... K.
I wonder why a rock-solid faultless "TRIM" isn't part of these SSD's controllers? Surely the manufacturers do (have done) enough R&D to know this was a problem. Heh, what a bunch of lamerz!
I suppose it makes sense tho.. This way they get to sell you the first one without it and then offer you a new and improved version too. Hmmm... So now the only question is: Are they evil bastards or just lamerz?
I wonder why a rock-solid faultless "TRIM" isn't part of these SSD's controllers? Surely the manufacturers do (have done) enough R&D to know this was a problem. Heh, what a bunch of lamerz!
I suppose it makes sense tho.. This way they get to sell you the first one without it and then offer you a new and improved version too. Hmmm... So now the only question is: Are they evil bastards or just lamerz?
Hmm, so TRIM is the explanation... K.
I wonder why a rock-solid faultless "TRIM" isn't part of these SSD's controllers? Surely the manufacturers do (have done) enough R&D to know this was a problem. Heh, what a bunch of lamerz!
I suppose it makes sense tho.. This way they get to sell you the first one without it and then offer you a new and improved version too. Hmmm... So now the only question is: Are they evil bastards or just lamerz?
TRIM has to come from the OS
Now see, that makes sense, considering all I have seen the last few years with drivers, and all.
The gurus here might disagree, and then I'll maybe learn something new, but as far as I get it, the real advantage with an SSD in a Mac pro (as system disk) is not based on the max throughput (as measured by blackmagic), but on the lack of drive head latency in reading multiple small files.
Thus the max throughput is really irrelevant, and might in some cases actually be misleading. I have a MP 3,1 and although it only has a SATAII SSD, (throughput about 150 MBps), it is a lot snappier than the HDD in OS-related tasks.
RGDS,
Thus the max throughput is really irrelevant, and might in some cases actually be misleading. I have a MP 3,1 and although it only has a SATAII SSD, (throughput about 150 MBps), it is a lot snappier than the HDD in OS-related tasks.
RGDS,
I would not consider myself any type of expert/guru.
I can only base what I say on personal anecdotes.
I have heard what you said before, whether it is true in all SSD's I don't know.
What I can say with some confidence is, if you notice a slow down, and a disk bench test shows a slow down, there is a better than average chance the slow down is disk related somehow.This screen shot shows the size of the data used to stress the drive. Now it is true this could be GB's of 4k files, but at the very least it points out it is a sustained transfer of data, and not a burst as some say.
At the very least it gives you a place to start.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
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Here is a bit old but very nice article, which explains a lot about SSDs performance and benchmarks: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011...ff_synchronous_vs_asynchronous/1#.UXWPkYIeG38
I did use the TRIM app to turn it on on the OWC Electra 6g. But it has NEVER been more than 50% full, and NEVER been more than just an iTunes server OS/App drive. It barely had any "usage" other than just serving movies and TV.
So the only way that he could be seeing lower speeds than we do, is possibly because his drive uses asynchronous NAND memory and we have synchronous NAND?
"Sean Dempsey I did use the TRIM app to turn it on on the OWC Electra 6g. But it has NEVER been more than 50% full, and NEVER been more than just an iTunes server OS/App drive. It barely had any "usage" other than just serving movies and TV."
I seem to remember that Trim, only works after it is activated. Meaning all the files that existed before you activated it, will not benefit from it. I looked and cannot find where I seen that so I may be wrong. If that is right, then a clean install and activation of Trim, should help. If it doesn't help, then you have something else at play. If you decide to replace the Pro, let me know, if the price is right I may buy it from you, and fix it.
It seems so. Blackmagic uses uncompressed data AFAIK.
And Electras use asynchronous NAND: http://www.storagereview.com/owc_mercury_electra_6g_ssd_review_240gbBlackmagic AppStore page said:
If the SSD would be defective, reads should be drastically low, i.e. somewhere near 40 MB/s or less. And it's not the case here.
OP's issue could be caused by upgrade installations instead of clean one. I presume that he has cloned his boot drive from HDD to SSD. I'd try it this way: clone existing OS onto spare HDD, erase Electra, clean Lion install then migrate user account and all needed software and files. TRIM shouldn't be necessary due to SF-2281 nature.
Maybe it's stupid, but I've noticed that some SSDs "do like" clean installation more than cloned one.
Yeah but from what I understand most (all?) SSDs use a wear-levling routine So as you overwrite or delete a file the new or next file is written to a different place on the NAND grid. I don't understand WL completely because I haven't needed to but it seems that it also acts on its own and moves data based on whatever conditions. (I dunno but like, maybe after 20 reads of the same data from the same location it moves it to another location for the next 20 or something like that.)
Now whether or not this wear-leveling thing creates the same conditions which TRIM is supposed to address or not I have no idea. Since people are saying that only the OS can or should use TRIM (which sounds wrong to me) then maybe it does. <shrug>
In short; it may not matter that it's never been more than 40% full and the entire grid array may already be clogged up... errr, "Untrimmed"?
Here's how I solved it on mine
Turned out to be a bad hard drive bay. In my case, bay number one. As long as I don't put a drive in that bay, everything is full speed. Try pulling all the drives but the startup drive, restart, then try moving that one to another bay, restart.
Turned out to be a bad hard drive bay. In my case, bay number one. As long as I don't put a drive in that bay, everything is full speed. Try pulling all the drives but the startup drive, restart, then try moving that one to another bay, restart.
