Slow SSD in 5,1 Optical Bay?

[judino28]

So, I've finally updated from my 2,1 to a genuine, perfect quality 2010 5,1 six core 3.33ghz. Found a great local deal on Craigslist: $400. Everything is moved over and configured perfectly. I love it and notice a huge difference, especially in Windows 7 gaming.

Only one thing I can't figure out: It came installed with an 240gb OWC Mercury Extreme in the lower optical bay. This was great as it allowed me to easily swap my four drives from the 2,1 into the 5,1 and gain an extra SSD. However, under Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, the OWC drive is showing abysmal performance: about 50-70MBs write and 100-130MBs read. Interestingly, I tried Xbench and things reported a lot better, but some of the tasks still showed lower write speeds than my other SSD.

The OWC drive has El Capitan on it and it doesn't feel slow at all. Boots quickly, applications open quickly, etc. I made sure the firmware is up to date and even wiped the drive just to make sure I was starting from scratch and no difference.

In comparison, my OCZ SSD in Drive Bay 1 reports over 250MBs read and write.

So, should I just not worry about it? Is it typical for drive installed in the optical bay to not report directly in Speed Test? Like I said, it feels fine and way faster than a spinning drive, and Xbench reports seem ok (I think the score was something like 290 for the OWC in Lower Optical vs 450 for the OCZ in Bay 1; my spinners scored around 100), but in Blackmagic, it scores less than my installed 7200rpm spinning drives.

Any thoughts/insights are most appreciated!

 

[bookemdano]

Shouldn't be any speed difference in the optical bay SATA but you can prove it by swapping your two SSDs. Put the OCZ in the optical bay temporarily and move the OWC drive to Bay 1. If the benchmark numbers look the same then the OWC SSD is at fault.

Does the OWC drive support TRIM? And if so, did you enable it (google trimforce)? Once enabled you should run first aid on it via disk utility to do a manual TRIM.

 

[h9826790]

Many old OWC SSD doesn't support TRIM, that's the problem.

Anyway, no need to worry about it. TRIM won't affect the random read speed performance, that's what we want from a SSD (as an OS drive).

 

[kensic]

So, should I just not worry about it? Is it typical for drive installed in the optical bay to not report directly in Speed Test? Like I said, it feels fine and way faster than a spinning drive, and Xbench reports seem ok (I think the score was something like 290 for the OWC in Lower Optical vs 450 for the OCZ in Bay 1; my spinners scored around 100), but in Blackmagic, it scores less than my installed 7200rpm spinning drives.

Any thoughts/insights are most appreciated!

yea put the OWC ssd in the bay port and blackmagic it again. hold up the ssd if need be while in the bay to speed test.

i have a 128gb crucial mx100 ssd in the optical bay. and with blackmagic, i get 120ish write / 220 ish read.
my 8years old wd black 7200 spin drive in bay 1 gets 110ish write / 120ish read.

so yea test out all combine and see what you get. imma do the same.

 

[leon771]

It is the OWC drive. I bought a 60GB one for a MacBook 6-8 years ago.
When I upgraded to a Mac Pro in 2009 I put it in that machine.
Did a BlackMagic speed test and had low values like you have.
Contacted OWC as I thought I had a problem with the drive. Turns out that is what its genuine read/write speed is on non-compressed data (which is what the BLackmagic test uses).

 

[judino28]

Thanks for the replies!

Just an update: I enabled trim, then ran fsck -fy which forced it to trim, and now the speeds are way better. Not as good as my OCZ SSD, but much better than it was and faster than any of my HDDs.

 

[bookemdano]

Glad to hear enabling TRIM helped you. Yeah that OWC SSD does support TRIM since it uses a Sandforce controller (of course, OWC has a BS explanation on its site amounting to "because our SSD has garbage collection and overprovisioning, you don't need TRIM"... LOL. I've really lost respect for that company.)

 

[ActionableMango]

Thanks for the replies!

Just an update: I enabled trim, then ran fsck -fy which forced it to trim, and now the speeds are way better. Not as good as my OCZ SSD, but much better than it was and faster than any of my HDDs.

I'm curious, how much of the drive's stated capacity is full?

 

[judino28]

I'm curious, how much of the drive's stated capacity is full?

After I suspected a problem due to initial tests, I completely wiped the drive so that I was starting on a clean slate as I moved forward. Even with the empty drive, the read/write speeds reported were way slower than any of my mechanical drives.

It was only after enabling TRIM, which showed some improvement, and then running fsck -fy, which resulted in even more read/write improvement, that I felt it was "as good as it gets" empty and then proceeded to fill the drive. Even now, with the drive about 80% full, the performance is pretty much equal to what it was when it was "fixed" and empty.

 

[crjackson2134]

IF the drive is 80% full, I strongly recommend replacing it with a larger capacity. Drives are pretty cheap now, so think about it.