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Drivers & Software

willyfisch
Adept III

RAID 0 sometimes abysmal performance

Hi guys

Sometimes my RAID 0 SATA SSD array is extremely slow. Then, maybe 15min later or after rebooting, it works fine again.

This is how it looks when it's slow:

RAID 0 slow.png

This is the normal speed:

RAID 0 normal.png

My relevant specs are:

Ryzen 7 1800x

Asus Crosshair VI Hero (RAID on X370 chipset)

2x Radeon R7 240GB SSDs (in RAID 0)

Windows 10 Pro N 1709

AMD AHCI RAID driver 9.2.0.0070

RAID 0 with Read + Write Back Cache

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11 Replies

Have you tried using Windows to RAID the disks as well?

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You mean software RAID via storage spaces? That has some drawbacks and doesn't work on boot drives, as far as I know.

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It's a really bad idea to RAID0 your boot drive, even though SSDs are far more reliable than HDDs it's still a bad idea. Also, you shouldn't always take benchmark results at face value, especially if you only run them once. If they're to be believed your sequential performance is better than mine, despite me having Samsung 850 EVOs which are -much- faster than the R7 SSDs you use.

Comparison: 512GB 960 Pro:

I'm completely aware of the (usual) consequences of running RAID 0. I have no data on it that I mind losing, which isn't backed up constantly.

It depends if you're running the SATA version of 850 EVO and if you're running hardware RAID or a software emulation of RAID (like Windows Storage Spaces). It can have various other reasons why results from one system to another might differ.

Generally, sequential speeds of SATA SSDs is often limited by the SATA bandwidth.

According to this review, my SSDs should perform similarly to SATA 850 EVOs:

AMD Radeon R7 SSD (240GB) Review

I get similar results for 5 runs, it seems to be accurate. Also keep in mind that you're running a different version of CrystalDiskMark with the Seq Q1T1 test replaced by a 4KiB Q8T8 test and in a different order.

pastedImage_2.png

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Yes I'm using the newer version, as you should be. Also no, it's not, they're 30% faster.

Which is why Anandtech came to this conclusion:

These drives were -never- a good idea, costing more than a Samsung Evo drive, yet performing worse. That's why AMD quickly discontinued them, and why https://www.amd.com/en-us/products/solid-state-drives  does not exist anymore.

The Radeon SSD is basically an ARC 100, which is a completely fine drive. It uses MLC instead of TLC of the Samsung EVO and thus has faster sustained reads and writes. The controller is a bit better on the EVO and it has some nice software features like rapid mode, but the 850 EVOs were substantially more expensive at the time then the Radeon drives.

I'm not sure why you're comparing a 1TB SSD with a 240GB SSD, the larger drives are usually faster. These are the Userbench scores of the 250GB version, where you can also see the ~50% higher throughput of the Radeon SSD:

pastedImage_1.png

Without RAID, it's impossible to reach 1TB/s on SATA III, as the theoretical limit of SATA III is 6Gb/s.

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I was comparing my drive to yours, mine is a 1TB. And no, Samsung drives were -always- cheaper than the Radeon drives, as was shown in the Anandtech article you linked, and as I believe I pointed out on here years ago on a thread I can't find when AMD launched them.

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Matt_AMD
Community Manager

Your Windows build looks to be outdated, please update to the latest build and setup Raid.

Does system performance seem sluggish, or is it just this one test showing low results?

I've been trying to update to the newest feature version of Windows, but it keeps failing. It's on the most recent version of 1709 though (KB4462932, released October 18, 2018).

Maybe I will rebuild the array and reinstall Windows in a few months, if there is no other solution.

The system is sluggish when it happens, I just ran the benchmark to "prove" that the issue is indeed related to the storage.

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It's not necessarily related to the drives. It could be corrupt system files, run "sfc /scannow" and "DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth" without quotes at the administrator command prompt or powershell.

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I did the sfc scan before, I'll try the restorehealth now, thanks.

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