F-60 very low ATTO results

[mark501]

Hello

 

I just bought a Corsair F60 and installed Windows XP on it. While it's certainly much faster than my mechanical drives I get very low scores on the ATTO benchmark around 130MB/s read and write.

http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/2121/attolow.th.jpg

 

I'm not sure if I installed it correctly. Couldnt find any instructions on how to install WinXP on the Corsair F-series so I followed a general SSD guide. Anyway here's my installation steps:

 

I plugged in the F60, booted into my existing XP installation. Then I used diskpar ("diskpar -s") to align the drive. Used offset of 128. I made one partition and did a quick NTFS format in disk manager with 4096 bytes allocation. I rebooted and did a clean XP install (slipstreamed SP3) on the F60 (on the existing partition created above) and everything went fine. No problems, updated drivers, Windows etc.

 

The drive feels quick and snappy. The only issue I've noticed besides the abysmal ATTO score is that a few times I gotten a 30s or so delay when opening a program or shutting down the computer etc. Also a few times I've gotten much better ATTO scores around 230-240MB/s read and write:

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/7199/attook.th.jpg

 

But then later when I rebooted the ATTO score returned to ~130MB/s. My motherboard has SATA-II so that shouldnt be a problem.

 

Any help would be very much appreciated thanks

[Kung Pow]

Post your Mainboard and other Specs.

 

First make sure your SSD is plugged into Port 0 of your Intel Controller and that you are running in AHCI.

 

Secondly download Intel Rapid Storage Driver that will speed up your ATTO scores quite a bit.

 

Lastly look for the latest chipset driver of your board and download it ... do the things listed here http://blog.corsair.com/?p=3989 I know its for Windows 7 but some of them are very useful ..and for your information the most ideal case for operating a SSD would be to run Windows 7 so you might wanna consider sharing that;) and to keep as little components as possible next to it on the controller.

For example ( I have ICH10R(Intel Controller) and JMB Micron (Gigabyte Controller) the best possible case was to *only* plug the SSD on ICH10R and the rest(like Optical Drives and HDD´s) on Gigabyte Controller.

[mark501]

Thanks for the advice :)

 

My chipset is AMD 770/SB700. I've been thinking about enabling AHCI but I can't figure how to install the RAID/AHCI drivers. In Device manager I don't see any SATA controller to update the driver (just primary and secondary IDE channel etc)

 

I have the F60 plugged into the first SATA port, three HDDs in 2, 3, and 4 and the DVD unit in 6. Could that be a problem? Too many SATA devices?

[Kung Pow]

Ok look do exactly as I am instructing you in the following steps.

 

 

1.) The ideal case would be to unplug as many Drives as possible from the Intel Controller except your SSD for now just put your SSD on Port 0 and your DVD Drive on Port 6 of your Intel Controller.

 

2.)Go into the BIOS (del at boot)..then Integrated Peripharels...change ICH Mode to AHCI ...Onboard SATA/IDE Controll Mode :Enabeld

Onboard SATA/IDE Controll Mode: IDE

 

3.)Reinstall Windwos XP and if possible get Windows 7 would be more lucrative because of TRIM support.

 

3.)Let Windows update and do the following steps http://blog.corsair.com/?p=3989.

 

4.) Download the Intel RST http://www.computerbase.de/downloads/treiber/mainboards/intel-rapid-storage-technologie/

 

5.)Run ATTO and thank me for giving you that awesome advice:)

 

And because I assume you have benched your SSD to death you have filled it so you could run into the same problem I did^^. if that is the case you will need to *Secure Erase* it but for now leave this point out and just follow my instructions above.

You can read my thread ...SSD F40 HELP! for that case

 

Good luck:)

[mark501]

Your advice would be awesome if I had a Intel system ;):

 

Anyways can lack of AHCI really cause a 50% performance decrease? My first thought was I screwed up during install somewhere. But if I reinstall I'll definitely install the AHCI driver when XP setup asks for it

[Kung Pow]

You can also install the MSAHCI driver which also is great.

I didn´t notice that you don´t have an Intel System but despite that fact still follow my instructions just plug into Port 0 and download MSAHCI instead of Intel RST rest stays the same do what I told you;)

 

And hell yes you need to be running AHCI or else you can forgett ATTO scores^^

[mark501]

Ok the msahci driver would be great, if I was using Windows 7 or Vista since apparently its not included or available for WinXP. The "How to Enable AHCI in WinXP" sticky thread above seems to be a guide for Windows 7/Vista not for Windows XP.

[mark501]

Just a quick update:

 

I flashed to the latest mobo bios and now my ATTO scores seems to be back to the half decent 230-240MB/s I got a few days ago.

 

My old bios was the latest nonbeta release from April last year, but maybe this new fresh one released a few weeks ago fixed some SATA issue or something. Though in that case Asus didnt bother to tell anyone in the bios description.

 

I also switched my SATA devices around so they connect at ports 1,3,5 just in case there some interference or conflict or whatever :)