T400 and slow read speed on Kingston V Series SSD.

[haquocdung]

Hey guys,
I just pick up an Kingston V Series SSD 128gb for my T400. This is my first ssd and I am totally noob to these ssds thing.
First thing I did when received my SSD is format it and do a fresh intall of Win 7 on it.
After that, I check my read speed with hdtune and crystal disk mark and the result came very disappointed.

http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/6586/hdtune.png

http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/3103/capturebcw.png

Installed Intel® Matrix Storage Manager (IMSM) and still same result.

http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/3262/hdtune1.png

Can someone please explain to me why this happening and teach me how to use my ssd effectively??
Review from newegg customer mention that these drives are running atleast 180+++ but I only get 1/2 of it.

here's the one that I have: Newegg.com - Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV425-S2BD/128GB 2.5" Desktop Bundle 128GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

[Harryc]

Breaking .img tags. Please read the forum rules ref. inline pictures. We allow only one small pic and there must be a warning in the subject line.

[Rochefort]

Your T400 like my T60 are limited to SATA 150.
Anyway your specs are low.
Her's a bench of my Intel X25E on AHCI mode
---------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0 Beta2 (C) 2007-2009 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
---------------------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 135.563 MB/s
Sequential Write : 128.881 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 126.795 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 112.601 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 16.417 MB/s [ 4008.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 29.497 MB/s [ 7201.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 101.363 MB/s [ 24746.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 82.274 MB/s [ 20086.4 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: Used 67.1% (9.8/14.6 GB)]
Date : 2010/05/12 17:50:11
OS : Windows XP Professional SP3 [5.1 Build 2600] (x86)

[Harryc]

Your T400 like my T60 are limited to SATA 150.

Whatever else may be going on in the OPS T400, SATA 150 is not one of them. All T400's are SATA 2 = 3.0 Gb/s. See the statement below from Mark at Lenovo.

The following explaination of SATA data rates available on the Santa Rosa (T61) and current Montevina based systems (T400/T500, W500, W700, etc)...

"For Santa Rosa-based systems, the Intel ICH8 supports a SATA bus speed of up to 3.0 Gb/s. Lenovo made a design decision to prioritize maintaining compatibility with Ultrabay disk drives, which are connected via a SATA-to-PATA conversion chip which could not handle a 3.0 Gb/s SATA bus speed reliably. Therefore the system was standardized to 1.5 Gb/s.

In testing rotating media drives, our measurements show data throughput difference between 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s bus speed is less than 5% since the drive mechanics are the limiting throughput factor, rather than the SATA bus itself.

For those customers who choose to purchase an after-market SSD drive capable of SATA bus speeds up to 3.0 Gb/s, the system will interface with them at 1.5 Gb/s. Lenovo's official position is that the Santa Rosa systems are working as designed.

The Montevina based systems which began shipping last year have direct SATA interfaces for both drive bays and are enabled at a system level for SATA bus speeds of 3.0 Gb/s performance. Current Lenovo drives have firmware set to 1.5 Gb/s data rates.

Exchanging these drives for after-market drives which support SATA bus of 3.0 Gb/s should provide for the higher data rate at the overall system level. Again, it should be noted that our performance measurements show less than 5% performance improvement between 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s SATA bus speeds for rotating drives, since the drive mechanics are the limiting throughput factor, rather than the SATA bus itself.

After-market SSDs which support SATA bus speed of 3.0 Gb/s will operate at that bus speed. Depending on the data transfer test method used, your actual data throughput from a 3.0 Gb/s SATA bus speed should be 220-250 MB/s and about 90-120MB/s throughput when running on SATA bus of 1.5 Gb/s. This is due to the bus signaling used for the SATA bus, as well as overhead for error checking."

[ThinkRob]

Can someone please explain to me why this happening and teach me how to use my ssd effectively??

The speeds you saw elsewhere were sequential transfer speeds which, although impressive-looking, don't mean much. Unless most of your drive's usage consists of frequent sequential transfers of large files (unlikely), sequential speeds don't really matter.

What matters for typical desktop usage is random IO, particularly small random reads/writes. Your SSD should be decent (although not great) at those.

Personally if I bought it for the price listed on NewEgg I'd return it (or sell it) ASAP and put the money towards an X25-M. It'll give you a bit less space, but has dramatically better real-world performance for desktop workloads.