Intel Communities : Discussion List - Solid State Drives

S3700 SSD server configuration recommendation

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 23 May 2013 20:15:00 GMT

I am putting together a server needing about 400GB of storage. Using S3700 SSDs, which of the following configurations is recommended?:

One 400GB drive
Two 400 GB drives in raid 1
Two 200GB drives in raid 0
Three 200GB drives in raid 5
Four 200GB drives in raid 10

We will initially be using about 250GB of capacity in for a Win 2012 server. With hard drives I would use a raid 5 or 10, but with a product as robust as the S3700, I am open to other opinions. Backups are performed daily.

Thanks for your help.

Intel SSD Toolbox

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:12:26 GMT

I have two Intel® SSD 520 Series (60GB, 2.5in SATA 6Gb/s, 25nm, MLC) installed in RAID “0” on an ASUS P8Z77-V Pro, Intel Ivy Bridge Quad i7 3770K, G.SKILL Trident X F3-2400C10D-16GTX and two HDDs with Windows 8 Pro 64-bit installed on the RAID volume. I am running Intel® Rapid Storage Technology, Kit installed: 11.7.0.1013, User interface version: 11.7.0.1013, RAID option ROM version: 11.0.0.1339, Driver version: 11.7.0.1013, ISDI version: 11.7.0.1013. I have Intel® SSD Toolbox 3.1.2 installed. When I run the Intel® SSD Optimizer, I get the message “The
Intel SSD Optimizer cannot run on a RAID array under Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012.”. Intel web site Download Details says “Optimize the performance of an Intel SSD in RAID 0 using Trim functionality Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) 11.0 or greater”. Why is it not working?

AHCI Driver 12.6.0.1033 fails with SSD Toolbar

webadmin@intel.com — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:45:26 GMT

Hello

after Intel Rapid Storage-Technologie 12.6.0.1033 (or F6 driver only ) is installed then inside the "Intel SSD Toolbox" Smart status and SSD Optimizer is not working with my Intel 520er SSD.

with Intel Rapid Storage-Technologie 11.7.0.1013 and earlier is it working fine

Please Intel fix it

how much free space on intel ssd

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:44:31 GMT

November 2012 I made the switch to Windows 8 Professional as my OS of choice on my HP XW6600 Workstation. This workstation has two Intel E5450 Xeon QC's inside and currently 8 gig of ddr2 ecc memory onboard.

For the installation I opted for the Intel SSD 330 at hand with the 6 Gbps SATA port and 120 Gb of room. That is for the OS, the desktop applications and nothing else. Data like documents, webapplications that I develop locally are on a WD Black 2.5 inch harddrive and a second Intel SSD 520 with 120 Gb is there for photo, video and audio editing.

I have read that you at least need to keep 20% free space at hand on a SSD to avoid loss of performance. How much is true in that case and how do I make the best use of my SSD's. I currently have 20.3 Gig of memory free on my C:\ drive. The page file is on this drive as well.

Please advice.

Regards

Anthony

Firmware Update Tool won't find my 60GB 520's

webadmin@intel.com — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:20:13 GMT

Firmware Update Tool v1.93

2 x EKCV315402D5060GN - 60GB 520 Series - FW:400i

Tried by plugging into SATA ports of a number of M/Boards, including Intel DQ77MK and DH67GD and DG45ID.

In each case, I tried both AHCI and IDE modes in the BIOS.

In each case, the M/Board can identify the drives no problems, and I can use the drives with the O/S.

However, the firmware update tool says there are no Intel SSD attached, and doesn't allow me to do anything.

Intel SSD Toolbox 3.1.2 does not work with new Intel RST 12.6.0.1033

webadmin@intel.com — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:14:16 GMT

Hi. I have Intel SSD 520 120GB SSD. After i updated from the previous Intel RST 12.5 to the new RST 12.6. The Intel SSD TOOLBOX software would not recognize ANY of my HDDs. Not only the SSD. Similar problem I had with my other program - CrystalDiskInfo. I had to update the CrystalDiskInfo to the latest version to recognize any of my HDDs/SSD on the new RST 12.6.

The error on the SSD toolbox is:

***The Intel SSD Toolbox cannot communicate with the selected Intel SSD.

Consider changing to another storage driver compatible with your system and try the tool again.***

The "Optimize" option is greyed out and only the other options are active but they all show this error. SO in other words we need updated Intel SSD Toolbox.

My specs: 2600K/Gigabyte P67-UD5-B3/Intel 520/2x4bg ram/ Win 7 64 bit/ OCZ ZX 1250W/ 2x 680 SLI

Unexpected Shutdown Intel 335 SSD

webadmin@intel.com — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:18:50 GMT

New system Win7 x64. swapped out the Asus Z77 motherboard with an Intel DH77EB board BIOS 0100, reinstalled windows clean, all current Intel drivers RST 12.5.0.1066. Intel 335 SSD. Same thing, shuts down when in sleep mode.

This is the link to the Dump Files: http://sdrv.ms/108mqgo

051513-6193-01.dmp 5/15/2013 11:26:00 PM DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE 0x0000009f 00000000`00000003 fffffa80`070c2a10 fffff800`04bef3d8 fffffa80`06c05010 ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe+75c00 x64 ntoskrnl.exe+75c00

I just installed RST 12.6.0.1033 and now the computer will not sleep at all. I had to uninstall the SSD Toolbox because it doesn't seem compatible with the 12.6 RST drivers.

Any ideas are greatly appreciated. Thanks ut

Should a Mac-User Upgrade to an Intel 520 SSD

webadmin@intel.com — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:54:26 GMT

Hello All,

I have been contemplating putting the new Intel 520 series 240gb ssd into my early 2011 13" MacBook Pro. However, I do have some serious concerns and would really appreciate some advice.

I know that Apple can be very stubborn in supporting third party hardware where they are not benefiting financially. After reading a number of forums that have reported problems with Macs and Intel ssd's my main concerns are:

1. Getting the beep that tells me the ssd is incompatible.

2. That there is no tool box for OSX.

3. There is no trim support (Snow Leopard)

4. Getting the OSX to recognise the 6gb/s sata interface.

I would love to hear that all of these problems have been resolved and that I'm being paranoid about getting this new drive. Any comforting words or sound advice from people who have successfully installed and intel 520 series ssd into an early 2011 13" Macbook Pro (Snow Leopard) would be gratefully appreciated.

I plan on performing a clean install with the SSD rather than migrarting my existing software from my 5400rpm hdd.

Regards

Rodney Ferguson

Ps. Please do not suggest upgrading to Lion. Unfortunately, I find it truly awful.

520 SDD incompatible with LSI2308 on SuperMicro X9DA7, W2012

webadmin@intel.com — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 23:17:08 GMT

I've been banging my head against a wall trying to get an Intel 520 240GB ssd to work with the LSI2308 SAS controller built in to the SuperMicro X9DA7. I am running Windows Server 2012. The adapter sees the SSD, but I can't format it - disk manager just hangs.

I have also tried a 120GB 520 - it quick formats after an unusually long time. However, if I try to run the SSD toolbox diagnostic scan it throws a read error almost instantly. The 240 also throws a read error in the toolbox.

I can take these drives and attach them to the SATA controller that hangs off the C602 chipset and they format just fine and pass the full diagnostics, so it comes down to incompatibility with the SAS controller. Any ideas on how to address this? SM's support is mute.

As to troubleshooting: the X9DA7 came with LSI 2308 P13 firmware installed. I have upgraded to P14 firmware and tried the controller with both the IR (raid) and IT (HBA) versions. I've used both the out of box drivers and versions 2.00.57, 2.00.58, and 2.00.60 of the LSI drivers. Same result.

Questions about SRT/SSD caching.

webadmin@intel.com — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:21:29 GMT

Documentation isn't exactly the most thorough...

So is SDD caching limited to only single drive/RAID volume at a time, or does it work for multiple disks/volumes by enabling separate cache for each?

And is that 64GB cache size limit just some decided limit in current software or hard limitation?

With 18 years of computer experience about everything keeps constantly bloating to consume all available space, so I could see higher limit being usefull in future and ability to cache only one disk/volume isn't very flexible.

My desk PC which I use for everything from I'm media use to digicam photo editing/processing and gaming is rather old Q9550 E0@3.7GHz/1.2V (wonder why it had unnecessary high 1.25V as stock voltage?) PC and I'm planning to upgrade main components during summer when Haswell becomes available.

Wanting both fault tolerance and more performance I went at that time for 3ware 9650SE hardware RAID controller with four 640GB WD Blacks (WD6401AALS) in RAID10 as main drive. That has so far gotten me over hyping of SSDs which are still insanely expensive per GB, despite of HDD prices still being lot behind price curve before Thailand floods.

Of course no mechanical HDD/RAID of them can approach SSDs in overall performance, so pure HDD storage approach just isn't anymore tempting.

And while combination mat lined Lian Li PC-A71B does good enough job at damping HDD noise that I had to make small comparator based circuitry for getting HDD activity led controlled by all sources (mobo and 3ware's two connectors) fewer HDDs is always less noise sources and less heat produced.

So considering read performance would be lot more important than fast non sequential writes simple RAID1 with SSD caching would be best compromise in all aspects.

SSD caching should also help if this seriously **** poor RAID1 performance (no excuse for it to be slower than single disk) wasn't some compatibility problem but sign of purposely crippled RAID1 implementation.

At least LSI's hardware RAID controllers have flexible SSD caching system but those would mean lots of cost for simple RAID1 and probably some 5 to 10W of more power consumed/heat produced by card. (plus problem of non-luxury priced CPUs/mobos being crippled in number of PCI-e lanes for both PCI-e x16 and x8 card)

Intel SSD for my PC matching

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 14 May 2013 02:49:07 GMT

Hi, I have a question.

My machine is SONY VAIO SVE1511AJB.

Please teach the type of Intel's SSDs that fits.

I don't know the size, 7mm or 9mm.