Z Turbo Drive Quad Pro was Fast, but Now has Poor RAID 0 Performance

[David_Elrod]

Z Turbo Drive Quad Pro was Fast, but Now has Poor RAID 0 Performance

I am having a peculiar problem. My PC is a Z840 dual processor machine and am running Windows 10 for Workstations. About 9 months ago I added a Z Turbo Drive Quad Pro card populated with four 512 GB SM951 modules to my Z840. I added the card in the suggested PCi slot, Slot 6, which is a PCIe3X16 slot. I used Windows Drive Manager to create 4 drive stripped (RAID 0) volume. I checked the speed of the volume using AJA system test, and it recorded a 5853 MB/SEC write score and a 5405MB/SEC read score, which is about where the card should perform. Crystal Disk Mark posted similar scores.

A couple of days ago I ran the test again and to my surprise the card was 1711 writes and 1899 reads, which is about what one SM951 should be. Crystal Disk Mark posted similar scores.  

I begun to try to fix the speed decrease. I deleted the stripped volume and recreated it. The scores remained the same. I then configured the 4 drives as simple drives, and they all recorded over 2000 for reads and about 1600 for writes, which is about right. So it seems the problem is not with the drives themselves.

I looked in my bios, which is the latest, and slots Slots 6 is recorded as operating at 8G and PCLe 3x16. I only have two other cards: my graphics card and an HP Thunderbolt card. Both seem to be working fine.

I also took the card out and reseated it. This didn’t help.

I have yet to try a different PCLe 3x16 slot as one is occupied by my graphics card (Slot 2), with would probably hit the SATA cable headers if it was moved to Slot 6, and the other PCLe 3x16 slot (Slot 5) is next to my Thunderbolt card, which would result in the two cards and their fans directly facing each other.

I also have yet to do a bios downgrade.

In short, my Z Turbo Drive Quad Pro was working in RAID 0 as it should. Now its speed is that of a single SM951. As I mentioned, if the drives are set up as 4 separate (non-RAIDed) drives, they work as they should. However I don’t want to have four separate drives. I want a single 2T RAID 0 drive with 6 G transfers as it had.

Old Benchmark 4 Drives RAID 0New Benchmark 4 Drives RAID 0New Benchmark One DriveSytem Block Diagram

[DGroves]

i suspect you are trying to fix something that is not broken

it's known that a new SSD or SSD array, will post higher numbers when new, and then after being use for a while settle down into what's called "steady state" which will post slower numbers

also SSD's when raided usually  loose the ability  to have the OS control garbage collection, and must rely on only the SSD's garbage collection methods this also can/will slow down the array after it's been in use for a while and is normal

since the turbo z quad does not have a cpu/ram i know it's using software raid, and as such most likely has no os trim support to test this you can try any of the numerous windows  trim apps that check for OS trim support

also some ssd's slowdown as they get older/more usage on them slow down

also Try a certify disk on your Samsung  sm951's

  (this is destructive, and you must also remove the raid info ,so backup all data first!)
Make sure you do a 2 pass or 3 pass certify and then recheck the ssd's speed

[David_Elrod · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the reply.  I was able to fix the problem today.   Apparently it seem the newest Z840 bios (M60 V02.41.1002)  has a negative impact on the Z Turbo Quad Pro performance as rolling back to version 2.40 fixes the performance issue.  My Turbo drive's  performance is now about 3.5 times faster.  I suspect the issues is more not specific to the Turbo Drive and is more of an issue with how the update deals with PCie3 x 16 slots.  It seems as if only 4 lanes are working not 16 as a result of the bios upgrade. 4 drives need 4 lanes each for max performance.  Again this is guess.  As I the bios update includes security enhancement, I am going to  go back to version 2.41 and live with the decreased performance.  Hopefully the issue will be resolved with the next bios update.

[DGroves]

i recomend you contact hp support direct via the  email support link from this web site with this problem, they may be

able to provide a quick fix for you

this is a peer to peer forum (user to user) as such we have little contact with hp, but they do monitor the forums every so often

[David_Elrod]

I contacted  workstation support. As the my Z840 is out of warranty, they will not provide support unless I pay.  Also it doesn't matter if the the Turbo Quad Drive Pro is in warranty if it was not purchased with the workstation.  Lol, I have to paid to report an issue I resolved, but that may be affecting other Z840 users.   I have had two HP workstations:  my current Z840 and a Z800.  Both have had a lot of issues.  My next workstation is going to be a Dell Precision workstation or an iMac Pro and not HP's new Z8 workstation.  I am also going to sell my $1800 Hp Z Turbo Quad Pro card.  In general, I prefer to use my computer and not troubleshoot or have to open it and mess with components.  Unfortunately this seems to be impoosible with HP workstations. 

Again thanks for your help.

[Cheron-Z]

@David_Elrod

I have brought your issue to the attention of an appropriate team within HP. They will likely request information from you in order to look up your case details or product serial number. Please look for a private message from an identified HP contact. Additionally, keep in mind not to publicly post personal information (serial numbers and case details).

If you are unfamiliar with how the Forum's private message capability works, you can learn about that here.

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Forum.

[Peter_Johnson]

I have a Z440 with a Z Turbo Quad Pro and 4 sticks. I've tried BIOS versions 2.46 and 2.47 with a similar result - it seems to only be using x4 lanes (~2GB/s) instead of x16. The RAID 0 has been created via storage spaces in Windows 10 x64. Am I missing a config step somewhere or are others experiencing similar slowness?

[Peter_Johnson]

Ok, it seems that changing the striped volume creation from "storage spaces" to "disk management" has opened the baffles.