2011 i5 2.5GHZ Mini with RAID SandForce = Performance Issue Solved!

9/1 Edit - Swapped out the Corsair Force GT's for Kingston Hyper X's and I am now getting SSD speeds. Thank you "buddster" for the info. These drives are both SandForce 2281 drives with synchronous flash. Must be a firmware bug on the GT.


Need help! I've been struggling with getting these drives to play nice with my mini for over a week now and I'm having no luck.

Issue: For two SSD's this thing should be screaming fast but I am constantly getting the spinning ball and freezes. I have tried RAID as well as the drives individually. I updated the firmware from 1.2 to current 1.3 on the drives with no change. I have pulled RAM from another machine to make sure it's not a RAM issue and it's not. When I use Xbench I get very random results and it takes an extremely long time to run. Some of the results come in at under 2mbps... This is a clean install of Lion (multiple times actually).




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Drives work fine in external enclosure on another machine in Windows, I only have esata external enclosures so no way to test with the mini.

saulinpa said:

There are reports of problems with TRIM and Sandforce so make sure you didn't load that patch.

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Too late for skipping the 1.3 update, you can't flash back to 1.2 once done. Performance was the same however with both firmwares so that isn't it anyway. Un -RAIDed the drives and Lion is loading on 1 drive now so I can load Bootcamp and test in Windows. Thanks for the ideas! I'll update later with Windows performance.

praetorian909 said:

Hmm, I realize this may be tedious to try but what about testing out boot camp with Win7?

Then you could at least narrow down if it's software-related or hardware-related...

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Alright, here are the Windows results... Drive works fine with decent performance but not full 555mbps. No lag, freezing or crashes.



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Any other ideas???

buddster said:

Here's the deal. Certain Sandforce drives won't work with Mini's. I just sent back two OCZ Vertex 3's which were stuttering on my new server. Last year I sent back two Vertex 2's for a 2010 server. Replaced the 2010 drives with Corsair F240's and it was fine. Replaced the 2011 server drives with Kingston Hyper X's and it works beautifully. I both cases the drives use the same controller with slightly different firmware. You just have to try different manufacturers. In Anandtech's recent test the Hyper X's tested faster than both the Force GT and the OWC drives. The best news is that I can confirm it works perfectly in a RAID 0 on new Mini's. I'm getting read / writes at 860 / 910. That's your best bet.

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What capacity are you running? Just checked out Newegg for the drive you referenced and there is a review that specifically states incompatibility with Mac.

Excerpt: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139599&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10440897&PID=3891137&SID=HyperXReview
Cons: I am more than certain that the hard drive is just fine, there is nothing wrong with the one I have. But man is it FLAKY in OS X Lion. All I am getting are frequent hangs and spinning pinwheels that last up to a minute, and I can reproduce this whenever I launch an intensive I/O process (indexing, Time Machine, installing ANYTHING, rebooting, etc). It is ANNOYING. I have a feeling it is something that Apple just hasn't dealt with (or Kingston needs a new firmware update released ASAP) because tons of people are having issues with SATA III SSD drives and Macbook pros (hit or miss). Like I said, Windows 7 in Bootcamp SCREAMS with this SSD, so that means there's nothing wrong with the SSD and nothing wrong with my Mac... so it's either a firmware or software problem (I have done many reinstalls of Lion so it's not my issue). This in turn means that it is a fixable problem.

buddster said:

My Kingston's are 120gb. The Vertex 3's were as well. My Vertex 3's gave me the same issues your describing. Beachballs, hangups, delays etc... Last time, I replaced two mini's and reinstalled the OS twice before figuring out what was wrong. This time, replacing the OCZ's with the Kingston's worked instantly. Same performance too. I know the OCZ's don't work. Sounds like the Corsair is a no go. The Hyper X is worth a try, it ships with firmware version 3.20. All three are using the SF2281 controller.

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Thanks! Grabbed a pair of Kingston's and I'm up and running. Not as fast as I expected but well into the appropriate SSD range.



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