Windows 7 raid 0 stutter problem

[gordonie]

Hey windows forums! So I am hear because I thought there would be no better place to take this problem than windows itself. so here we go.

System specs:

PSU: corsair 1200 gold
MOBO: asus 68 deluxe gen 3
CPU: intel g530 duo, will upgrade to ivy bridge
GPU: nvidia 9600 gt, upgrading to amd 7970 next month
RAM: gskill 1600mhz 16g
HD: 2x120g corsair force gt ssd in raid 0, windows drive.
HD2: 2tb wd black
CASE: HAFX
OS: windows 7 ultimate 64bit

ok, so before we start yes my cpu and gpu and grossly outdated, but I have plans to upgrade to ivy bridge and amd's southern islands, (7900 seires) as soon as they come out.

Currently I am attempting to run windows 7 ultimate on a pair of corsair force gt 120g ssds in raid 0 using the hardware controller built into the motherboard. And it runs, but with huge stuttering.

I have installed windows, as well as various drivers, office 2010, and a few other things. Everything is well except the whole system, like I said, is just glitchy and it stutters all the time. Certain things dont work like gagets and such, any audio I play stutters every half secondn which makes listening to anything unbareble. Really navigating the whole system a pain and I dont know whats going on.

I know its not a virus, I have pc tools and kasperkies and both their scans pull up nothing. Infact I reinstalled windows alltogether and I am still getting the same problem so unless I have a virus that can survive a formatting, then its not a virus.

I can take a video with my phone to show you whats going on if you would like, pretty much the whole system is stutters every half second. I have noticed it gets worse with system use.

I tried a few registry fixers and they found a bunch of stuff, one found 100 errors the other 1,000 errors, neither seemed to work. I hear they are all snake oil anyway so.

Anyway, really confused, tried everything, defragged all my hard drives, system scans, registry cleaners, restores, reinstalled drivers and windows itself. really bummed out at this point as I have been working on this new rig for the past week and cant seem to figure this out.


and I doubt this matter but the first time I installed windows 7 it ran good, then I tried ntune to oc my laggy gpu to maybe give me a little boost in bf3, I think things started going downhill from that install, it gave me bsod when I tried to run it, only to find out ntune is outdated and bad altogether haha and then I couldnt uninstall it! but even after the reinstall of windows 7 the problems persists so I dont think it is related.

I am truly starting to think my problem is hardware related. But which component should I persue a fix for? How do I check each ones functionality?

would love some help,

thanks!

 

[DeaconFrost]

Aside from RAID drivers or watching what is running during the stutter, you may have to test hardware. Since your SSDs are of a good enough size to run individually, try breaking the array and installing Windows 7 on just one drive. You won't lose anything in performance, but at least you can eliminate an issue with RAID.

If that solves the issue, test the second drive, and then sell it, to use that money towards your upgrade.

 

[gordonie]

I thought that raid 0 will double sequential read and writes, in a benchmark I was getting over 1gb per second read and write.

But I guess at this point that doesnt matter, the system isnt even running so I will try that. ugh.

What is the best way to formatt hd?

 

[DeaconFrost]

When comparing RAID setups, you need to be careful of bloating synthetic benchmarks. The only reason people were RAIDing SSDs was to make up for small drive size. In some areas, performs dips in an array, so that's why RAID0, or striping, died out about 4-5 years ago, once it turned out to be pretty much all hype. Not to mention the fact if one drive has an issue, data on both is toast.

As for formatting the drive, you can use DISKPART when you do the clean install, using the steps here:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/91339-ssd-hdd-optimize-windows-reinstallation.html

 

[gordonie]

welp, I broke the raid and installed windows onto just one of the ssds, and I am still getting stuttering when I navigate the system :/

odly though when I play bf3 I dont get as much stutter?

Someone told me I might ahve partitioned my boot drive wrong, c drive. Under disk management I dont see that it has a system reserved partition, typically about 100-200mb big and used for cache. How do I go about creating one to see of that resolves anything?

I was also told that my power plan might be putting my hd to sleep after a certain time, however turning that to "never sleep" hasnt done much.

One last one, an updated sandforce controller??? I have not installed anythign for my ssd's, perhaps they just need an update.

Or I just have a rotten display adapter, which was borrowed from a friend.

Sorry right now I am exploring every option so please be patient :/

any advice?

thanks!

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Check the firmware for the ssd drives. Latest is 1.3.3.

Force Series 3 and Force GT Firmware Update Ver 1.3.3 - The Corsair Support Forums

Anything before that is often trouble. Only way I know to get the partition back is to do a fresh install. Delete the drive then start again. That should create it. That could be you whole problem. I'm running raid0 & don't have a problem.

 

[gordonie]

" I'm running raid0 & don't have a problem. " I hate you lol! what type or raid 0 are you using?

I think ill resort to the fresh install as a last resort, let me see what this firmware update does for me.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Make sure you bios is up to date too.

As for the type of raid0 I just went with the default settings.

While you're at the fresh install see if secure erasing this way helps.

http://forum.corsair.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=7545&d=1288202362

Quote from thread:
"NOTE: If you get a message saying that your drive is locked and cannot be secure erased, with Parted Magic still running, remove the power and data cable from the drive for 1 minute. Reattach the cables and then try again."

 

[DeaconFrost]

I hate you lol!

I'm not sure why you'd be so disappointed that you can't run RAID0 with SSDs. There's no point to it, in terms of actual, real world performance. Striped arrays are all about hype. If you don't want to believe my word for it, then read up on some performance related websites.

The only reason it was used early on with SSDs was for cost. In the beginning, two 30 GB SSDs cost less than a single 60 GB. Therefore, people were getting two and striping them. Once that price advantage dissolved, so did the point of RAIDing the drives. I don't remember the link or the poster who gave it, but in some cases, striped arrays actual hurt everyday Windows performance.

 

[gordonie]

I mean what are you using to control the raid array, a seperate pci card or the built in raid controller on your mobo, or windows itself.

Hmm, I see your point. And how could it actualy harm performence? I would love to do some more research on it, though all the research I have done points towards raid0 being a good thing, could show me the other research?

Anyway, back on topic.

I did not flash my ssds, I just didnt feel comfortable doing that but what I did do was reinstall windows, for the fourth time. :/ but this time I am leaving windows alone, no drivers no updates no nothing, JUST windows by itself haha I am not even connected to the internet, im using my laptop right now incase your wondering. And I have been playing with the system for a day now and there has been no sign of the stutter, yay!

I think that rules out any hardware defect, which is good. I would hate to have to start RMA's on all these parts. Only other thing I can think of that could be causing it is a driver conflict, one of the discs that came with the various parts I bought has to be messing me up.

I have one for my mobo, blue ray burner, wireless card, graphics card, headset, keyboard, mouse, and then one for my antivirus called kasperkies. All which I have been installing soon as I booted into windows the previous four times I installed windows.

So since I am running smoothly now, I figure Ill take up a systematic approach to this and install one driver at a time. Then play with it for awhile and check for the stutter to see if I can find the rouge driver, then check for an updated version of that driver.

 

[DeaconFrost]

Hmm, I see your point. And how could it actualy harm performence? I would love to do some more research on it, though all the research I have done points towards raid0 being a good thing, could show me the other research?

The only time striped arrays have ever shown a benefit was as a scratch disc for Photoshop or video editing software. You need very large files to make any difference. In the way striped arrays work, seek times can often increase, and so can rnadom small file reads and writes....the very action that normal Windows usage is made up of. Too often, people run a synthetic benchmark that shows scores not related to real world usage, and it makes them feel that a striped array is providing some benefit. It isn't and only serves to double the risk of data loss on the drives.

There are very good reasons why striped arrays died out in a hype fire 5 years ago. So, that leaves two camps of people...those who still believe in synthetic benchmarks, or those who understand why they are all hype and don't improve actual Windows performance. Now, when discussing SSDs, they are fine when used individually. That's why, as suggested, if you read up on true performance enthusiast sites, you'll find people running one single SSD, and putting that money into a better video card or extra memory...things that will show a real benefit in performance.

The reason you find sites and guides proclaiming it's greatness, is because too many people still fall into the trap of synthetic benchmarks. It plagues the drive comparison community, as well as the video card comparison community.

 

[gordonie]

hmm, I can see how it wouldnt help random read/writes, and possible hurt them if one maybe took a little longer to find it. I see your point, though no point in breaking the array now that I am running good I guess :/

UPDATE!

Found out what it was, i got the sucker! Turns out its one of windows updates. So the whole first half of today I have been running windows by itself with nothing on it, not even connected to the internet. The second half of today I installed kasmerkies anti-virus, everything cake. I have been running the system smoothly playing audio all great, just now I connected to the internet, played around a bit and then decided to go ahead and install the nearly 100 IMPORTANT updates windows was recommending, close to a gig. As soon as I restarted the computer the stutter came with a vengence, wow!

So now I guess its up to me to uninstall EVERY update, and install one at a time to weed out the bad guy. Never had this happen on my laptops, all I can say is wow. Could one of the updates be fighting with something on my mothebroard like the bios of the bus chips or something? I think I am going to install SP1, play for a littl bit, then try a motherboard update from the asus website.

wow!

 

[DeaconFrost]

I use an SP1 incorporated disc, so I have SP1 installed right away. There are download links on the forums, but I don't know if they are allowed to be posted. If you search for MyDigitalLife, you'll find the links, and it is a Microsoft-run website.

Once the install is done, I load my latest drivers, then run Windows Update and get all updates before I install any more apps. If you see something in Windows Updates for drivers, you can skip it, and then come back to it later to decide to install it or not.

I'm not sure what you mean by a motherboard update, but if it is the BIOS, I would read about it to see if it addresses any RAID issues, or any other problems you are having.

 

[gordonie]

So you suggest before I do anything get the sp1 update? Problem is that update doesnt show up till I do a few other updates. Should I just uninstal every update so far, because I have been going one at a time to find the bad update infact I am through all the important security updates with no problem, and get the sp1 download from the microsoft website?

This just seems silly that the updates would be messing me up.

Well I mentioned the bios and really the motherboard altogether because I thought there might just be a conflict there bewteen it and one of the updates.

problem though there doesnt seem to be a new bios out for my mobo, the deulxe one.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z68_DELUXEGEN3/#download

but odly there are like 5 for the mobo right below mine?

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z68V/#download

 

[DeaconFrost]

I suggested downloading the .iso with SP1 incorporated, so if or when you do a clean install, you are already at SP1. That saves a lot of time.

As for the links you gave, if there's no new BIOS version for your board, then you can't really do anything but wait to see if one is released.