Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
Post a reply

Strange: Why is my HDD much faster than my SSD?

June 20th, 2020, 14:16

I build my own computers, but I am no expert at HDD & SDD tech. Years ago I used to have 2 10,000 rpm Raptors in RAID 0 to as my C: drive(now they are G:).. When I upgraded to SSDs I did the same thing. Made Them RAID 0 and made them my C: Drive. Now I am not sure if RAID 0 helps SDD or not? But I recently tested my drive speeds with ATTO Disk Benchmark and got the results in the attached pic.

:?:
1 - Is it worthwhile to put SSDs in RAID 0?

2 - Why is my F: HDD(8gbps) so much faster than the C: (0.7gbps) & D: (2.3gbps) SSD drives?

Here is my drive setup:
C: RAID 0: 2x - SSD SanDisk Extreme Pro 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal (SSD) - SDSSDXPS-240G-G25
D: Samsung 970 EVO SSD 1TB - M.2 NVMe Interface Internal with V-NAND Technology, Black/Red - MZ-V7E1T0BW
E: Western Digital HDD 1TB 7200RPM SATA 3.0 Gbps 3.5 inch RE3 - WD1002FBYS-02A6B0
F: Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal - ST4000DM000-1F2168
G: RAID 0: 2x - Western Digital HDD VelociRaptor 300GB SATA DCM:EBCV2B - WD3000HLFS-01G6U0

Any help is appreciated!!
Thanks
Attachments
My Disk Speeds.png

Re: Strange: Why is my HDD much faster than my SSD?

June 20th, 2020, 16:19

C: - Putting SSDs in a RAID 0 is a great way to make it slower than a single SSD by itself. Most likely you're just using a software RAID 0 which is bottlenecking the speed. It's also only on a SATA connection which can only move data so fast.

D: - This looks like pretty normal speeds for an NVME SSD (notice that the speed is in GB/s not MB/s like the HDDs, maybe you misread that)

E: - This looks like pretty normal speeds for a HDD (you'll notice it's actually much slower than D:)

F: - Ignore these numbers completely, the data was undoubtedly written then read back before the data even made it to the platters. At best, it only made it to the HDDs RAM cache and completely skewed the results. Actually, SATA itself won't even support such a speed, so something is just completely wrong with these results.

G: - This looks quite normal for a pair of 10K spindle drives in a RAID 0

I think you really just need to use a better benchmark tool. That one obviously isn't any good. I usually use this one: https://www.techspot.com/downloads/6014 ... hmark.html

Keep in mind too, that the real power of an SSD is less in it's ability to sequentially move a large file and more in it's ability to move thousands of small files in short order. Try using a benchmark tool that can do a random 4K read/write test. That'll give you a much better idea of the performance difference.

Re: Strange: Why is my HDD much faster than my SSD?

June 20th, 2020, 18:20

Awesome reply!! Thank you so much!!

I have Acronis True Image and backup my drives weekly. I guess I'll need to free up that C: drive so I can remove them from RAID and fit it on one drive. I'll try that AS SSD Benchmark and see how things look.

Thanks again!! :D
Post a reply