To say that there was a major improvement in performance between the HDD and the SSD would be the understatement of the year. Easily a 1000% improvement in performance and I/O bandwidth.

In fact I don't necessarily think you should view this as something that needs to be fixed unless you really see a performance deficit in everyday use. In other words, if you see and feel the benefits of the speed that a typical SSD provides over a HDD then perhaps you should just leave it be until you update your platform.

Any suggestions on a decent SATA 6 controller?

Size 223.57 GB (240,054,796,800 bytes)
58607128.125

Size 223.57 GB (240,054,796,800 bytes)
58607128.125

Yes, AHCI is enabled on the controller. No, I didn't format it weird.

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Checking SSD Partition Alignment

To check the alignment of your SSD's partition, it is quite simple.

In windows 7, run msinfo32 by typing it into the search box on your start menu and hitting enter.

click on: components => storage => disks

Look for your SSD and check the partition starting offset.

It needs to be divisible by 4096 (ie return a whole number when you divide by this) otherwise the alignment is not correct.

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I see you ordered from Amazon already, but Amazon is having a sale on SSDs today only, I just picked up a 240GB Sandisk for $160 with free shipping.

They have the 120s for $80. I might just pick one of those up for the wife's laptop.

You put it in your laptop? or desktop? If you put it in your desktop. I thought you said your desktop has SATA III ports.

And now for some benchmarks...

That SSD access time would be so wonderful.

This is my current raid 0 using 2 Western Digital Black 500GB drives.

[att=1]

WD Black 1TB SATAII running at SATAII speeds vs a Mushkin Deluxe 60GB SSD SATAIII running at SATAII speeds. PC is a Core i5-750 with 6GB of RAM running Windows 7 Pro (WEI 7.3).

My "next" build will be with the Mushkin deluxe version. They are now more than $100.00 cheaper than I paid for the non-deluxe!! :D

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Intel was rumored to be working on a SandForce based drive for several months now, but even the rumors couldn't encapsulate just how long Intel and SF has worked on this drive. According to Intel, the relationship began 1.5 years ago. Still lacking a 6Gbps controller of their own and wanting to remain competitive with the rest of the market, Intel approached SandForce about building a drive based on the (at the time) unreleased SF-2281 controller. Roughly six months later, initial testing and validation began on the drive. That's right, around the time that OCZ was previewing the first Vertex 3 Pro, Intel was just beginning its extensive validation process.

Codenamed Cherryville, Intel's SSD 520 would go through a full year of validation before Intel would sign off on the drive for release. In fact, it was some unresolved issues that cropped up during Intel's validation that pushed Cherryville back from the late 2011 release to today.

Intel's strenuous validation will eventually make SandForce's drives better for everyone, but for now the Cherryville firmware remains exclusive. Intel wouldn't go on record with details of its arrangement with SandForce, but from what I've managed to piece together the Intel Cherryville firmware is exclusive for a limited period of time. That exclusivity agreement likely expires sometime after the SF-2281 is replaced by a 3rd generation controller. There are some loopholes that allow SandForce to port bug fixes to general partner firmware but the specific terms aren't public information. The important takeaway is anything fixed in Intel's firmware isn't necessarily going to be fixed in other SF-2281 based drives in the near term. This is an important distinction because although Cherryville performs very similarly to other SF-2281 drives, it should be more reliable.

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