@100PIER - Yeah, thanks! I’m just glad that I had another machine I could get it recognized on to do the flash. Not sure how Plextor thinks someone can flash a drive to fix a bug that a machine can’t see a card/drive if the machine can’t see the card/drive.
I did have a quick question, while I’m seeing some great Read speeds, to be honest, the rest of the speeds look awful and slower than the Samsung EVO 840 I was using and even the Read speeds are 600 MB/s off from their claimed 2500 MB/s read speeds.
I’m thinking I might want need a better Win10 driver like one of the ones that @Fernando called out in this thread, but since Plextor doesn’t have a specific driver put out, not sure which to try. I do konw that card/drive uses a Marvell 88SS1093 controller, but I only 91/92x AHCI / RAID driver, or some other possible reason I’m seeing bad numbers on everything but Reads?
@MeatballB : Before you may try to replace the Win10 in-box NVMe driver by any other one (I doubt, that it will help), I recommend to run the Device Manager, to expand the "Disk Drives" section, to do a right-click onto the listed Plextor SSD, to choose "Properties" > "Policies" and to check both Write Caching options.
Thanks again Fernando. I did go in and check the Polices, the "Enable Write Caching…" was checked, but "Turn off Windows write-cache buffer…" was not. I put a check in that box, rebooted and then re-ran a benchmark.
Again, not too shabby, but according to Plextor’s specs I should be seeing up to 2500 MB/s Read, up to 1400 MB/s Write, Up to 280K Random Read IOPS and Up to 240K Random Write. The disabling of the Write-Cache buffer definitely improved the Write speeds, but as I’m only seeing 1700 MB/s Read, 1000 MB/Write, 154K Random Read IOPS and 180K Random Write IOPS, I’m still a bit off. I plan to reach out to Plextor’s support when they open in a few hours, but if anyone has any other ideas I’m open to suggestions or should I just be happy with the great numbers those are?
The performance of your PCIe connected NVMe is much better than any SATA connected SSD. Here are some tips how to get better benchmark results: 1. Run the Task Manager, hit the tab "Startup" and disable the listed programs, which are running in the background. 2. Set the "Power Options" to "High Performance". 3. Run the Windows Explorer, right click onto drive C, choose "Properties" > "Tools" and run the "Optimizer". 4. Reboot. After having done that, re-run Anvil’s Storage Utilities.
@davidm71 - Not sure what blue LED/Link light you’re talking about? The model I have just has a simple white LED that comes on and lights up the Plextor logo on the card face, but that’s just always on. Then there’s some Red LED’s along the top edge that are just activity related and flash when the drive is in use. No other LED’s or link lights that I can see.
@Fernando - Did all those, rebooted and reran the benchmark.
Definitely some improvement in Read/Write speeds, but IOPS are still about the same. Not a big deal, at this point I’m pretty happy with the speeds. Thanks again for all the help.
Should I have Intel RST installed (I do have v14.6.0.1029 installed right now)? Have you found that hurts or helps?
@MeatballB Your ANVIL score is quite acceptable even specifications says 2500/1400 and 280/240 for R/W Sequential and Random respective tests. Is it possible for you to get a CrystalDiskInfo screenshot such as this one with the yellowed infos to compare these two NVMe SSD 1TB PCIe V3.0 X4 solution ?
@100PIER - Looks like everything matches on those highlighted areas other than ‘Unsafe Shutdowns’ as I’ve got a less since the drive is relatively new.
@MeatballB Thanks for the screenshot. I observe that even with a new SSD the specific SMART parameter ‘0D’ “Unsafe Shutdowns” does progress and even when using MS native NVMe driver like you do. This does seem true for any NVMe SSD manufacturers (Samsung, Plextor, etc…) on the planet. So, do we have to incriminate W10 driver or any other Bios software/firmware components ? For me it is a myster I observed for more than one or two years now.
The blue logo I refer to is the preboot logo posting on the screen right before the bios starts up. Its kind of like those legacy video cards displaying their brand before boot. At least my Plextor card behaves that way. You might not see it either because it flies by too fast at post or not displayed on Uefi. Anyhow I read that Plextor cards down grade their link speed on unsupported hardware. Could be affecting your performance. Too bad theres no way to check if your at pcie 1.1 or 2.0 or 3.0 mode.
@davidm71 - Ah…yeah, I have seen that a few times, but it goes really fast and I can’t see anything. Though I do think I’m getting PCIe 3.0 mode, at least according to CrystalDiskInfo. And according to the ASRock Motherboard specs all 3 x16 slots are PCIe 3.0 compatible, only the 4 x1 slots are PCIe 2.0.
@davidm71 It is very easy to check all the PCIe details (max/current values) for your SSD NVMe with HWINFO64 tool such as done for this screenshot (see yelowed informations).
@gucc : Welcome at Win-RAID Forum! Owners of an ASUS mainboard with an UEFI BIOS have to use the USB FlashBack feature, when they want to flash a modded BIOS. Regards Dieter (alias Fernando)
@Fernando Thanks for the tip. I did that. Now should I change any bios option? Because now i see the ssd in the windows installation, but it does not allow to install windows there.
