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Recently I've noticed that my SSD, which is a Crucial model CT128V4SSD2, is performing really really poorly. I took a benchmark test and here's the result:
In addition, I noticed from the Task Manager dialog in Windows 8 that the response time of the drive is very long.
Is my SSD having serious problems? Is there a way to identify what's causing the slowness?
superkinhluan
Posted 2012-11-03T20:03:18.557
Reputation: 279
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Look at the picture. Is tells you that you run the SSD in IDE mode (PCIIDE) instead of AHCI (MSHACI/AMD_sata). So go into the BIOS and change the mode to AHCI.
Attention, enable the AHCI drivers first or you'll get the 0x7B STOP code "INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE".
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976
The key is renamed in Windows 8 to StorAHCI instead of Msahci, the rest is the same.
magicandre1981
Posted 2012-11-03T20:03:18.557
Reputation: 86 560
Thanks for the response. Does it mean for SSD, I have to use AHCI mode? I didn't know this. – superkinhluan – 2012-11-24T16:01:54.753
always run all HDDs in AHCI mode. This improves performance a lot. – magicandre1981 – 2012-11-24T18:16:13.723
I've just checked my BIOS, and it has only the RAID mode. There's no AHCI mode. will RAID mode help? – superkinhluan – 2012-11-24T18:18:30.417
which motherboard do you use? – magicandre1981 – 2012-11-24T18:19:28.263
It's the default motherboard that comes with Dell Studio 540: IPIEL-RN2 Motherboard – superkinhluan – 2012-11-24T19:14:50.560
According to this site: http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/ICH10-chipset-but-no-AHCI-in-BIOS-Any-work-arounds-to-run-C300/m-p/70267#M21678
using RAID does the same like AHCI. Give it a try.
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According to the specs for your drive:
Newegg Product Description
Performance
Max Sequential Read
Up to 230 MB/s
Max Sequential Write
Up to 175 MB/s
4KB Random Read
Up to 10,000 IOPS
4KB Random Write
Up to 4,000 IOPS
MTBF
1,200,000 hours
That suggests that your read is about there, the write is a bit slow (but you aren't doing sequential in some of those tests - so not alarming).
The seek time is pretty questionable though. Might be a sign that it was formatted poorly, oddly enough. SSD's are a bit more particular about that (the best tool I have read of/used is Parted).
nerdwaller
Posted 2012-11-03T20:03:18.557
Reputation: 13 366
Sequential writes are pretty slow, 76 MB/s vs. 175 MB/s in the specs. 4K reads and writes are also rather slow. Specs give 39 MB/s for reads and 15.6 MB/s for writes, but OP's drive gets 16 MB/s and 3.8 MB/s respectively. – Indrek – 2012-11-03T20:17:34.753
Are you suggesting I'm using Parted to reformat my drive? – superkinhluan – 2012-11-03T20:17:44.413
@Indrek, what is OP's drive? – superkinhluan – 2012-11-03T20:19:03.103
Original Poster's (SSD)drive. – page4096 – 2012-11-03T20:20:51.557
@superkinhluan "OP" means "original poster", so in this case, you. I'm referring to the benchmark results you posted in your question. – Indrek – 2012-11-03T20:21:15.937
@page4096 How do I check if my partition is not properly aligned? The drive has only one partition. – superkinhluan – 2012-11-03T20:23:41.760
Ah, my bad, read the wrong results from the screenshots. 4K reads are still a bit slow - specs give 39 MB/s but OP's drive gets only 10.7 MB/s. Interestingly, 4K writes are faster than specced - 22.6 vs. ~15.6 MB/s. – Indrek – 2012-11-03T20:23:51.493
The green "1024 K - OK" text tells you that it's aligned, I edited my previous comment. – page4096 – 2012-11-03T20:25:51.757
What is happening right now is that every operation, e.g. opening web page, opening app, playing music, etc. is very slow. – superkinhluan – 2012-11-03T20:26:44.753
I am curious if it is a Windows8 issue - because the benchie looks pretty reasonable for that specific drive (which isn't rated terribly well). However, the Win8 Task manager makes me wonder if the OS is handing it poorly. Did you just upgrade? Also, did you do any tweaks to make W8 handle the drive better? – nerdwaller – 2012-11-03T20:40:29.433
1the benchmark images don't load for me, could you use the "upload" picture button to host them properly? – Ben Brocka – 2012-11-03T20:06:00.063
Sorry, didn't know there's an upload picture button. Thanks for editing the question. – superkinhluan – 2012-11-03T20:09:13.497
No I didn't notice any slowness before. The only thing I change recently is installing a new graphics card. – superkinhluan – 2012-11-03T20:11:59.003
How full is the drive? Is TRIM enabled? See here for info on how to check that.
– Indrek – 2012-11-03T20:20:26.043The drive still has 81 GB free out of 120GB. TRIM is enabled. – superkinhluan – 2012-11-03T20:24:48.187