New SSD, very slow write speeds, help?

[crab0]

Hello Anandtech forum users!

I got in my Corsair Force LS 120GB SSD in today and after installing it, cloning my HDD with Paragon OS Migrate and dealing with some snagging issues with having two Windows 7 boot options (after formatting old drive), everything seemed to be okay. Except... the boot and launching applications was fast but man the write speeds felt slow and yup they are. I have attached the CrystalDiskMark report (I know its not how they got the advertised speeds and I'm okay with the read value).

For record my 7200rpm HDD is 190MB/s Read and Write, so it's been both an upgrade and a downgrade.

TRIM and ACHI are enabled, and I tried a few tweaks like making sure defrag is off, setting power option to turn of drives to "Never", and disabling indexing on the drive and nothing has worked. Searching online, the problem seems common but the solutions for SSD users with bad performance is varied or non-existant so I've come here with my own personal case.

 

[Elixer]

Are your partitions aligned ?

Run AS SSD (no need to run the benchmarks), and see if it says "OK" for alignment.

 

[crab0]

Yup, AS SSD and the divide by 4096 method say my SSD's alignment is fine.

 

[Charlie98]

How full is your SSD?

Is it plugged into a SATA3 port? (EDIT: I guess it would be with those read rates.)

FWIW, when I was testing my new MX100 120GB drive I thought something was wrong, too, because the write speeds were so slow. It's just that is was a 120GB SSD... (as opposed to a 240+ GB, which has greater bandwidth.)

 

[jrichrds]

I get 125MB/s for sequential write and 105MB/s for Random write 512K. These do seem quite a bit slower than advertised spec.

 

[denis280]

are you on ahci or ide

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

The C drive is 84% full, can you move none Windowed items off of it?

 

[corkyg]

The C drive is 84% full, can you move none Windowed items off of it?

That is the root of the slowness - lack of drive space freeboard.

Yhe 84% full is indicated in the top margin of OP's CDM image. He also said AHCI was enabled.

 

[Charlie98]

The C drive is 84% full, can you move none Windowed items off of it?

I'm going to say that's the root of the cause (like Corky mentioned.) You have two things working against you... the full SSD and the 128GB size. I don't like to go over 70%, certainly not 75% Even my 256GB Samsung 840Pro takes a nosedive in write speed over 75% (I know, I tested it.)

If you have any generic files, not Windows OS program files, you can just drag and drop on another drive. You can move things like game files also, but there is a process to do so, so the game client doesn't lose track of where they are.

In hindsight, given the amount of data you have, you should have gotten a ~250GB SSD, to not only allow for what you have currently, but for expansion in the future (think Windows updates! ) Hindsight is always 20/20...

 

[crab0]

The drive comes over provisioned 9GB out of the box, so its really 77.5% full (94/120). I was under impression the rule was 10% free not 25%, but I got it down to 74% without including the over-provisioning (82/111). The new result was 470MB/s Read 109MB/s Write. Better but still very low.

EDIT: Turns out origin didn't uninstall two games proper so got it down to 42% (47/111) full and got 453MB/s Read 77MB/s Write

 

[VirtualLarry]

Realistically, what do you expect? You bought a cheap and crappy SSD with a budget Phison controller, and a tiny 120GB size to boot.

Should have purchased a 480/500/512GB SSD with a real controller if you wanted better write speeds.

Edit: Looks like you should be getting half of the write speeds shown in this review.

http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/corsair-force-series-ls-240gb-ssd-review/4/

Edit: Unless... Corsair has followed Kingston and PNY's lead, and substituted async NAND in their newest batch of drives. That could easily explain your low write speeds.

 

[crab0]

Realistically, what do you expect? You bought a cheap and crappy SSD with a budget Phison controller, and a tiny 120GB size to boot.

Should have purchased a 480/500/512GB SSD with a real controller if you wanted better write speeds.

Because even 3/5 star user reviews had the write speeds at 300 MB/s not 100, and "pro" reviews in general were actually decent. I don't use much space as I'm only using ~50GB now I found the culprit for why it was full (Origin not uninstalling properly). A 512GB SSD by Intel is almost the cost of the whole computer it's going into

 

[jrichrds]

Realistically, what do you expect? You bought a cheap and crappy SSD with a budget Phison controller, and a tiny 120GB size to boot.

Should have purchased a 480/500/512GB SSD with a real controller if you wanted better write speeds.

Edit: Looks like you should be getting half of the write speeds shown in this review.

http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/corsair-force-series-ls-240gb-ssd-review/4/

Edit: Unless... Corsair has followed Kingston and PNY's lead, and substituted async NAND in their newest batch of drives. That could easily explain your low write speeds.

That is a 'regardless of cost' approach. This Corsair was on sale for $25AR, making it a heckuva deal. Corsair advertises far faster speeds, and has been mentioned, this SSD has reviewed fairly well.

I also get slow write speeds with this drive at 40% full and latest Intel AHCI v13.x RST driver. The PNY Optima, another budget offering, performs much better for me. I'm also thinking Corsair played switcharoo with NAND, although I'm pretty it was Kingston that is known for the NAND switch. PNY had some hub-bub over controller switch when it turned out they simply used their XLR8 prouduct to fill in the supply gaps in their Optima line...so you were actually getting an upgrade in product line if you didn't mind the Sandforce controller. I haven't seen anybody report getting a Sandforce-based Optima for quite a while now.

 

[hojnikb]

That is a 'regardless of cost' approach. This Corsair was on sale for $25AR, making it a heckuva deal. Corsair advertises far faster speeds, and has been mentioned, this SSD has reviewed fairly well.

I also get slow write speeds with this drive at 40% full and latest Intel AHCI v13.x RST driver. The PNY Optima, another budget offering, performs much better for me. I'm also thinking Corsair played switcharoo with NAND, although I'm pretty it was Kingston that is known for the NAND switch. PNY had some hub-bub over controller switch when it turned out they simply used their XLR8 prouduct to fill in the supply gaps in their Optima line...so you were actually getting an upgrade in product line if you didn't mind the Sandforce controller. I haven't seen anybody report getting a Sandforce-based Optima for quite a while now.

as with sandforce, phison is using deduplication, so empty data gets a hefty boost in writes.
Test with atto and see it for yourself.

 

[Charlie98]

The drive comes over provisioned 9GB out of the box, so its really 77.5% full (94/120). I was under impression the rule was 10% free not 25%, but I got it down to 74% without including the over-provisioning (82/111). The new result was 470MB/s Read 109MB/s Write. Better but still very low.

EDIT: Turns out origin didn't uninstall two games proper so got it down to 42% (47/111) full and got 453MB/s Read 77MB/s Write

Personally, I would have clean-installed your OS. A slow, bloated OS transferred to an SSD is still... a slow, bloated OS. I know it's a pain...

Aside from what Larry said, you are still getting better read speed than your old HDD... once you reestablish your OS and have your files figured out you most likely won't be writing a bunch anyway... and reads are where SSDs shine in everyday use. People read too much into benchmarks anyway... not that they are not useful tools, mind you, but they are not the Omega.

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

Personally, I would have clean-installed your OS. A slow, bloated OS transferred to an SSD is still... a slow, bloated OS. I know it's a pain...

Aside from what Larry said, you are still getting better read speed than your old HDD... once you reestablish your OS and have your files figured out you most likely won't be writing a bunch anyway... and reads are where SSDs shine in everyday use. People read too much into benchmarks anyway... not that they are not useful tools, mind you, but they are not the Omega.

+1
The test is made for an HD not an SSD, you can save what you have on the SSD some where else then clean the SSD. install a new updated OS with all drivers, then in the saved file remove the old OS and old drivers(transfer) any remaining files you need. I'd only use it for the OS putting anything else on the HD like game files, ETC.
A lot of the disk tests r old and made for HDD'S not SSD'S, here's my Raid 0 (2 Intel sata3 Cherryville 60BG) mainly OS and drivers less then 50% full been running about a year.

 

[crab0]

Personally, I would have clean-installed your OS. A slow, bloated OS transferred to an SSD is still... a slow, bloated OS. I know it's a pain...

Aside from what Larry said, you are still getting better read speed than your old HDD... once you reestablish your OS and have your files figured out you most likely won't be writing a bunch anyway... and reads are where SSDs shine in everyday use. People read too much into benchmarks anyway... not that they are not useful tools, mind you, but they are not the Omega.

OS install was ~3 weeks when I cloned it, I tried the fresh install but the driver situation got fubar so I switched to cloning; I didn't bench so can't so for sure but the fresh install subjectively felt like it also had slow writes.

Oh yes I understand, its just I know this drive should be doing better. I know the cheap ass Kingston SSD I see everywhere gets realworld 150 write and would have gotten that instead if reviews of this didn't point to ~250-350 write (my budget was lower then I thought and idea of using SSD in laptop but not on desktop was ridiculous, didn't order with desktop just cause was waiting for BF sales).

 

[Charlie98]

OS install was ~3 weeks when I cloned it, I tried the fresh install but the driver situation got fubar so I switched to cloning; I didn't bench so can't so for sure but the fresh install subjectively felt like it also had slow writes.

Oh yes I understand, its just I know this drive should be doing better. I know the cheap ass Kingston SSD I see everywhere gets realworld 150 write and would have gotten that instead if reviews of this didn't point to ~250-350 write (my budget was lower then I thought and idea of using SSD in laptop but not on desktop was ridiculous, didn't order with desktop just cause was waiting for BF sales).

Nope... I understand your disappointment. I didn't know your OS install was only 3 weeks old... maybe try it again. I don't know why your drivers would have borked it up, however, that may be a different problem. I'm sort of dealing with the same thing... I just switched to an Asus board (from Gigabyte) and I hate it... the drivers and utilities are all... well, just odd.

FWIW... your SSD is an improvement, no matter how slight. It will provide real user improvement even if it's just marginally. Maybe with an OS reload things may improve, or there is some setting you are missing somewhere...

 

[fire400]

extract the drive, then use WD lifeguard tools on another system.
strip the drive to 1's and 0's, fully.
then perform full extended test.

fresh install the OS w/trim support.
install ACHI controller first. restart PC.
install chipset. restart PC.
install graphics improvement.

then benchmark one more time with 2 or 3 benchmarkers with absolutely no other drives attached.

load dummy data onto SSD, then erase dummy data. let system sit idle overnight.

bench one more time the next day.

bios, various other product firmware(s) and combination of software/hardware variables play a role. other way for enthusiasts to know for sure that they're getting the best performance is to try it on 2 or 3 other platforms before coming to ultimate conclusions.

 

[Data-Medics]

Something about that benchmark doesn't seem right to me. Could be a hardware issue causing the fault. SATA does use a separate read channel from the write channel. Try changing your SATA cable, port, or even try it on another computer entirely. It could be something stupid. If it can read that fast the write speed should only be a bit slower.

 

[Fernando 1]

@ crab0:

You can boost your write scores by enabling the "Write Caching Settings".
Run the Device Manager, open the "Disk Drives" section, right click onto your listed SSD and choose "Properties" > "Policies".
This is how it should look:

Then check both options, reboot and redo your benchmark test.