Very low (<2mb/s) transfer rate copying to new Crucial M4 SSD.

[GAmbrose]

So I installed a Crucial M4 128GB SSD drive yesterday and it worked straight away as these things should (after I told Windows 7 is was there and quick formatted it to NTFS).

Problem though is that I've copied my Steam folder across to it from a 7200RPM Samsung SATA drive (Steam was not running at the time) and when I woke this morning it was still going, and I'd been in bed for 8 hours

Looks like I've literally been getting 1.5mb/s transfer rates all night, I download stuff quicker than this!

I can't run a speed test right now as i'm now at work, but what program do I need to check the speeds and figure out why it's going so slow?

Gigabyte P55M-UD4 Motherboard with 5x P55 Express SATA 3Gb/s connectors.
Intel X-25 80GB SSD in SATA Port 0 (OS drive)
Crucial M4 128GB SSD in SATA Port 1
Samsung 1TB 7200 rpm drive in SATA Port 2

AHCI mode is enabled, as is TRIM - already checked this.

So what's the obvious things? Could a dodgy cable be causing it? Lack of juice perhaps?

The only thing I had to mess about with was that the Samsung drive was previously in SATA port 1 and I moved it to SATA port 2.

 

[Rifter]

Thats actually not to bad for a spindle drive. Remember if the source is a spindle drive copying to a SSD is not going to be any faster than copying to another spindle drive.

Also terracopy is alot better than the stock windows file transfer program.

EDIT. also games are usually lots of small files not large files, so transfer will be alot slower than if you were transferring media.

 

[Shmee]

That does seem a bit low for a modern Samsung 7200RPM drive. Have you had any other issues with the drive? Might want to run diagnostics on it to make sure there are no issues with it.

 

[GAmbrose]

That does seem a bit low for a modern Samsung 7200RPM drive. Have you had any other issues with the drive? Might want to run diagnostics on it to make sure there are no issues with it.

I'm more concerned that the new Crucial SSD isn't working properly. Obviously I won't get full speed as I am limited by my 3GB/s SATA but I've copied thousands of MP3's before to a USB 2.0 drive and it was nowhere near as slow as that.

 

[Rifter]

I'm more concerned that the new Crucial SSD isn't working properly. Obviously I won't get full speed as I am limited by my 3GB/s SATA but I've copied thousands of MP3's before to a USB 2.0 drive and it was nowhere near as slow as that.

how would you even know if the SSD is working properly when transferring from a spindle drive? that makes no sense.

 

[GAmbrose]

how would you even know if the SSD is working properly when transferring from a spindle drive? that makes no sense.

If i've transferred large amounts of files at a decent rate from the Samsung Spindle drive to an external USB 2.0 spindle drive before and it was much faster, and now I am transferring to a new SSD drive and it's taking forever then the obvious thing would be that the SSD drive is not operating correctly?

As I said, I could do with some help with regards to drive speed testing, particularly something that would show up low write speeds.

 

[Shmee]

Have you tried running benches or diagnostics on the SSD? I guess that would be the next step.

 

[GAmbrose]

No, what (free) programs would you recommend?

I suppose transferring one large file would also be a better test, but I had to leave it to go to work

 

[Shmee]

As SSD is decent, and I know there are others for free dl at techpowerup.com. Or, just google, and try them out

Another suggestion would be to try transferring a large amount of storage, but in multiple files and folders. This would create a similar copy scenario to the steam folder, but do it only with the SSD.

 

[Rifter]

use this and test it

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html

 

[Coup27]

As already mentioned, you cannot go any further with this until you benchmark your SSD. I personally prefer crystaldiskmark.

 

[GAmbrose]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I will let you know the results tonight (I'm sure you can't wait )

 

[nanaki333]

use 1 really large file and copy it. i noticed you're copying your steam drive, which has a lot of small files per game.

 

[jhansman]

Also keep in mind that your read speeds with the M4 will be much higher than write. This should be shown by your benchmarking.

 

[GAmbrose]

This is what happens when I ran AS SSD (as an admin)

Very slow for about 4 minutes and then an error message.

Here is my Intel SSD drive as a comparison:

I moved the SATA cable to another SATA port and then the computer wouldn't even get past the POST screen, then I moved it from the Intel P55 Express SATA port to the Gigabyte SATA2 chip port and that didn't even detect the drive! Something clearly is wrong.

I'll try another cable and see what happens but it looks like the drive might just be broken?

 

[adamantinepiggy]

I'd call Crucial. Seems the drive is borked. Also re-align your intel OS drive partitions if you can. The "31K-BAD" thing in red in ASSD indicates your SSD is not aligned. While not earth shattering, performance is better with aligned partitions. You can also jump to Intel RST drivers for another tiny performance gain over MSAHCI drivers regardless of what's plugged into the Intel SATA ports.

 

[Coup27]

Also re-align your intel OS drive partitions if you can. The "31K-BAD" thing in red in ASSD indicates your SSD is not aligned.

A quick way to determin SSD alignment is to do the following:

Open a command prompt (start menu > run > cmd)
type: DISKPART
type: LIST DISK (note disk # of your SSD, should be 0)
type: SELECT DISK 0 (if 0 is your SSD)
type: LIST PARTITION

then either screenshot or type out what it says. To close, type: EXIT [enter] then EXIT again [enter].

If your drive isn't offset correctly, its worth correcting this on your OS install.

Before calling Crucial I personally open disk management and delete the/all partitions on the Crucial. Then I would run secure erase on the drive. I would then remake the partition table in the Windows 7 disk management which will align it correctly then rebench. If the numbers are still poor then you can have more confidence in your call.

 

[adamantinepiggy]

Before calling Crucial I personally open disk management and delete the/all partitions on the Crucial. Then I would run secure erase on the drive. I would then remake the partition table in the Windows 7 disk management which will align it correctly then rebench. If the numbers are still poor then you can have more confidence in your call.

That's a lot of extra work that is unneeded as Crucial will exchange it regardless.

 

[groberts101]

LOL.. it's a hell of a lot less work than dealing with an RMA!

All rudamentary stuff and you should learn how to do it now if you plan on building your own systems and living with SSD. I could easily do all that in less than 5 minutes and you can't even pack that drive up and label it to be shipped in that time.

And FYI(performance losses aside).. a misaligned SSD will cause the drive to eat through its rated PE/c much more quickly as well. It should be fixed if you care at all about performance and lifespan.

Coup has you covered if you care to listen to others advice on the matter(which I assume is why you created this thread and asked in the first place). Good luck

 

[Coup27]

and Crucial won't just replace the drive regardless. If he sent it back and somehow it was just setup incorrectly he's going to get the same drive back plus be out of pocket.

After the secure erase in my procedure you may as well flash to FW0009 if you haven't already.