In 24 hours of reformat + software installation (141gb free/238) my SSD is 30-60% slower?

triplefam

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Apr 22, 2012
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I don't know why my drive's running this slow..

Motherboard: ASUS Z87-Pro
SSD: ADATA SP900 SATA3 (with April 2013 5.0.7a firmware -- supposedly fixing and essentially enabling TRIM amongst other small bugs)
SATA PORT: First, via Intel 6.0gbps port as opposed to third party 6.0gbps ASMedia port
SATA MODE: AHCI, confirmed via BIOS, AS SSD benchmark, & DisableDeleteNotify=0 in CMD
SATA DRIVER: Intel(R) 8 Series/C220 Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller (12.0.0.1082 1/22/2013)
OS: Windows 7 x64 SP1 + all relevant updates


Last night I posted here regarding the proper drivers to be using. As it turned out, my older BIOS was preventing me from achieving ideal speeds. I reformatted with the new BIOS and after chipset drivers + SATA drivers I finally got the speed I was looking for. However... after software installation, my drive is running 30-60% slower depending on file size.

What can I do? What is wrong? Is this just a normal caveat of SSD technology or is something just not working right here? If so, how can I fix it?

1.) Fresh reformat via Parted Magic's Secure Erase.
2.) Fresh copy of Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64.
3.) Fresh installation of most recent chipset drivers provided by ASUS on its website for my particular board.
4.) Fresh installation of most recent SATA drivers provided by ASUS on its website for my particular board.
EDIT worth mentioning that I forgot: Confirmed AHCI via BIOS & in Windows via AS SSD showing IaStorA as the SATA driver & CMD prompt DisableDeleteNotify=0
5.) Installed all Windows 7 updates
6.) Installed avast! Antivirus Free (as with all software, I declined installing any spyware programs)
7.) Installed Tune-Up Utilities and 100% optimized my computer
8.) Installed the following pieces of software:

uTorrent
3DMark
AMD Catalyst Install Manager
avast! Free Antivirus
Battlefield 3
Battlelog Web Plugins
Core Temp 1.0 RC5
CPUID CPU-Z 1.65.0
DAEMON Tools Lite
ESN Sonar
Futuremark SystemInfo
Google Chrome
HD Tune Pro 5.00
Intel(R) Network Connections 18.1.59.0
Intel HD Graphics Driver
Intel SDK for OpenCL - CPU Only Runtime Package
Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller Driver
LatencyMon 5.00 (which doesn't show any unusual ISR or DPC activity)
Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5
*All Microsoft Visual C++ packs*
MSI Afterburner 3.0.0 Beta 10
Origin
Presonus Universal Control 1.7
PunkBuster Services
RivaTuner Statistics Server 5.1.2
The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim
TuneUp Utilities 2013

8.) Messed around with Battlefield 3 and Skyrim just to watch the fast load times, and yes they're fast, but...
9.) Less than 24 hours after setting up...

HD Tune Pro

Before:
512 bytes | 21298 IOPS
4 kb | 19011 IOPS
64 kb | 5904 IOPS
1 mb | 505 IOPS
Random | 965 IOPS

After:

512 bytes | 8958 IOPS (58% decrease)
4 kb | 8403 IOPS (56% decrease)
64 kb | 3704 IOPS (37% decrease)
1 mb | 355 IOPS(29% decrease)
Random | 671 IOPS(30% decrease)

What could I have possibly done to make it run so slow in a matter of 24 hours?! People say they run slower when they're filled up however I'm at 141GB free out of 238GB total. This is frustrating.. still faster than a HDD however I know I should be getting more out of it!

What could I do?
 
Solution
I forgot to mention that you might need to adjust your Windows Power Plan settings. You have to change to the option that says "Put the computer to sleep" to "Never".
That way power is being supplied continuously to your SSD while your system is idling.

How long TRIM and idle Garbage Collection take to recover drive performance will vary with each drive and each system.

I have 2 60GB SSDs in RAID-0, so I don't have TRIM, so I idle my system once a week, or once every other week to allow idle Garbage Collection maintain performance.

Reboot your system and leave it at the Windows Login screen before you go to sleep or before you leave to go to work, and see if TRIM and idle Garbage Collection will recover drive performance.

Also FYI, your drive's advertised Read/Write performance is with ATTO & AS-SSD. http://www.adata-group.com/index.php?action=product_specification&cid=3&piid=171&lan=us

So you might want to start using those two benchmark programs instead of HD-Tune to verify if your drive is really having any issues.
 

triplefam

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Apr 22, 2012
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10,530


Took your advice and let it idle at the Login screen for 6 hours. When I came back, the speeds were still pretty miserable :(

Getting the following results from ATTO:
Size / Write / Read

0.5 / 8915 / 1224
1.0 / 17786 / 2183
2.0 / 44322 / 4899
4.0 / 195657 / 10163
8.0 / 277980 / 24651
16.0 / 308099 / 60235
32.0 / 413863 / 230068
64.0 / 492676 / 43021
128.0 / 491471 / 489080
256.0 / 531313 / 520971
512.0 and on is all above 500MBps and I'm very happy with that. Its just smaller file sizes are doing pretty terrible..

Thank you for the advice, idling in Windows Login is a practice I'm gonna make a habit out of. How long does it take normally for TRIM to get a drive back to its previous potential? It was doing MUCH better after a secure erase, before I loaded it up with so much stuff.

For example, on a fresh secure erase and installation of Windows + chipset + ahci driver:

0.5 / 12928 (faster) / 18048 (was whopping 14x faster than now)
1.0 / 23122 (faster) / 27136 (was whopping 12x faster than now)
2.0 / 4673 (marginally faster) / 4899.

FYI the ATTO bench is averaged, there seem to be some anomalies of very small speeds (like for 64.0) but running it a few times (not too many times) it averages to about that much.
 
I forgot to mention that you might need to adjust your Windows Power Plan settings. You have to change to the option that says "Put the computer to sleep" to "Never".
That way power is being supplied continuously to your SSD while your system is idling.

How long TRIM and idle Garbage Collection take to recover drive performance will vary with each drive and each system.

I have 2 60GB SSDs in RAID-0, so I don't have TRIM, so I idle my system once a week, or once every other week to allow idle Garbage Collection maintain performance.

 
Solution

triplefam

Honorable
Apr 22, 2012
29
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10,530


Thank you for bringing this to my attention! I'm making it a habit now of idling on the login screen instead of simply turning off the whole computer, at least until it can start to get things working efficiently. My speeds hadn't improved, but from the sound of it, I should see overall performance consistency if I let it do its thing.

Thank you!