Crucial M500 question

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RFM1997

RFM1997

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Mar 11, 2013
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Hello,

My ssd is a Crucial M500 120gb, has a write speed of 250mb/s and a read speed of 500 mb/s.

I've been monitoring the speeds using the task manager on Windows 8 and I've noticed that sometimes the ssd goes 100% usage while read/write speeds are really low.

Other times it barely reaches 50% usage and it's reading at 100 mb/s, or writing.

Why is this?

Also, does the fact that my motherboard only supports 3GB sata connection, impedes the ssd to reach the official values of 250 mb/s write and 500 mb/s read speeds? Because I never saw the ssd reaching those speeds, I would like to be able to enjoy those speed levels.

I'm happy with the product, but these issues are buggering me.

Have a good day!
 
Solution
jay2tall
It can help, yes. The larger the block size, the more it reads in one operation. However, if you have a lot of small files it can waste space. For example if you use a 64KB block size it would use 64KB even though you are only storing a 4KB file. However, files of 64KB can benefit a great deal from it. I found 64KB the happy place for me. Some recommend 128KB.

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ish416

ish416

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Jul 5, 2012
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On SATA 2 (3Gbps) the interface is good for around 220 - 240 MB\s in real world performance.

SATA 3 (6Gbps) is good for around 550 - 580 MB\s in real world performance.

So there could be an issue with your SATA controller holding the drive back.

Also, it depends on what you are writing or reading from the drive. Smaller files will be slower than larger ones.
 
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jay2tall

jay2tall

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Apr 9, 2007
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According to Crucial the 120GB only has a max write speed of 130MB/s and Read of 500MB/s.
http://www.crucial.com/store/ProductMarketing_m500.aspx
These are sequential speeds under optimal conditions. Chances are you will NEVER see these speeds. SATA2 will cap just under 300MB/s so it shouldn't effect your writes, but will cap your reads. It will also depending on how randomly distributed your data is and what cluster size you used when you formatted the drive. I use 64K blocks, some will suggest 128K. Below is a link to a download for Crystal DiskMark. You can use this to test your drives read and write speed under different conditions. I run it 5 times with a 1GB sample. You will see how the speed for each selection varies.

http://download1us.softpedia.com/dl/9ab589e41576c426d1c2f636df55b3c6/530bb724/100127669/software/portable/system/CrystalDiskMark3_0_3a.zip
 
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RFM1997

RFM1997

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Mar 11, 2013
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Thanks for the replies ish416 and jay2tall!

My motherboard only supports 3GB sata 2 ports. That is why the read speeds are low compared to the ssd's maximum perfomance.

I didn't knew about the cluster size option, I checked the current cluster size, and it is only 4096 bytes, or 4Kb...

Does changing cluster size improve speeds a lot?

 
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jay2tall

jay2tall

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Apr 9, 2007
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It can help, yes. The larger the block size, the more it reads in one operation. However, if you have a lot of small files it can waste space. For example if you use a 64KB block size it would use 64KB even though you are only storing a 4KB file. However, files of 64KB can benefit a great deal from it. I found 64KB the happy place for me. Some recommend 128KB.

 
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Solution
RFM1997

RFM1997

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Mar 11, 2013
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Hmm I see, having 4KB clusters makes the SSD work more, waste more time and lowers its life expectancy.

I'll look up a tutorial to change the cluster size to 64KB, it will speed up my system, as I tend to handle larger than usual files.

Thanks for the suggestion!
 
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