Samsung 850 Pro SSD, survived fw EXM02B6Q but slower

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soewhaty

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I have the HP Pavilion dv7-6b76eo notebook and am from the lucky ones who somehow survived the fw update EXM02B6Q by doing the update from the desktop utility Magician. With the old firmware everything worked perfect. AHCI is supported, Sata 6 3gb/s is the port the ssd is connected to and before the EXM02B6Q fw update Magician's benchmark used to show 550/520 MB and 95000/85000 IOPS, AS EXPECTED. After the EXM02B6Q update somehow speeds got slower to sth like 300/300 60k/60k iops. Was advised to reinstall Windows. Did so. Immediately after the reinstall and after installing all necessary drivers Magician measured perfectly 550/520 95k/85k. So far so good. Then I went on to install other things, such as Windows Updates and other software I use and guess what? The speed became low again. Amazing!

The software and updates I installed were the same as the ones I had when I was running the original EXM01B6Q fw. And with that fw and with all software and updates Magician showed consistently 550/520 95k/85k. Somehow now ... that is not the case any more. With the new FW and with all software and Windows Updates speeds dropped down. It has been 2 times now that I reinstall Windows, and as described, immediately after the reinstall and install of all drivers the speeds are perfect at 550/520 95k/85k. But later on, I don't know what causes them to be lower. Could it be the software I install or maybe the Windows Updates? I am indeed running the Magician benchmark when the PC is idle so as to see if this would get it to show me the speeds I want to see, but somehow... no matter what I try the speeds remain lower at sth like 400/500 80k/80k. Why? As I said, there is nothing unusual about the software [and Win. updates] I install on my pc. After all, with that very same software [and updates] installed everything worked at 550/520 95k/85k when I was with the original FW.

Will now try to rule things out and will slowly start uninstalling Windows Updates and will report if they turn out to be the culprit. However, do share your views on this, pls! :)
 
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The reason for reduced speeds, and specifically reduced Seq. Read (MB/s) from 560MB/s to 380MB/s is the free version [Basic Protection] of AVG antivirus software. Yep ... installed it and it reduced the speed. Uninstalled it and the speed went up to 560 again. Did that about 10 times so now I am pretty sure that it is the culprit. Will see how the remaining windows updates affect the speeds of the SSD and will report back ... For now it is clear that AVG and 850 Pro don't like each other ... Tested 10 times, as I said, and the test shows clearly that that ssd and that anti-vir software are not to be used together! No idea why ...

[Sorry for the confusion with different posts]

The bad thing is that I just tried with Avira Antivirus and...
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soewhaty

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Intel ... definitely got the latest drivers and even if I didn't have the latest drivers my initial post explains exactly how and where things went wrong, so even with an outdated driver, I am sure that it, in itself, is not the culprit. I am 100% sure that if I reinstall Windows yet again followed by an install of all needed drivers, Magician will read 550/530 95k/85k. From that point on, however, it is either the Windows Updates or maybe some other software I install that messes up the whole thing... I am thinking it is the Windows Updates ... now I am uninstalling them slowly 1 by 1
 
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soewhaty

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After all updates in Device Manager the latest thing I got for 'IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers' is 'Intel R Mobile Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller' that is the only thing under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers in Device Manager. Nothing else! There used to be other stuff, but once I updated to the newest drivers, only the above-mentioned is left...
 
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soewhaty

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It is 20-May-2011 v10.6.0.1002. I did not try to search for a later one cos that is the one Device Manager found automatically and I thought it knew better. Not sure if I should just start looking for a newer driver as my PC is from HP and what HP told me is to just use their drivers and not any newer drivers from the producers of the individual components, because HP have specifically modded some or all drivers from various producers so as to fit my notebook. Have had issues when trying newer gpu drivers from others than HP and did suffer a lot so I learnt a lesson at least for this notebook to only use the HP provided drivers, cos any newer ones from AMD, in this case, really made me suffer. Therefore I stuck with the dev. manager SATA controller driver. Not sure what to do now, but in the name of getting this thing to work I'll willing to experiment with some other drivers for the SATA controller. Pls come forth with your suggestions and potentially dl links.

Also let me ask the question in another way then ... at the time of benchmarking in Magician I always try to make sure the PC is as idle as psbl. It is however still doing stuff in the background, surely. So perhaps the solution is this: When Windows is freshly installed it only runs at approx 2gb out of my 8gb RAM. Once I install all Win Updates and all the software I normally use though it becomes more like 3-3,5gb RAM used and obviously more processes and services running in the background. So the question is, is it because I install extra stuff [which in turn runs in the background and uses more RAM] that I get lower read/write speeds and IOPS or is that out of the question? I mean, RAM is RAM ... more RAM being used should not affect the SSD's read/write speeds and IOPS, but what do I know ... Someone can answer this to me by telling me if their 850 Pro SSD with the newer FW also gets slower once they load their system with all possible software and updates. However, I doubt all this to be the culprit.
 
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soewhaty

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In other words... am I to always expect to get the product specifications 550/520mb and 95k/85k when I benchmark with Magician or will I only get that when very little or almost nothing is running in the background. I repeat ... the background. Cos as I said I benchmark only when I myself am not doing anything in the foreground i.e. keeping the PC idle. I clearly don't benchmark my ssd while I am rendering images ...
 
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soewhaty

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Perhaps this might be important in the overall context.

I am now starting to think that this 'Intel R Mobile Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller' is just some generic thing that Windows Update and Device Manager pushed me to update to cos they thought it was the latest update for my SATA controller. However, before I updated to it Dev. Manager used to show me 3 things under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and they were:

ata channel 0
ata channel 5
Intel R 6 Series/c200 series chipset family 6 port SATA AHCI controller 1C03

So I think 'Intel R 6 Series/c200 series chipset family 6 port SATA AHCI controller 1C03' is the right name of my controller. Does that help anyhow now?

Not sure which one of all Intel RST drivers to download from your link, but thank u anyway ..:)))
 
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soewhaty

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Well ... i installed it, it works, but the speeds are not what I expected. Perhaps it is a mistake of me to expect the max speeds to be measured in Magician all the time, huh? Well, as I said, the max speeds were there when I had just reinstalled the OS, but clearly there was nothing running in the background, so nothing to slow the ssd down. I guess in a way it is fair that Magician shows it slower now, cos things are running in the background. I am also keeping an eye on the Resource Monitor to see what disk activity there is. I am running in Win7x64 Pro.

Well I thought I'd see 550/520mb 95k/85k iops every time I benchmark with Magician, but what I see is something more like 390/520mb and 89k/80k, which in a way is close enough. So I started asking myself if it is even realistic of me to always expect to see the max speeds? It does make sense that the speed would vary a bit but ... the first measurement, i.e. sequential read is like ... 150mb lower than what it is supposed to be. The product says max 550/520 100k/90k so I was hoping to get close to that all the time. On the other hand the Resource Monitor does not show anything significant consuming that difference of 150mb for the seq. read. Any idea? Could the SSD be faulty due to the update of fw. Somehow I survived it, but did I?
 
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soewhaty

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OK. I see ... so is there a reason for me to worry or not? I was afraid that the new fw update totally messed up my ssd. As I said, it was a clear and distinct difference before and after the FW upgrade. How do we explain that? Before the FW update Magician showed max speeds all the time, and afterwards it got to 300/300 65k/65k ... drastic change. So, as I said, I was advised to reinstall the OS as it seemed that the fw update messed up some drivers and files. After the reinstall speeds were again at max but only for a short period of time, that is only be4 I installed all Windows Updates and all the software I use. Once that was installed the speed became 400/520mb and 90k/80k which is close to max but ... a bit slower clearly. So my question is ... could it be the installed stuff that is now running somewhat in the background that is slightly slowing down my ssd and could I ever get back to those top speeds, while having all my software installed?
 
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stamenvalchev

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The reason for reduced speeds, and specifically reduced Seq. Read (MB/s) from 560MB/s to 380MB/s is the free version [Basic Protection] of AVG antivirus software. Yep ... installed it and it reduced the speed. Uninstalled it and the speed went up to 560 again. Did that about 10 times so now I am pretty sure that it is the culprit. Will see how the remaining windows updates affect the speeds of the SSD and will report back ... For now it is clear that AVG and 850 Pro don't like each other ... Tested 10 times, as I said, and the test shows clearly that that ssd and that anti-vir software are not to be used together! No idea why ...

[Sorry for the confusion with different posts]

The bad thing is that I just tried with Avira Antivirus and it does almost the same thing. Correct me if I am wrong, but I guess any anti-virus app would slow down an ssd or hdd for that matter as it does real time scanning of ... everything, which is the whole idea in a way but I mean ... I know that an antivirus software needs to provide realtime protection, but I am not happy with its reducing the speed of my ssd. Besides ... any proper nerd knows that an antivirus software is useless, cos if a hacker wants to hack your PC .. you're defenseless. Other than that .. if you know what .exe .msi and .dll files you download and they are trustworthy ... then u r ok ... another thing is the security of the browser. That is up to the developer of the browser .. they gotta keep that up and you just gotta apply their updates and bug-fixes. That's pretty much the view on security a colleague of mine has and he is an it guy indeed. Buy whomever's advice you want and do be careful with whom supplies it ...

If anyone finds an antivirus app that does NOT slow down drive speeds ... speak out!
 
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soewhaty

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A small update now: just tried with Avast and it seems that it is almost not reducing the speed of my 850 pro at all. Perhaps a tiny bit, but that IS a price I am willing to pay in order to get some kinda of .... I won't call it protection, but at least to get some prompts now and then when things with my internet use start seeming suspicious ... so yeah ... for now the free version of avast seems to be working better hand in hand with my ssd than AVG and Avira were ... don't know what the bottom line of all this is.

PS Avast seems to be extremely light on resources ...
 
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