NVMe SSD 4K write speeds painfully slow

nico53laval · Feb 16, 2016

I have owned an Alienware 15 laptop equipped with a 512 GB NVMe SSD for about a week now. I reinstalled Windows on it yesterday (deleting every partition first then creating one on the SSD and one on the HDD). Now, the laptop becomes painfully slow whenever I have any write operation (extracting, installing...) but loads everything fairly quickly. The sequential read/write speeds in AS SSD seem fine (1300/160) but the 4K write speed is below one MB/s, as well as a write latency in seconds...
Could anyone help me out with this? Any help is very much appreciated!

Kurz · Feb 16, 2016

Did you let windows create the partition on the SSD or did you do it yourself?

nico53laval · Feb 16, 2016

I simply clicked on new during Windows installation

smorizio · Feb 16, 2016

use windows disktools make sure the reserve partion is on the ssd drive.
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/20775/Intel-Chipset-Device-Software-INF-Update-Utility-
when you did a clean wipe of windows your missing the intel chipset drivers and the newest mei drivers for the system board.
in the bios make sure the sata port set to achi mode not ide.

Kurz · Feb 16, 2016

smorizio :

Smorizio he definitely wants to be in NVME mode not Achi or IDE.

nico53laval · Feb 16, 2016

Kurz :

smorizio :

Smorizio he definitely wants to be in NVME mode not Achi or IDE.

NVMe is simply the connection, not the SATA mode.

nico53laval · Feb 16, 2016

smorizio :

I'll try installing the chipset drivers and seeing if it makes a difference. I tried both ACHI and RAID, there's no IDE option in my BIOS.

Kurz · Feb 16, 2016

nico53laval :

NVME is not the connection its the protocol.
M.2 is a connection, Sata is a Connection, SCSI is a connection, PCI Express is inter motherboard communication.
ACHI is a protocol as well as IDE. NVME is an improvement on the ACHI protocol. Just like DirectX12 is an improvement on DirectX11.

nico53laval · Feb 16, 2016

[/quotemsg]
NVME is not the connection its the protocol.
M.2 is a connection, Sata is a Connection, SCSI is a connection, PCI Express is inter motherboard communication.
ACHI is a protocol as well as IDE. NVME is an improvement on the ACHI protocol. Just like DirectX12 is an improvement on DirectX11. [/quotemsg]

Well, according to Wikipedia NVMe is a logical device interface for PCIe SSDs, so certainly not a SATA protocol like AHCI or RAID, and there is absolutely no way to choose NVMe as a protocol in BIOS.

nico53laval · Feb 16, 2016

smorizio :

Wait, I just saw that the reserve partition is on the HDD instead of the SSD. How can I fix this?

smorizio · Feb 16, 2016

you have to wipe and start in again. after you wipe the partion of the hard drive. turn the pc off and unplug the sata cable to the hard drive so windows cant do it again.

nico53laval · Feb 17, 2016

smorizio :

I can't unplug the cable or open the laptop :/
But do you really think that's the main issue? Since read speeds are actually really good and boot is fast.

Kurz · Feb 17, 2016

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2899351/everything-you-need-to-know-about-nvme.html

Just a little bit of a background, in computer speak logical means software. If Physical is used we are talking about physical connectors.

nico53laval · Feb 18, 2016

Kurz :

You may be right, I don't know enough about it, but I am certain that NVMe is not a SATA standard in the same way as AHCI or RAID, and that there's no way to choose NVMe in the BIOS

Kurz · Feb 18, 2016

nico53laval :

If your SSD looks like this, its a M.2 or its variant connector.

http://edge.alluremedia.com.au/m/g/2015/09/SSD_950_Pro_3.jpg

Though the way you select NVMe is by select EFI in BIOS.

https://tinkertry.com/how-to-boot-win10-from-samsung-950-pro-nvme-on-superserver

nico53laval · Feb 18, 2016

Kurz :

Do you mean UEFI? If yes, that, again has nothing to do with the SATA protocol, it's simply a choice of boot menu between legacy and UEFI and otherwise changes nothing. Your link simply states that the BIOS needs to support UEFI.

Kurz · Feb 18, 2016

nico53laval :

Kurz :

Do you mean UEFI? If yes, that, again has nothing to do with the SATA protocol, it's simply a choice of boot menu between legacy and UEFI and otherwise changes nothing. Your link simply states that the BIOS needs to support UEFI.

Actually it says to make sure the Setting for the M.2 slot needs to be set to EFI.

nico53laval · Feb 18, 2016

Kurz :

nico53laval :

Actually it says to make sure the Setting for the M.2 slot needs to be set to EFI.

It says to use UEFI during installation, so that Windows lays down a GPT partition table. I am unable to boot from a USB drive and therefore install Windows in UEFI mode, so that's not an option. However, the motherboard supports UEFI and I can therefore boot perfectly fine from NVMe.

NVMe SSD 4K write speeds painfully slow

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