Potential SSD Issues?

[JWH85]

Hey everyone,

I recently purchased a Lenovo Y580 along with an OCZ Solid 3 120gb. At first I just cloned the original 750gb drive to the 120gb SSD. Everything was fine for a while, speeds between 350-400 mb/s. A few days back my entire file system crashed. Started with a BSOD which read unmountable boot volume, followed by random BSODs in windows and predicable BSODs when running certain programs IE QQ messenger, Speedfan. I managed to do a full wipe, reformat/reinstall, and get the operating system stable once again.

However, now my speeds have dropped as low as 115mb/s, randomly peak up around 350mb/s (very brief peak) then fall back down around the 120-150mb/s range. The system is table, no BSODs or any other issues...I'm just wondering if the SSD was damaged? I've run multiple tests on everything from the CPU to the motherboard itself (PC Check) and have found nothing wrong. HD Tune reports no errors and the SMART status is A-Ok.

Another thing, after running multiple HD Tune speed tests, the fast peaks I mentioned were all in the same general part of the test, on each test, along with the slower peaks.

Any help here would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[inzone]

HD tune is not the best testing software and I have used it and got similar speed ratings from a SSD. I switched to ATTO and got better results also you will get better results if you purchase a program because the free software is a very basic version and not as accurate. I didn't buy the ATTO program but did find it better.
Did you by any chance unplug the SSD from the SATA port and plug it back in to the wrong port? The sata mode is still in AHCI mode in the bios? With those speeds it sounds like it connected to the SATA2 port and not the SATA 3 port.
If everything is the same as before then maybe a firmware update can help if one is availabel.

 

[RetiredChief]

DO NOT rum multi-passes of a benchmark program!!!!

Down load, install and run AS SSD - DO not run the benchmark. Just look in the up left at:
.. Firmware Version - make sure it is the latest. Also good to use the latest Bios firmware for your MB
.. If driver shows pcide = BAD, you have your answer
...... msahci is OK, but if you have an intel system then iaSTor version 19 or later is better.
.. Verify that partition alignment = OK.
Report back.

General info:
1) ATTO is what manufs use to report Performance UNforatunatly - YUK. ATTO is a louy SSD benchmark to compare what to expect in real life.
2) Sticking the OCZ Solid 3 on sata II is FINE, since it does NOT perform any better in real life on SATA III. This is the same for the OCZ agility III, My words " the agility III is a SATA II SSD in a SATA III wrapper". AND YES, i have 2 120 gig Agility III SSDs. YES both show better "ATTO" sequencial performance on SATA III, BUT NOT in real life, nor using AS SSD as the benchmark.
NOTE: ATTO was developed for HDDs not SSDs. As SSD was developed with SSDs in mind. The difference is in the data used to benchmrk. ATTO uses Highly compressable Data, AS SSD does Not - Quess which is more representative of real life, if you answered AS SSD you would be correct.

The 120 gig drive probably shows about 111 gigs formated. Remember as you use the drive over time DO NOT let used go over 85% - This is true for even the Higher end SSDs. SSDs need this "free" space so that wear leveling, Garbage collocter and Trim can work ther magic.

 

[JWH85]

Downloaded and verified everything is fine, so I ran the benchmark anyway and produced results similar to HD Tune, here's a screen shot (bit low for a Solid 3 isn't it? Especially compared to what I had been getting)

http://tinypic.com/r/ih1q3s/6

Is it possible the Sandforce controller was damaged in some way? I mean, my platter drive wasn't much slower than this...

Edit: And the firmware is 2.25, latest version, updated just the other day (hoping it would solve my issue)

 

[JWH85]

To be subjective, I decided to also run ATTO...not sure what to make of these results, but there they are. (write faster than read?)

http://tinypic.com/r/33afm07/6

I'm considering sending in for an RMA, but I'm torn...it's stable although the speed has dropped.

 

[inzone]

Have you tried posting on the OCZ forums to see what you can get for a response there? When I had an OCZ drive I went to thier forums for answers to my questions.