Kingston SSD Slow Write Speed Issues (Drivers?)

valp

January 5, 2013 12:27:29 PM

Hello there,

I recently bought a Kingston SSDNow 64Gb SSV200S37A64G and reinstalled Windows 7 on it (clean install with only that disk installed). It's working quite well, and I can see the improvement over my old HDD, however, the benchmarks I've done got me worried.

At first, I didn't do any benchmarks, but my Windows Score for the disk was 6.9, so I wasn't worried. However, after adding 4Gb of RAM to my system (there was a struggle because of the overclock and the other RAM module, but now it's working), I did the test again, and it showed me 5.9 (same score for my old HDD) for the SSD. I found it odd and began to benchmark, which revealed some worrying results.

Before I show the results, I must say that the SSD is connected to a M4N68T-M LE mobo, which doesn't have SATAIII (it's SATAII) and has Geforce 7025/nForce 630a as chipset. The drives are updated (though they go way back to 2009/2010).

So, these are the benchmarks results.

http://i.imgur.com/CGjRw.png (ASSSD)
http://i.imgur.com/D1tOa.png (CrystalDiskMark)

I don't know about the read values, but the write values are awful. Sequential writing goes way down to 26MB/s, this is 1/4 of a regular HDD. I tried this in practice and it's real, copying a file inside that SSD is a slow process (but copying from a different drive to it it's kind of fast.).

I know there are other people with this issue here, and I followed some posts, but couldn't work it out. And none of them have such bad results.

Some things I've tried:

I checked that TRIM command is on;
In the BIOS, ACPI and other option are enabled;
I tried to search drivers with SlimDrivers;
I tweaked Windows7 (Defrag was off already, hibernation is off, searchindex is off, power options are set to performance and no sleep, reduced paging file, no more prefecth, write caching is enabled, MBR is in this disk etc.)

Lastly, here are some screenshots of how Windows is seeing the drive and controllers:

Ata Channel http://i.imgur.com/aTNrH.png
Disk Details http://i.imgur.com/g47xT.png
Disk Drivers http://i.imgur.com/ntgpy.png
nForce SATA Controllers http://i.imgur.com/ydi8j.png

I hope I can figure it out with your help, guys. Thanks a lot.

Edit: Currently 40GB free (of 60GB).

More about : kingston ssd slow write speed issues drivers

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RetiredChief

Storage Expert

January 5, 2013 12:52:38 PM

Question - Currently you are using the nvstor64 as a driver, do you remember if that was the driver priuor to re-installing win 7, or was it by chance msahci?
I know that the Intel driver performes better than the default uSoft driver - Not sure on older Nvidia driver. Reason I asked is that 3rd party sata 6 controllers take a hit (I did catch that you are on a older Sata II (3) port - just an illustraion).

Another question, did you do a secure erease before doing the reinstall. This is More important on small drives than larger drives. SSDs do NOT write over sectors the same as HDDs - they use 64 K blocks normally. And unless you did a secure erease you may have a large number of blocks that are "Marked" as used.

Just a Note - 64 Gig SSD = 60 gig Formated, then Must leave a Min of 15% free so that wear leveling, Garbage Collector, and Trim can work their magic. Now Down to 60 - 9 = 51 Gig avail space (Recent review indicates that the "old 10->215% free space is Low and infact should be 20->25% free.

What %age of the drive is filled?

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Dereck47

Storage Expert

January 5, 2013 1:17:31 PM

Go to Device Manager in Windows and click Disk drives.
Right-click on your SSD and select "Properties".
Click on the Policies tab.
If "Enable write caching on the device" is checked, uncheck it, click OK, check it, click OK.
Re-run your benchmark and see if that helps.

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Reply to Dereck47

valp

January 5, 2013 1:54:51 PM

RetiredChief said:

Question - Currently you are using the nvstor64 as a driver, do you remember if that was the driver priuor to re-installing win 7, or was it by chance msahci?
I know that the Intel driver performes better than the default uSoft driver - Not sure on older Nvidia driver. Reason I asked is that 3rd party sata 6 controllers take a hit (I did catch that you are on a older Sata II (3) port - just an illustraion).

Another question, did you do a secure erease before doing the reinstall. This is More important on small drives than larger drives. SSDs do NOT write over sectors the same as HDDs - they use 64 K blocks normally. And unless you did a secure erease you may have a large number of blocks that are "Marked" as used.

Just a Note - 64 Gig SSD = 60 gig Formated, then Must leave a Min of 15% free so that wear leveling, Garbage Collector, and Trim can work their magic. Now Down to 60 - 9 = 51 Gig avail space (Recent review indicates that the "old 10->215% free space is Low and infact should be 20->25% free.

What %age of the drive is filled?

As for the driver, I don't remember, but probably I was using the nVIDIA/nForce6 normal drivers in my last build (in which there wasn't a SSD), since the last time I just installed nForce 15.49 and let it be.

As for the erase, I didn't do any special erase. I got the SSD unformatted, so I just formatted it NTFS and had kind of 25Gb of files in the start, then I moved these files to an HDD and installed W7 on the SSD (I think I didn't format with windows installer).

I have 40Gb free out of 60Gb.

Edit: Should I try to change nvstor64 for msahci?

Dereck47 said:

Go to Device Manager in Windows and click Disk drives.
Right-click on your SSD and select "Properties".
Click on the Policies tab.
If "Enable write caching on the device" is checked, uncheck it, click OK, check it, click OK.
Re-run your benchmark and see if that helps.

I tried it and it looks pretty similar to the last run. Seq. Write got 2MB/s faster in this one.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 205.254 MB/s
Sequential Write : 27.753 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 196.957 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 14.483 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 16.196 MB/s [ 3954.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 12.177 MB/s [ 2972.8 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 21.532 MB/s [ 5256.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 13.731 MB/s [ 3352.3 IOPS]

Test : 500 MB [C: 31.9% (19.0/59.6 GB)] (x5) <0Fill>
Date : 2013/01/05 12:51:34
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

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valp

January 5, 2013 4:56:53 PM

Here are some BIOS shots I've taken:

http://i.imgur.com/WiQubh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/EP300h.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/KYlMjh.jpg

Even though the benchmarks are horrible, I've copyied and pasted a 200mb file around and it was kind of instantaneous.

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Reply to valp

valp

January 7, 2013 8:32:42 PM

Hello there,

I bring more info, so someone might discover why the write speeds are so low.

I've researched and found out that M4N68T-M LE doesn't support AHCI, so it seems my SSD is running on IDE, however my HDDs running on the same controllers can achieve 70-100MB/s write speeds.

http://i.imgur.com/O73YAh.png
Here is a speed test done in device manager, it shows the SSD in port 0 and in DMA mode.

http://i.imgur.com/flsQuh.png
These are the available compatible drivers for the nforce controller. I've tried using the first and third, but it looks the same.

http://i.imgur.com/wAWiVh.png
Here is AHCI driver inside the non-compatible drivers listed by Windows, could I try to install it? Could this work, since the mobo doesn't seem to have ahci support?

Thanks again.

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Reply to valp

valp

January 12, 2013 5:21:32 PM

Well, it's been a while. Can someone shed some light into the issue?
write performance seems quite unstable, benchmarks can get 25-50Mb/s sequential write speeds, while copy and paste into the disk sometimes is very slow.

I put the SSD in a Intel sataII motherboard and got similar results (30-60 seq write).

I've messed around with the drivers, here's the most recent benchmark on my nforce motherboard:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 204.368 MB/s
Sequential Write : 52.298 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 198.271 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 34.110 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 16.849 MB/s [ 4113.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 28.025 MB/s [ 6842.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 21.418 MB/s [ 5229.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 34.270 MB/s [ 8366.8 IOPS]

Test : 100 MB [C: 37.7% (22.5/59.6 GB)] (x5) <0Fill>
Date : 2013/01/12 16:20:09
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

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Dereck47

Storage Expert

January 12, 2013 6:44:22 PM

valp said:

I've researched and found out that M4N68T-M LE doesn't support AHCI, so it seems my SSD is running on IDE,

If your motherboard doesn't support AHCI then your current benchmark results are as good as it's going to get.

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Reply to Dereck47

valp

January 12, 2013 10:27:12 PM

Dereck47 said:

If your motherboard doesn't support AHCI then your current benchmark results are as good as it's going to get.

Hello, Dereck47, thanks for the answer.

I'm certain that the SATAII and IDE "bottlenecks" are happening, but my HDD (SAMSUNG HD502HJ) gets almost 130MB/s sequential write speeds.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo

Sequential Read :   120.943 MB/s

Sequential Write :   126.965 MB/s

Random Read 512KB :    36.600 MB/s

Random Write 512KB :    63.338 MB/s

Test : 100 MB [D: 87.5% (407.4/465.8 GB)] (x5) <0Fill>

Date : 2013/01/12 21:24:27

OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

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Reply to valp

valp

January 12, 2013 10:51:19 PM

Dereck47 said:

SSDs are "compatible" with IDE mode but they were designed to work best in AHCI mode.
IDE mode is primarily for Optical drives (CD, DVD, etc.), and HDDs.

Also, most SSDs in IDE mode do not support TRIM so that is probably another factor in your Read/Write performance.

Start Logging Off (not Shutting Down) overnight while you sleep a couple of times a week to allow Garbage Collection to recover some drive performance.

Thanks, Dereck, I guess that addresses the questions then. I shall get a better motherboard in a following upgrade.

Thanks again, everyone.