[SOLVED] 970 EVO Plus poor performance

[Stoney7474]

I have an ACER XC-885 with i5-9400 and an M2 slot with a 970 EVO Plus 500GB NVMe drive. When I run the Magician software it claims I have the wrong driver installed (Intel(R) Chipset SATA/PCIe RST Premium Controller 17.2.6.1027) and Magician cannot work with this driver. I tried running the driver updater from Samsung and this gives an error Samsung NVM Express device not connected! Further when I run CrystalDiskInfo on the line for Transfer Mode: it has --- | ---. What on earth is going on? This is my boot device and it seems to work but not as quick as all reports suggest this device should be.
Any enlightenment would be most appreciated.

 

[Jmusic88]

How full is your SSD?

I think it'll be best if your post a screenshot of crystaldiskinfo for everyone here to see. Anyone familiar with your specific issue may help you better.

 

[Stoney7474]

Thanks but posting a screen shot seems like a lot of bother having to register with i.imgur.com. But I will do if essential.
The drive is ~90% free.

 

[Stoney7474]

O/K here is the image of CrystalDiskInfo
Didn't work...

 

[Stoney7474]

Try again..CrystalDisk image

 

[Maxxify]

That's common with laptops, the Intel controller manages the NVMe drive so it uses an Intel driver. I believe it has to do with RAID versus AHCI mode for SATA in the BIOS (even though that doesn't apply to NVMe). I have the same situation on my Dell laptop - it's linked to the Intel Rapid Recover Technology (RRT) that OEM laptops rely on, unfortunately.

 

[Stoney7474]

You are right. I found an article (via Google). I followed this and hey presto, Change Intel Optane to AHCI in BIOS and now works fine. Not sure it's any quicker but Magician installs now and correct Samsung driver. See here: Solve SSD problem with Optane to AHCI Thanks guys!
At least I now know how to use Imgur!

 

[Maxxify]

Nice! It shouldn't perform much differently as NVMe drives don't explicitly require drivers, but it will allow Magician to work. You didn't mention what you meant by "poor performance" but if you mean low sequentials it's probably because the laptop is throttling you to one-half speed. It might even say x4 PCIe in CDI but it's actually capped at x2.