I think I must win the prize for the slowest ever Samsung 830 SSD – see the benches below (<100MB/s!). Can anyone suggest what might be going wrong?
Here’s the problem:
I have just replaced the OS HDD in my XPS8300 with a brand new Samsung 830 SSD 128GB (more details of the setup and how I migrated are given below). The new SSD works, but its performance is WORSE than the HDD in almost all respects:
■Windows startup: the SSD takes 65s vs 30s for the old HDD.
■Program launching is slower, eg 6s to launch Word, and some other programs have taken 15s or more to appear.
■The benchmarks are appalling, and contradictory:
CrystalDiskMark bench is the slowest I’ve seen anywhere; even others complaining of poor performance are getting >200MB/s sustained; I’m getting <100! It’s no better than I had before with the HDD (for comparison below)
Measured with AS SSD (below), the sustained write performance appears to be better (contradicting the CDM mark), but the 4k and access time benchmarks look dreadful to me. In fact the 4k test took so long to run (30 minutes or so) that I didn’t run the 4k-64Thrd test.
Something is clearly badly wrong – not just with the benchmark results but with the real-world performance too. Can anyone suggest what?
System setup
To answer the obvious questions, here’s my setup:
■ Dell XPS8300, about 12 months old running Win 7 Pro 64 bit
■ Core i7 3.4GHz, 8GB Ram
■ Originally had 2 x 1TB Hitachi disks, one as C: (OS), the 2ndas a D: Data drive. I replaced the first disk with the SSD (see below for how I did it).
■Intel Series 6 motherboard (if I have that right), with 2 x SATA-III
■(6Gb/s) ports (0 & 1) and 2 x SATA-II (3Gb/s) ports (2 & 3). The HDD’s were on the 6Gb/s ports, numbers 0 & 1. The SSD is now on port 0 (ie 6Gb/s)
■ The SATA controller reports as “Intel Desktop/Workstation/Server Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller”.
■ Set to AHCI mode (and always has been)
■ Running Intel Rapid Storage Technology (in SATA mode, I don't have RAID)
Drivers are up-to-date according to Windows, & device manager shows no conflicts. Samsung firmware is the latest.
Migration process
Again to answer any obvious questions in advance, here’s how I did the migration from HDD to SSD:
1. Cleaned up the OS HDD to save space/eliminate bloat (backed-up & deleted the Recovery Partition after moving the bootmgr from there to the C: (OS) partition using Easy BCD; deleted unnecessary recovery points etc).
2. Installed the SSD temporarily on SATA port 3 (SATA-II, 3Gb/s).
3. Cloned the C: partition from the HDD to the SSD using Macrium Reflect 5.0, using “intelligent sector copy” (copies only the used sectors, apparently) and set the SSD as Active
4. There was also a 2GB Dell OEM partition on the HDD which I did NOT clone across to the SSD – after reading up on this partition I concluded it wasn’t necessary…
5. Disconnected the old C: HDD and reconnected the SSD in its place (on port 0, SATA-III 6Gb/s)
6. Checked BIOS set to boot from the Samsung
7. Rebooted OK, but very slow as described
8. Ran WEI, giving disk score of 7.8 (woo-hoo! If only the SSD didn’t actually go at a snail’s pace!)
9. Ran Samsung’s optimisation tools, and set 11.9GB overprovisioning as recommended, all to no effect. Still as slow as ever.
10. On advice from elsewhere, tried to check the drive is running in UDMA5 mode, not PIO. But Device Mgr doesn't list any ATA channels, only the Intel controller mentioned in my system description, and the properties of that don't mention transfer mode.
11. Replaced the Samsung with the old HDD, which is performing as normal.
Some thoughts of mine:
1. Is the Samsung 830 simply faulty?
2. Have I messed up by not cloning the Dell OEM partition to the SSD? Can’t see why this should be as I understood it only contains Dell utilities/tools.
3. Does the difference in the benchmarks using CrystalDisk and AS SSD indicate the source of the problem?
4. How can I check that I'm not running in restricted PIO mode (ref step 10 I tried above)
Grateful for any help that any of you knowledgeable souls can offer, please! Thanks.
Here’s the problem:
I have just replaced the OS HDD in my XPS8300 with a brand new Samsung 830 SSD 128GB (more details of the setup and how I migrated are given below). The new SSD works, but its performance is WORSE than the HDD in almost all respects:
■Windows startup: the SSD takes 65s vs 30s for the old HDD.
■Program launching is slower, eg 6s to launch Word, and some other programs have taken 15s or more to appear.
■The benchmarks are appalling, and contradictory:
CrystalDiskMark bench is the slowest I’ve seen anywhere; even others complaining of poor performance are getting >200MB/s sustained; I’m getting <100! It’s no better than I had before with the HDD (for comparison below)
Measured with AS SSD (below), the sustained write performance appears to be better (contradicting the CDM mark), but the 4k and access time benchmarks look dreadful to me. In fact the 4k test took so long to run (30 minutes or so) that I didn’t run the 4k-64Thrd test.
Something is clearly badly wrong – not just with the benchmark results but with the real-world performance too. Can anyone suggest what?
System setup
To answer the obvious questions, here’s my setup:
■ Dell XPS8300, about 12 months old running Win 7 Pro 64 bit
■ Core i7 3.4GHz, 8GB Ram
■ Originally had 2 x 1TB Hitachi disks, one as C: (OS), the 2ndas a D: Data drive. I replaced the first disk with the SSD (see below for how I did it).
■Intel Series 6 motherboard (if I have that right), with 2 x SATA-III
■(6Gb/s) ports (0 & 1) and 2 x SATA-II (3Gb/s) ports (2 & 3). The HDD’s were on the 6Gb/s ports, numbers 0 & 1. The SSD is now on port 0 (ie 6Gb/s)
■ The SATA controller reports as “Intel Desktop/Workstation/Server Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller”.
■ Set to AHCI mode (and always has been)
■ Running Intel Rapid Storage Technology (in SATA mode, I don't have RAID)
Drivers are up-to-date according to Windows, & device manager shows no conflicts. Samsung firmware is the latest.
Migration process
Again to answer any obvious questions in advance, here’s how I did the migration from HDD to SSD:
1. Cleaned up the OS HDD to save space/eliminate bloat (backed-up & deleted the Recovery Partition after moving the bootmgr from there to the C: (OS) partition using Easy BCD; deleted unnecessary recovery points etc).
2. Installed the SSD temporarily on SATA port 3 (SATA-II, 3Gb/s).
3. Cloned the C: partition from the HDD to the SSD using Macrium Reflect 5.0, using “intelligent sector copy” (copies only the used sectors, apparently) and set the SSD as Active
4. There was also a 2GB Dell OEM partition on the HDD which I did NOT clone across to the SSD – after reading up on this partition I concluded it wasn’t necessary…
5. Disconnected the old C: HDD and reconnected the SSD in its place (on port 0, SATA-III 6Gb/s)
6. Checked BIOS set to boot from the Samsung
7. Rebooted OK, but very slow as described
8. Ran WEI, giving disk score of 7.8 (woo-hoo! If only the SSD didn’t actually go at a snail’s pace!)
9. Ran Samsung’s optimisation tools, and set 11.9GB overprovisioning as recommended, all to no effect. Still as slow as ever.
10. On advice from elsewhere, tried to check the drive is running in UDMA5 mode, not PIO. But Device Mgr doesn't list any ATA channels, only the Intel controller mentioned in my system description, and the properties of that don't mention transfer mode.
11. Replaced the Samsung with the old HDD, which is performing as normal.
Some thoughts of mine:
1. Is the Samsung 830 simply faulty?
2. Have I messed up by not cloning the Dell OEM partition to the SSD? Can’t see why this should be as I understood it only contains Dell utilities/tools.
3. Does the difference in the benchmarks using CrystalDisk and AS SSD indicate the source of the problem?
4. How can I check that I'm not running in restricted PIO mode (ref step 10 I tried above)
Grateful for any help that any of you knowledgeable souls can offer, please! Thanks.