Kingston V300 SSD - not showing up in Toolbox, running slow

[Jaiimc]

Hi guys,

So, I wasn't in AHCI. I am now, I believe - at least, when I boot up the BIOS says it's booting drives in AHCI mode. I used the Windows 10 reboot method.

I noticed my SSD was running pretty below spec. Supposed to get close to 450 read/write. Read, not too bad 350s. Write, dreadfully slow, 150s. Considering it might be my specs or the drive - decided to email the seller anyway.

They told me to update the firmware of the SSD. I thought this would be simple enough. However, after downloading the toolbox... There are no Kingston drives connected?

I've tried changing over SATA ports between the two drives. I've changed leads. Everything is recognised and boots fine. I'm fairly certain the AHCI drivers are working. So, why the slow speeds? Why isn't Kingston letting me update the drive?

Here is a screenshot of my MOBO, CPU, the two drives I have connected - E: is a 1TB Toshiba, CrystalDiskMark results, Kingston Toolbox not displaying the drive and Device Manager to see the AHCI drivers.

Thanks for any insight.

 

[CountMike]

If it's any consolation to you, I'm getting just marginally better read with mine. Is it connected to first SATA port and do you have drivers installed ? I don't think FW is changeable with those drives.
My FW is 505 though, it's one of the first of V300 SSD Now series. I've heard that they intentionally lowered performance in later models so they would not compete wit HyperX series which are higher priced.

 

[CountMike]

If it's any consolation to you, I'm getting just marginally better read with mine. Is it connected to first SATA port and do you have drivers installed ? I don't think FW is changeable with those drives.
My FW is 505 though, it's one of the first of V300 SSD Now series. I've heard that they intentionally lowered performance in later models so they would not compete wit HyperX series which are higher priced.
You may wont to try http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/as_ssd_benchmark.html for more accurate benchmarks because Crystal DM is primarily for HDDs and don't handle compression right.

 

[Jaiimc]

Reformatted the computer. Heard that switching to AHCI mode doesn't always work and my partitions were unaligned anyway.

Kingston toolbox still doesn't detect the SSD. Strange considering this tool was built specifically for their drives, and the version I've tried was made specifically for the drive in question?

370 read, 250 write at maximum - however as low as 70 at minimum. Using AS SSD the seq results were 370 read - 70 write.

Any ideas?

 

[Jaiimc]

Another update - started from scratch on my 1TB internal Toshiba standard 7200RPM drive.

Installed Windows 10. Got it up and running. Installed basic drivers. Ensured my SSD was accessible. Installed three different versions of Kingston's SSD toolbox - none showed the drive as being there.

Shut down. Swapped the SSD to a SATA 2 port on my MOBO. Reason being that I've heard there are problems between the SSD toolbox and SATA controllers - pretty sure my SATA 3 ports are controlled by a different controller than my SATA 2 ports. (Cheap MSI mobo.)

Started back up. Loaded the three different types of SSD toolbox again. None showed the drive. Went to the site for answers - noticed that none of their toolboxes (even their latest) show Win10 support in the specifications.

I know that the AHCI drivers change around from version to version. Thinking maybe that Win7 would be the next thing I'll try. After all this effort, the firmware update better fix these speed issues... If it turns out to be a MOBO issue, I'm just going to sigh. Then maybe cry.

If anyone has input, it'd be appreciated.

Update: Almost exactly 2 hours later. I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to make a bootable Windows 7 installation media. Came up with a weird driver error, all it needed was me to move it to a 'supported' USB port. No clue.

Hi, from Windows 7, anyway.

The situation: Still, Kingston Toolbox does not want to recognize the SSD. Rather frustrated at this point, but there's one more option...

Kingston lists on their site that it is Windows 7 SP1 that is supported. They made a clear denotation of it being SP1. I am on Windows 7 Home Premium, no service packs installed. It's updating to SP1 in the background as I'm typing this.

Once installed, I will try it again. If it still does not list the drives - my plan is to install the AMD AHCI drivers and try it once more. If THAT doesn't resolve the issue, then ... Hi Kingston employee. You're having to read through this thread because I linked it to you during our support chat. Enjoyed the read? Good!

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

One benefit of being self-employed is that I can sit and screw around with things like this for hours on end without anyone telling me that I'm wasting my time. But hey, maybe this documentation will help someone in future.

FINAL UPDATE FOR NOW: Coming at you live from Windows 7 SP1.

The Kingston toolbox - all 3 of them - are still not recognizing the drive. That's the important part.

The specifics: Rebooted into SP1. SSD plugged into SATA 2 port. Standard AHCI Win7 drivers. No joy.

Rebooted. SSD plugged into SATA 3 port. Standard AHCI Win7 drivers. No joy.

Installed AMD drivers.

Rebooted. Left plugged into SATA 3 port. AMD AHCI drivers. No joy.

Rebooted. Plugged into SATA 2 port. AMD AHCI drivers. No joy.

I'm going to take the loss on this one. There's nothing more I can possible try. All I wanted to do was update this Kingston SSD's firmware, this has been far too difficult for such a simple task in my opinion.

I'll be keeping an eye on the thread. If you guys have any advice or words of wisdom, I'm open to hearing them. Will hit up Kingston Tech tomorrow or Monday.

 

[CountMike]

My machine, W10, MS original AHCI drivers. Just downloaded and installed Kingston toolbox, it recognizes SSD just fine although it it insisted to repair Visual C++ runntime files. I'm not going to let it update Firmware because 505 was best for that model.
On my previous MB, Gigabyte ga-890fxa-UD5 v 2,1, I could not make it run at full SATA3 speeds either although this MB now has same south bridge where SATA3 controller is.
I think that your MB is to blame, specially if it has crappy Marwel SATA controller.