SSD is taking a long time to be formatted

[Surreal_X]

Hi everyone,

I just bought a A Corsair Force LS 2.5 120GB SATA III (SSD) yesterday (not that fancy i know, but that's what i could afford) and after installing and connecting it to GSATA3 i noticed that when i tried to create and/or format the disk it takes a long time compared to hard disks, It took me about 10 minutes to get it formatted. I need to know if that's normal?!.

PS: I tried the "normal"/windows formatting and a 3rd party app (EaseUS Partition Master 10) and still facing the same issue.

OS: Windows 10 x64 Enterprise 1511
Motherboard: Gigabyte P61A-D3
Processor: Intel Core i5
HDDs: WD Black 1TB + WD Blue 320GB
RAM: 8GBs Kingston
PSU: XFX Pro 550w

Note: AHCI is enabled and it's formatted as NTFS.

would appreciate your help guys, thanks .

 

[martinch]

Is it doing a "full format" (writes 0's to every sector - bad idea with SSDs!) or "quick format" (clears the table of files)? Really, you can just create a new volume (partition) in Windows Disk Manager then quick format it...

 

[Surreal_X]

I was just trying this now, used windows disk management to delete the disk and create a new one, It took about 5 - 7 minutes.

I was also trying to copy a 2GB files it start copying at 100MB+/sec and suddenly drop to 2MB/s - 0 ! and then i'd get an error that says "Interrupted action" and the disk is gone from my computer!

 

[martinch]

Hmm ... that doesn't sound right - my SSDs & HDD were all near instant (and 100MB/s seems to be a low transfer rate for an SSD) ... have you tried running a "secure erase" on the SSD to re-initialise everything, then re-partition and re-format (I'm wondering if it's doing garbage collection...)

 

[JohnnyLucky]

First, perform a secure erase to erase everything on the ssd and make it like new.

If the ssd will be the primary boot drive, then do not format the ssd. Instead, do a fresh clean install of the operating system. If the ssd will be a secondary data storage drive, then perform a Windows low level format only.

No need or requirement to partition the ssd.

GSATA is a sata port driven by a proprietary chipset that Gigabyte included on the motherboard. If you install the drivers from the gigabyte website the port should function okay. You may need to copy the drivers to a USB flash drive if you plan to install windows on that ssd.

Here are the storage specifications for your motherboard:

Intel Chipset: There are four SATA 2, 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2 0~3) supporting up to four SATA 2, 3Gb/s devices

GSATA: Marvell 88SE9172 onboard controller for two SATA 3, 6Gb/s connectors (GSATA3 4~5) supporting up to two SATA 3, 6Gb/s devices.

Download and install the motherboard's BIOS updates for improved compatability. Get the updates directly from the Gigabyte web site. Also download and install the Intel chipset updates. Get those direct from the Intel web site.

 

[Surreal_X]

Thanks a lot guys for the info, (quick question here, so gsata 3 is supposed to be faster than the normal slots 3GB/Sec vs 6GB/Sec right?).
Today i went to the place where i got it from and the guy working there formatted it in front of me, and it just took a few seconds, also copied a 10GB folder and the transfer rate was around 400MB and at the end it was around 200 - 100.
When i went back home i tried to install windows and it refused to be installed on mbr disk, used gparted and converted it to gpt then got this error: "we could not create a partition or locate an existing one", i was able to see the ssd though, deleted the ssd partition using windows installation then i got this error: "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL",
I'm now sure that it's something from my end, but not sure what it could be, it's driving me crazy!

 

[Surreal_X]

Update: I have moved disks from marvell's controller to intel chipset and now everything is working fine.