SSD read/write performance is really bad

[Deleted member 2022030]

I have 2 Samsung 840 EVO drives setup in a RAID 1 and have run some benchmarking on them. The read/write scores seem way lower than the rated 500 Mb/sec. They are connected to 6Gs SATA ports. I can't figure out why they are running so slow. This is on a fresh rebuild of a Windows 7 system. Any ideas on what I could check?

Here are my scores:

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CrystalDiskMark 5.1.2 (C) 2007-2016 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
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* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 205.011 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 11.089 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 25.018 MB/s [ 6107.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 0.407 MB/s [ 99.4 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 199.666 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 11.115 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 20.697 MB/s [ 5053.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.398 MB/s [ 97.2 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [C: 33.5% (36.0/107.4 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/02/16 20:42:34
OS : Windows 7 Professional SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, tworst.

I'd suggest that you check if your motherboard's drivers are all up to data. You could try resetting/updating your BIOS/UEFI to see if that changes anything. Other than that, go ahead and update the SSDs' firmware if you haven't done that, to see if that fixes things up.
The benchmark scores are really a lot lower than they should be. Have you ever used those drives without a RAID configuration, to see if the performance is better?

Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[tom_spinach]

The Samsung magician is an easy tool to check your SSD for firmware and issues. Check if its on AHCI mode in the BIOS.

 

[Deleted member 2022030]

Now that the Samsung SSD's are in RAID 1, I can't use magician to do anything, which I suppose means I also can't update the firmware on them.

I downloaded all the latest drivers from Gigabyte for my P55A-UD4P. I have also went to device manager and checked every driver on my system and the are all the latest. The MB BIOS is F14 which is the last they made.

I checked the BIOS settings and they are correct - set up to run 6Gs on the Marvell 9138 chip and ACHI. Every windows 7 update is installed and this is a fresh install.

Did you see my random reads/writes? Less than 1Mb/sec!!!!! I should submit this for a world record slow performance. I mean even if I didn't have the latest firmware/drivers it should be no where near this slow.

I debated going to a new Skylake system before trying to revamp this 5 year old computer but decided I didn't really need it but this is ridiculous.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

So this is a software RAID then if you've set the SATA mode to AHCI? If you're using a RAID controller for a hardware RAID, the SATA mode should be set to RAID instead of AHCI.
I know it would be frustrating to do everything from scratch, but if you don't mind it you could try the SSDs one by one, just to make sure that they're working properly and if the benchmark scores are as they are supposed to be. This way you'd be able to exclude or confirm the SSDs as possible culprits for the problem. Note that if you decide to test them out, you should backup any important files you might have written on those drives in advance.

 

[Deleted member 2022030]

Oops, meant to say that I changed it from AHCI to RAID. I also double checked and it is set to RAID. I don't have a RAID hardware card, just using the motherboard chips.

I can rebuild if required and check the drives 1 at a time. Don't have any date on the PC yet, so not too big a deal.

Last night I also checked my other RAID 1 VD. Its using the Intel P55 chipset for RAID 1. Those scores were even worse. Granted, its a 7200 RPM harddrive running on 3Gs ports but still way too slow.

I will look things over one more time when I get home and see if it is something simple. If not, I will bust the system down and just check one drive at a time.