SSD slowing down even when mostly empty

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Dylan Shekter

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Aug 8, 2013
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My computer's main and only drive is a crucial mx300 750gb, the logic being that since I won't be filling it up too much I should be able to keep good speeds throughout more than the month and a half since I built it. The weird thing is that I've noticed significantly higher bios times and login times. All startup programs are disabled, but either way they shouldn't effect the loading before login. TRIM is enabled and I optimize on a weekly basis. The recovery drive says it needs optimization, but that shouldn't get in the way of performance, and clicking "optimize" does nothing.

I do have the crucial storage executive, which allowed me to update its firmware, although that didn't help. The S.M.A.R.T. stats concern me since they say

1 Raw Read Error Rate 2 Errors/Page
5 Retired NAND Blocks 1 NAND Blocks

I'm no expert so I don't know if this is bad, but the drive reports being healthy. Searches on the subject of retired block say this could warrant a return, but again, I'm not an expert.

Any advice?
 
Solution
B
The Good rating is what we wanted from CrystalDiskInfo. Passing Seatools is also good, though that warning just shows that it definitely is running slow as I normally don't get that on an SSD.

Do you have any network drives mapped by chance?
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Take a look at Task Manager, Performance Monitor, and Resource Monitor.

See what processes, services, and applications are running at boot time. Take a look at how much CPU time, Memory, and RAM each may be taking.

The slowing could simple be some backup, some update, or indexing trying to "catch up" with the size of the drive.

Go to Crucial's website and check their forums, FAQs, and Chat (if available). Learn about what those errors may mean or imply.

Hopefully you have a 90 day warranty or better window within to RMA if necessary.

But do back up any important data elsewhere before doing anything else.
 
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This is going to sound stupid, but how can I check that exactly?
Task manager reports all 0's except for a few small bumps in the disk section
Performance Monitor shows me what's happening right now, is there a way to have it log the performance at startup?
Resource monitor also shows right now, and again except for a few small bumps from chrome, nothing is happening
 
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Resource monitor is still only showing what's happening now, not at boot times. At the moment it's reporting the odd couple hundred KB/s i/o, nothing large. Is there a way to log the startup?

Update: ran performance analyzer on a restart, most of the time is spent during winlogon init, so I'm googling around for some answers but since nothing comes up that's helpful, any information would be much appreciated
 
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Does the following link show your drive?

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct750mx300ssd1#productDetails

Verify that TRIM is enabled:

http://www.howtogeek.com/257196/how-to-check-if-trim-is-enabled-for-your-ssd-and-enable-it-if-it-isnt/

My other thoughts are with respect to BIOS - can you go into your BIOS and enable some sort of verbose POST reporting?

Or something like this via Group Editor:

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/enable-verbose-status-message-windows

What I am trying to identify is an option or options aviable to you to see what is happening with respect to higher bios times and login activities. Need to peek into things a bit earlier I think.

 
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That is my drive, TRIM is enabled, I have regedited the verbose status since I am running home edition. Also my build is here just in case you think another component may be an issue.

Post reboot edit: there were only two mesaged that appeared for more than a frame, on shut down was 'stopping services', on start up nothing, login said 'preparing windows'
 
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I was thinking about the screen information presented during POST. Details may or may not be configurable via some BIOS setting.

Try to identify some other variable: e.g. booting on and off network, via safe mode, with and without the GPU maybe...

The objective is to pin down some process or service that is getting hung up or otherwise slowing down the SSD. Or Windows boot up.

Yes: taking an overall look at your build is important. Check that all drivers are correct and current.

What I have not been able to find/determine is some way to discover a specific cause for the slowness you are seeing.

However, if we keep digging, looking, and posting perhaps someone will note something I am missing. Fair game and no problem with that on my end.

 
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I was thinking of doing that and will tonight, just have to finish up some work since that will take a bit. The drivers are up to date, but I can go back to device manager and check each component.
 
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So it turns out safe mode with networking is slower than without to log in, but I still have no idea why. I updated the wifi (which I don't use), lan, bluetooth, and graphics drivers to as high as their companies released at least for regular consumers, and still no improvements. I ran a startup with logging, and a system check. The check found nothing, the logging claimed I had 1 MB in my ssd which I assume means unallocated space, as it says
Volume 1 is the selected volume.

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
* Disk 0 Online 698 GB 1024 KB

Read-only : No
Hidden : No
No Default Drive Letter: No
Shadow Copy : No
Offline : No
BitLocker Encrypted : No
Installable : Yes

Volume Capacity : 698 GB
Volume Free Space : 504 GB

Anyway, the system still starts up the exact same speed, and since networking seemed to be the issue I didn't go mucking around in the internals to disconnect the graphics card or go through advanced UEFI settings.

Any idea why networking would take so long?
 
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What was supposed to appear in the "Spoiler" block? Something has been lost, I think.....

Networking:

Are you sure that only one network adapter is enabled. Do you have Homegroup on? Any indications that your system is trying to find some non-existant or no longer existant network device or resource? Some share that is no longer available. Hopefully there would be some explicit error message or notice....

Were you able to take a look at Crucial's website and its' FAQs and Forums. Contact them via a chat or email with respect to the initial SMART stats errors. Just as a matter of elimination.

Very much agree with not "mucking around in the internals" - at least for the time being. Last resort sort of measure sans any interim error code or other clue.

Not sure how deep into the matter you really wish to go. However, you mentioned winlogon....

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/markrenoden/2015/07/28/windows-enterprise-client-boot-and-logon-optimization-part-13-boot-phase-winlogon/

The information in the presentation may help you identify what is going on. I will take a shot at it all via my own system to see what and how things happen. [Always more to learn....]

Otherwise sort of running out of ideas here.
 
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I am able to click the box and see what's in the spoiler, but if that doesn't work on your end it just says that one part of the file reports 1mb exact of free disk space, another part shows I have the correct amount free. I plan on contacting Crucial over the retired NAND block, as that should not only be covered by warranty but happen many years after installation, not a month.

I'll have to open the boot log in Analyzer and go more in depth I guess, so I'll report back if I find anything.

And even if that doesn't work, just having somebody that helped out is appreciated.

Report: I disabled all services to do a "clean boot" and found no difference in speeds. I am also not part of a homegroup or have made any hardware or software changes to my networking, just the same ethernet cable from when I first booted it up. I guess I'm off to crucial.
 
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Run CrystalDiskInfo it will give you a rating, anything other than Good is indication of a problem.
Then I would also run Seatools for Windows, start with the short tests and if those pass then run the long test. Any errors in any of these tests means drive is failing.
BTW this is fine to do on an SSD.
 
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CrystalDiskInfo told me what I already knew, one retired NAND block and 2 error per page or whatever the name of that metric is, and said 100% good

Seatools was a different case. After passing SMART and a short test, I ran the long write test, and found this window when I can back later
if the image doesn't load on the forum
window.png


 
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The Good rating is what we wanted from CrystalDiskInfo. Passing Seatools is also good, though that warning just shows that it definitely is running slow as I normally don't get that on an SSD.

Do you have any network drives mapped by chance?
 
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Solution

So I have been using CrystalDiskMark. I ran a test before I did the garbage collection Crucial recommended (forgot to screenshot the chat but it was just a regular customer service rep) and I had pretty close to advertised beforehand. I am currently running the test now, so I can get back to you on how well their fix worked, but so far it has actually decreased read speeds by 2 MB/s

As a matter of fact, I do have a network drive mapped. I'll unmap it and see if that helps after the tests are done.

(for the record I am on another machine, so chrome browsing won't interfere with testing)
 
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I may still contact Crucial, but after unmapping the network drive I was able to login 3 seconds faster, back to how it used to be. Such a simple fix, thank you very much.

As for drive speeds, just look below, first is before garbage collection second is after


Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 531.412 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 505.373 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 297.520 MB/s [ 72636.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 331.492 MB/s [ 80930.7 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 426.211 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 490.993 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 23.217 MB/s [ 5668.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 134.120 MB/s [ 32744.1 IOPS]

Test : 32768 MiB [C: 27.9% (194.6/698.1 GiB)] (x9) [Interval=600 sec]
Date : 2016/12/01 17:18:24
OS : Windows 10 [10.0 Build 14393] (x64)

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 529.662 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 499.972 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 298.649 MB/s [ 72912.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 330.666 MB/s [ 80729.0 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 425.151 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 490.193 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 23.384 MB/s [ 5709.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 133.635 MB/s [ 32625.7 IOPS]

Test : 32768 MiB [C: 26.7% (186.3/698.1 GiB)] (x9) [Interval=600 sec]
Date : 2016/12/02 15:51:33
OS : Windows 10 [10.0 Build 14393] (x64)

Either way, thanks for the advice on the network drive
 
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Better late then never? No I meant 3 seconds, when it's in the single digits that makes a huge difference.
 
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