SSD write speed slower than HDD (~15MB/sec)

[MoBonnin]

I have a PNY XLR8 Pro 128GB SSD and for some reason transferring/downloading files to my ssd is much slower then to my WD Green. I ran CrystalDiskInfo and didn't find any problems. However when running ATTO my HDD gets significantly higher Write speed than my SSD. Has my SSD just gone bad or is it somthing else? I've tried updating my BIOS/drives/firmware. Tried disabling/enabling TRIM, write-cache, etc. Switched from AHCI to IDE and back. Nothing seemed to make a difference. Benchmarks for my SSD and HDD are below.

My specs:
Intel Core i5-4670k cpu @3.4GHz O.C. 4.5GHz
ASRock Fatal1ty Z87 Killer Motherboard
8GB G.SKILL Sniper Series 2400 RAM
Asus GTX 1070
PNY XLR8 Pro 120GB SSD
2TB WD Green HDD

SSD:

HDD:

 

[Colif]

How much free space do you have on ssd? If its almost full that will impact its speeds.

try running this as see what speeds you get: http://www.techspot.com/downloads/6014-as-ssd-benchmark.html

this is mine for comparison

 

[MoBonnin]

I just reinstalled windows and all drivers so the drive is almost completely empty. The benchmarks we're taken after reinstalling with little difference. I'll post AS-SSD when it finishes, idling at about 2MB/sec sequential...

 

[Colif]

did you get drivers from motherboard web site?

check you have latest firmware on ssd - http://www.pny.com/support/technical-support/solid-state-drives/firmware-update

that speed is a concern for sure.

 

[MoBonnin]

I got most of my driver's from ASRock and Intel. Upgraded my SSD firmware to the latest (5.0.7) a bit ago, still no difference.

 

[Colif]

i would download and run atto on mine to see if its same but you need an account for it, which seems odd for just a free download.

as ssd seems similar to crystaldiskmark, so it might not really help - though crystaldiskmark makes my ssd look better compared to the recent as ssd I ran.

Download speccy and look on the storage tab and look at its smart scores. SMART isn't perfect but might show health of drive, and its another way to look besides speed tests.

Does it feel slow or is it just showing as slow in atto?

 

[MoBonnin]

i would download and run atto on mine to see if its same but you need an account for it, which seems odd for just a free download.

as ssd seems similar to crystaldiskmark, so it might not really help - though crystaldiskmark makes my ssd look better compared to the recent as ssd I ran.

Download speccy and look on the storage tab and look at its smart scores. SMART isn't perfect but might show health of drive, and its another way to look besides speed tests.

Does it feel slow or is it just showing as slow in atto?

It's works fine when all it has to do is read but as soon as I try downloading or transfering large files it starts off high and then dips to `2MB/s within seconds and the entire system slows to where several windows go unresponsive. Even after canceling the download or transfer the ssd still takes several minutes to drop from 100% usage back to a usable state.

 

[Colif]

All ssd start off high and get slower as they eat the buffer of onboard storage they have to cache data to be put on drive and start having to stop the transfer of data while they write data - the smaller the drive, the faster it will happen but your speed may still be low. I don't know how slow my ssd becomes as I have almost all my large files on hdd

double check and make sure its not in ide still as that will do it.

have you tried drive in another PC? Attach it as a 2nd drive and run same benchmarks on it - that would tell us if its drive or something else.

 

[BFG-9000]

Depending on what you had on that Sandforce drive before, there's a possibility there are no free blocks because TRIM cannot recognize the empty area as empty so won't clean them.

If you don't want to secure erase and reinstall everything, I suggest downloading sdelete 1.61 (there is something seriously wrong with 2.0) from Microsoft and running:
sdelete -z C: /accepteula
to zero-fill the empty space.

Windows' built-in utility cipher /w:C also wipes free space but leaves everything filled with random numbers which is obviously no good for TRIM!

 

[MoBonnin]

I think i'll go ahead and secure erase and reinstall windows again, if it still has problems I'm just going to go ahead and say the thing is toast. I made sure TRIM was enabled and even downloaded a program that test whether or not TRIM is actually working (TRIMcheck i think is what it was called) and the test came back okay.