Question SSD writing speed low and task manager shows sawtooth pattern

[ma_gub]

Hi all,

Just bought a 500 GB SSD (MX500) for games, because the hard drive was too slow.

Installed a first game (around 100 GB) and it worked well, with high, sometimes constant write speeds of 100/200 MB/s.

The next game I'm currently installing is limiting the write speed to around 60 MB/s and task manager says the speeds and disk usage times are in a kind of sawtooth pattern.

I have no idea what it could be and did not change any settings. A similar pattern happens when I transfer big files on my USB flash drive.
Has anyone seen something like this before?
With these problems, times for installing/updating game times are pretty much the same as for the old hard drive (however there's no more 100% disk usage and this is nice).

Formatting the drive wouldn't be too much of a problem since it's used only for games, but I'm not sure it is advisable for an SSD.

SSD Crucial MX500
mobo: ASUS H81M-E/M51 AD
Windows 10 22H2


Thank you all

 

[rgd1101]

how full is the ssd now?

and the c drive is on another ssd?

 

[USAFRet]

"installing", from where?

And with the USB flash drive...the performance depends on the slowest device in the chain. There, either the flash drive or the USB port connection. The SSD is mainly just waiting for the flash drive. Nothing you can do about that.

 

[ma_gub]

how full is the ssd now?

and the c drive is on another ssd?

About 1/4

The system drive is on another drive which is 80% full

 

[ma_gub]

"installing", from where?

And with the USB flash drive...the performance depends on the slowest device in the chain. There, either the flash drive or the USB port connection. The SSD is mainly just waiting for the flash drive. Nothing you can do about that.

"installing" both when downloading games from Epic Games launcher, and when installing a game from an already downloaded installer. The first game I installed was downloaded from steam, could this be related to a different way of handling download files? Thanks

 

[USAFRet]

"installing" both when downloading games from Epic Games launcher, and when installing a game from an already downloaded installer. The first game I installed was downloaded from steam, could this be related to a different way of handling download files? Thanks

That sawtooth is due to the data being downloaded as it is installed, not the drive speed.

And doing from a file already downloaded...the drive has to read a bunch, then write a bunch.

I see no problem there at all.

 

[ma_gub]

That sawtooth is due to the data being downloaded as it is installed, not the drive speed.

And doing from a file already downloaded...the drive has to read a bunch, then write a bunch.

I see no problem there at all.

The screenshot is from when it was installing through an already downloaded installer.

I understand what you mean and you are right, for the first game I downloaded (a 100 gb download from steam) the drive was alternating between write and read, but it could do it at much higher speeds, and less consistently. In fact, the limiting factor for that download was my CPU I think, going at almost 100% usage all the time, while I know the internet download speed was the highest it usually goes.

For this install (and another game I installed yesterday from Epic), it's different.
Downloading from epic, my CPU was used at 30%, and therefore the download speed was decreased from around 500 Mbit/s to around 200, because now it was being limited by the drive speed itself I think.

Thank you for the reply

 

[ma_gub]

That sawtooth is due to the data being downloaded as it is installed, not the drive speed.

And doing from a file already downloaded...the drive has to read a bunch, then write a bunch.

I see no problem there at all.

The screenshot is from when it was installing through an already downloaded installer.

I understand what you mean and you are right, for the first game I downloaded (a 100 gb download from steam) the drive was alternating between write and read, but it could do it at much higher speeds, and less consistently. In fact, the limiting factor for that download was my CPU I think, going at almost 100% usage all the time, while I know the internet download speed was the highest it usually goes.

For this install (and another game I installed yesterday from Epic), it's different.
Downloading from epic, my CPU was used at 30%, and therefore the download speed was decreased from around 500 Mbit/s to around 200, because now it was being limited by the drive speed itself I think.

Thank you for the reply

So maybe it's a problem of my System drive, instead of the new one?

The system drive is almost 80% full and is from HyperX, could this be the limiting factor?

 

[USAFRet]

So maybe it's a problem of my System drive, instead of the new one?

The system drive is almost 80% full and is from HyperX, could this be the limiting factor?

No, it is not a "problem" that needs "fixing".

 

[mdd1963]

Run a CrystalDiskMark sequential test...

Most MX500's do an honest 500-540+ MB/sec on both reads and writes..

If you see similar, your MX500 is fine, IMO...