SSD problems

Well, I was going to try to post my benchmark, but now I think I've got some problems with my SSD.

I have a 64GB Kingston SSD-Now installed as my primary system disk. When I first installed the system, Windows ranked my disc at 7.1, then after rolling from Win7 RC to the final version Windows said that it could not complete the performance analysis because of some error (can't remember exactly what it said). Then a while later I ran it and it did complete, but now my disc rates at a 5.9.

I tried to run the first benchmark program, read speeds seem OK, tops off around 170 MB/s, but the write speed has me concerned. The first "Seq" sequence had write speeds at 26.9MB/s. The "4k" sequence was taking too long to complete, and was showing 0.19 MB/s with and hour and a half showing on the countdown timer!

Anyone have any ideas on what could cause this or any settings to check?

Well I'd go into the BIOS and make sure that ultraDAM mode is enabled for that drive. If it was stuck in PIO mode only then that might do it.

Seconsly, make sure the real storage drivers for your motherboard are installed, not just the microsoft ones.

Checked Bios, Ultra DMA5 enabled, PIO is in Mode 4

Storage controller is latest from Asus - Marvell 6121 SATA Driver V1.2.0.69 for 32/64bit Windows7.

Any other ideas?

Does Kingston have any drive refresher/inspection tools available?

Not sure how old the dirve is or how suspetable it is but older SSDs did suffer from some trememdous performance slow downs after a lot of use. For years and years actually till the relatively recent crop of SSDs finally appeared.

If that is the case you may be able to get a tool to completely refresh the drive to like new performance, but it may or may not require reinstalling windows on it again, depends on how the tool works.

Dunno if I have any more ideas...

profdlp said:

simplecj said:

...Storage controller is latest from Asus - Marvell 6121 SATA Driver V1.2.0.69 for 32/64bit Windows7...

Is there an Intel storage controller on the board along with the Marvel? My housemate's SSD performance increased a fair bit when I moved the drive to the Intel SATA controller.

Ah good catch, the Marvels are frequently a secondary controller set. I've got mine on port 0 of the Intel set, not using the Marvel one on my board at all.

Well it's not much more than a year old. I got it while I was trying out Win7 RC 7100 last fall, then I reinstalled the full OS last spring. It ran great on the RC install, not so good now though. I have done a bunch of SSD tweaks that were recommended online. It's been a while though, can't remember everything I did other than I really didn't notice any difference in performance from the recommended tweaks. I think most of the tweaks I did were supposed to reduce read/write cycles performed by the OS.

Starting to think I might be better off getting a new OCZ drive and doing a new clean install of Win7.