New to SSD's. First install attempt with bad read/writes

[njneer75]

Hi everyone, first time poster here. Maybe you all can help me figure out what i did wrong.

I switched over from a hdd to a ssd for the first time. I installed the new 120gb Patriot Pyro on my sata mobo and took the advice from some other posts here about doing a quick win7 backup/restore to get my OS back on the new ssd. Everything seemed to work fine. Booted up first time with no problem. Thought everything was okay until i started gaming. Noticed significant decrease in performance. Did a couple of speed tests on the read/write for my ssd. I know that no ssd is gonna perform to factory specs but mine is horribly low. Patriot describes this Pyro model as having 550 give or take a few on the read/write. Im getting less than 150 on multiple tests with different software. Anything that you all can see thats an obvious mistake with my install process and maybe how to fix? thanks in advance.

*Major Update*

I called Gigabyte and this particular model mobo is only Sata2 @ 3gbs and does not have the capability in the bios to set AHCI mode. Is this my major issue?

 

[Hipster Doofus]

What port is it plugged into? Makes a huge difference.

 

[essenbe]

When You restored the image it did not slign your SSD. To check, open a elevated compemand prompt. (click start, type cmd in the search box, right click the cmd snd select run as administrator) In the box thst opens type diskpart and press enter, when it responds diskpart, type list disk and press enter, It will list every drive in your computer and give each a number. (Hopefully, yours is drive 0) type selrct disk 0 (or the number given for your SSD. Next type list partition and press enter. It will show each partition on the drive with it's size and offset. The offset is your alignment. Use the snipping tool and take a snip of the window, save it to your desktop (or wherever it is easy to find) use the paperclip icon at the top of the reply window here to attach it. The alignment must be divisible by 4, but if you have the 100MB partition the results can be confusing. If that is the case, it can be fixed with this tutorial.

EDIT: to help, this is what it should look like.

 

[njneer75]

What port is it plugged into? Makes a huge difference.

Not sure, there are 3 sata ports on my mobo. im not home right now but i think i remember that 1 port is a different color from the other two, any way for me to tell which port my primary ssd is on? i also had a hdd and an optical drive hooked up on the other two ports when i did the install

 

[Hipster Doofus]

It should be doing better than that. Check out the tutorial essenbe posted.

 

[essenbe]

When you do the diskpart I posted above, when you do the list disk command, it usually lists them in order. But, your mobo manual should tell you the port numbers.

 

[whs]

What port is it plugged into? Makes a huge difference.

Not sure, there are 3 sata ports on my mobo. im not home right now but i think i remember that 1 port is a different color from the other two, any way for me to tell which port my primary ssd is on? i also had a hdd and an optical drive hooked up on the other two ports when i did the install

That sounds like a Sata3 port and that would be OK. I agree with the others, you have an alignment problem. That can degrade the performance by up to 300%.

Before you do anything, check the alignment and let us kow what it says - copy the command prompt result here. See under "Verification" at the end of this tutorial: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html?ltr=S

 

[njneer75]

ok i'll check the mobo manual for port info. what exactly am i looking for? what port should the ssd be on?

 

[whs]

ok i'll check the mobo manual for port info. what exactly am i looking for? what port should the ssd be on?

I think you are OK.

 

[njneer75]

Thanks for all the helpful replies so far. When i get home in a few hours i'll jump into all the suggestions and get those screenshots up on post. Just thinking ahead a little....

If i wanted to start over, since I have a good recent backup of my hard drive and a ssd that is obviously in good working order, what would be the suggested course of action to wipe the drive and start over with doing all this the right way from the beginning. Im assuming that i did/did not do something during my initial install and would like to know for future reference how to get it right from the start.

 

[whs]

You can check this tutorial - it will be more difficult if you have the 100MB partition. And it depends also what image you have. If it is from the Windows7 imaging program, you will have difficulties.

 

[njneer75]

When You restored the image it did not slign your SSD. To check, open a elevated compemand prompt. (click start, type cmd in the search box, right click the cmd snd select run as administrator) In the box thst opens type diskpart and press enter, when it responds diskpart, type list disk and press enter, It will list every drive in your computer and give each a number. (Hopefully, yours is drive 0) type selrct disk 0 (or the number given for your SSD. Next type list partition and press enter. It will show each partition on the drive with it's size and offset. The offset is your alignment. Use the snipping tool and take a snip of the window, save it to your desktop (or wherever it is easy to find) use the paperclip icon at the top of the reply window here to attach it. The alignment must be divisible by 4, but if you have the 100MB partition the results can be confusing. If that is the case, it can be fixed with this tutorial.

EDIT: to help, this is what it should look like.

View attachment 191528

Here is the snippet you were asking for....weird. It shows I have 2 partitions on the save drive although i did not create two.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

The first partition is the system reserve. Both partitions look OK.

Check to see if you have the latest firmware on the SSD.

 

[essenbe]

Also, see if you are in ahci mode in bios.

 

[njneer75]

The first partition is the system reserve. Both partitions look OK.

Check to see if you have the latest firmware on the SSD.

Any advice or links to help me figure out how to check firmware version? I tried to use the firmware updater from Patriot but it wont see me drive. I tried using it with/without admin priv.

 

[essenbe]

Go to device manager, expand disk drives and right click on the SSD, and select properties. Click the details tab. Click on device descriptions and from the dropdown list, the 1st one is haedware ids. click on that. in the screen there will be numbers on the right side. That is the firmware. You can see mine is firmware 0009.

 

[whs]

You are ahead of me Steve. I am still trying to put 09 on, but cannot find the IDE setting in the BIOS. They offer only AHCI and Raid0. Have to call Dell.

 

[essenbe]

You are ahead of me Steve. I am still trying to put 09 on, but cannot find the IDE setting in the BIOS. They offer only AHCI and Raid0. Have to call Dell.

That's pretty strange, to me. I've never seen one with no IDE option in bios. It would really be a pain if you have to take it out to do a firmware update. But, I do have a laptop with no one time boot option. To boot from a USB you have to reset bios boot options.

 

[whs]

You said it. Taking it out would be a pain especially since I had plenty of trouble getting it into this tight box - with Velcro.

 

[essenbe]

With most all brands of SSDs, the people with Mac's always have to do it. Macs won't update firmware even if running Windows in Bootcamp.