Peculiar WEI result with Force 3 drive on Ivybridge system

[GeneralEclectic]

Just took delivery of a new HP dv7t-7000 laptop. It has the i7-3210QM Ivybridge processor along with Intel's H77 chipset. Everything looks pretty good with it so far. Processor WEI 7.8, Memory 7.9. etc. (BTW, processor Passmark score: 8843. Yowser.)

On unpacking, I removed the original mechanical drive (never started it up, actually) and installed a used Corsair Force 120 (SATA II) drive to perform all the setup activity (this includes Intel RST). My plan was to hammer the used drive with all the setup writing/deleting and then move the finished image over to a new Corsair Force 3 (SATA III) 240GB drive.

Well, everything went fine with the setup. Not a single glitch or problem. No freezing. Perfect startup and shutdown. Perfect sleep state and wakeup. And, the WEI the old used drive turned in came in at 7.5. About what you'd expect for a normally functioning SATA II drive.

So then I cloned the image onto the Force 3 (f/w 5.02). Everything still works fine. The ATTO scores for the drive when used as the system boot drive come in about where you'd expect for a SATA III drive. So what's the problem? The Force 3 WEI comes in at 5.9. Now I KNOW that it's working okay to the best of my knowledge, but there's this nagging feeling that something's not right somewhere such that it produces this greatly substandard score. In about 20 Win7/SSD installations/conversions, I have never seen such an unusual WEI result. It just strikes me that something fishy there. but there's not a single other symptom that suggests where to look.

Anyone have any idea what might be going on here?

 

[Britton30]

Rather than use a used drive and make an image, why didn't you just install the new one first? TRIM or garbage collection or something would have taken care of it in a few hours. Let it sit powered on idling for a few hours and re-try WEI.
You can try this too: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/79177-windows-experience-index-reset.html

 

[GeneralEclectic]

Actually, I didn't have the new drive in my possession at the time.

Thank you for the suggestion to clear the WEI. Got the same result.

 

[GeneralEclectic]

Here is the AS benchmark for this system. It's good, but not great. This Force 3 drive came with the most recent 5.02 firmware. You have to wonder if there's something about this f/w that has slowed this down, since reported results with these drives have been higher. When I have a chance, I'm going to pop the Force 120 (SATA II) drive back in and see how this benchmark turns out.

 

[GeneralEclectic]

Here are both benchmarks run again on an empty partition. And Windows' assessment of the performance:

 

[GeneralEclectic]

Okay..... so I swapped the Force 3 for a Crucial M4. Re-ran the benchmarks on an empty partition and here are the results. They look about what you'd expect for an M4. AND... the Disk WEI is still coming in at 5.9!

So it looks like there's some kind of incompatibility or bug in the Windows rating applet. It comes up with (IIRC) 7.7 for that old Force SATA-II drive, but two brand new SATA-III drives score much lower. Doesn't make a lick of sense, but I'm going to trust the benchmarks when they tell me the drives are performing as they should. So FYI, here's the data for the M4....

 

[Britton30]

Thanks for all the info. I'm scratching my head about the 5.9 though. While WEI is only important to a specific PC, you should get a 7.8-7.9 with any newer SSD.

When I first installed my first M4 it got a 7.7 but within 24 hours changed to 7.9. I think the AS SSD score should be nearer 700.
I'll ask a member more versed is SSD than I am.

 

[Hopalong X]

Okay..... so I swapped the Force 3 for a Crucial M4. Re-ran the benchmarks on an empty partition and here are the results. They look about what you'd expect for an M4. AND... the Disk WEI is still coming in at 5.9!

So it looks like there's some kind of incompatibility or bug in the Windows rating applet. It comes up with (IIRC) 7.7 for that old Force SATA-II drive, but two brand new SATA-III drives score much lower. Doesn't make a lick of sense, but I'm going to trust the benchmarks when they tell me the drives are performing as they should. So FYI, here's the data for the M4....

Your Crucial m4 is working great.

The Force brands I'm not familiar with their expected speeds but appear adequate.

If you did a reset of the WEI scores and then rerun the assessment and still get 5.9 on the hard drive then their is a glitch in WEI.
There is no problem with the SSD's.

Other than a reset of WEI I have no idea how to fix the WEI.
I would not worry with it.
You have the info you need.
Everything is working fine so enjoy the new hardware.

 

[GeneralEclectic]

Yeah, it appears that the SSDs are working approximately as expected, so I'm going to TRY not to obsess about the incorrect WEI. There's this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that it's actually measuring something relevant that *is* wrong, despite the nominal benchmarks.

Thanks for the input. I'd still appreciate comments that might shed more light on this.

 

[essenbe]

First, I would suggest you not run any more tests for a few days. too many tests in a short period of time can slow an SSD down. As Britton30 suggested, let it idle on the login page for a couple of hours, to help with the garbage collection. After about 3 days go back and run WEI again. I suspect you will get a different result.

 

[GeneralEclectic]

You guys might be interested in this analysis of SSD behavior. Specifically, the authors of this paper were interested in how fast garbage collection happens. It's a LOT faster than Britton and Essenbe might suspect. But don't take my word for it, read the paper. It's pretty interesting:

http://www.jdfsl.org/subscriptions/JDFSL-V5N3-Bell.pdf

 

[Hopalong X]

The link takes you to empty web page.

GC according to most mnufacturers if allowed to idle occasionally takes 30- 60 minutes.

Extreme I suggest 2 hours if they have never done this or are unsure if they have ever done it.

 

[DeaconFrost]

I'm going to TRY not to obsess about the incorrect WEI.

That shouldn't take much effort. I run WEI once to make sure Aero is enabled and working properly, and then I ignore it form that point on. I honestly couldn't tell you any of the scores on any of my three systems. It's a largely useless scoring system that has no real purpose at this point. As long as the real benchmarks are showing good performance, don't worry about it. Go on enjoying the system.

 

[GeneralEclectic]

The link takes you to empty web page.

No it doesn't. It takes you to a PDF download.

 

[GeneralEclectic]

I'm going to TRY not to obsess about the incorrect WEI.

That shouldn't take much effort. I run WEI once to make sure Aero is enabled and working properly, and then I ignore it form that point on. I honestly couldn't tell you any of the scores on any of my three systems. It's a largely useless scoring system that has no real purpose at this point. As long as the real benchmarks are showing good performance, don't worry about it. Go on enjoying the system.

Haha.... Yeah, you're right of course. Ignoring it is what I do too, after confirming that it's about where I expect it to be.

I have a feeling that, given the evidence so far, this is a minor bug in the disk assessment that has something to do with some aspect of this hardware/firmware/BIOS. There's no other high-probability explanation. That doesn't mean that I'm not going to wonder exactly where the problem is occurring due to the small probability that there is some minor latent problem that shows up under the conditions that the WEI disk evaluation uses.

I predict that there will be an explanation of this one of these days.

 

[IIllytch321]

The WEI is a silly attempt at quantifying hardware used on Windows systems. Only when we know exactly what the WEI tests for in an HDD or SSD (I tried to look a bit and couldn't find anything aside from vague statements), the number it assigns to it is pretty meaningless.

If you want it to just SAY the max score you can always hack it (so I've read, I don't necessarily know if it works or not).

There was a time long ago when I first built this sytem and moved from WinXP to Win7. I ran that test and, due to the weakest link being my HDD, scored a 5.7. I got passionate and angry, pacing about my chamber in a restless manner for quite a time, until I realized...then it was no more; I peeled back the Veil of Maya and freed myself from the confines of the Windows Experience Index.

 

[DeaconFrost]

so I've read, I don't necessarily know if it works or not).

It does....my system can run a 9.9 in each category at will.

 

[Britton30]

The link takes you to empty web page.

No it doesn't. It takes you to a PDF download.

Yup, a 14 page article full of research. Where does it address the GC and TRIM speeds?