Solved! Crucial BX500 slowdown

[Shogun05]

I upgraded my old laptop from a HDD to a Crucial BX 500 SSD this year. It is a well known issue with these drives that they slowdown after sometime. Crucial has an article on this and solutions to solve this issue on here: https://www.crucial.com/support/articles-faq-ssd/ssd-used-to-be-faster-but-has-slowed-down

But their solution hasn't helped me. I put the laptop in its BIOS mode for over 12 hours, twice and the SSD is still running really really slow. Please help if somebody knows a solution to this and how to avoid this in the future.

Additional Info: My laptop is HP 15Q-bu013tu. Also, in the past, the ssd has slowed down for 5-6 times but following the solution from the article, I was able to get the ssd back to running in its original speeds. Only this time, it doesn't work

 

[Shmee]

I can try to lookup your laptop to find more info on it, but if you can, could you let me know the exact specs? The article you linked mainly references TRIM and garbage collection, which an older OS might not support. Also, the BIOS should have the SATA controller set in AHCI mode, not IDE. So, what OS are you on? Have you verified you are in AHCI mode? Also, what capacity is the drive, and how full?

 

[Shogun05]

> could you let me know the exact specs? Also, what capacity is the drive, and how full?
CPU: Core i3 6006U
Memory: 8GB
No graphics card, just an Intel HD Graphics 520
SSD: Crucial BX500 (98.6 GB free out of 222GB)
OS: Windows 10

> The article you linked mainly references TRIM and garbage collection
Yeah I tried to look into it more and found this: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-ensure-trim-enabled-windows-10-speed-ssd-performance
I tried whatever this article mentioned, but ssd still slowed down after few weeks. The slowdown is like a monthly occurence and like the crucial article states, keeping the laptop in its BIOS settings for 6-8 hours worked fine, but this time it isn't working

> Also, the BIOS should have the SATA controller set in AHCI mode, not IDE
I believe it is already in AHCI mode because I found this in the device manager settings:
I cannot actually confirm this in any way because HP locks out many BIOS settings from users in their old laptops. Is this enough to confirm it is on AHCI?

 

[Tech Junky]

Things like this are usually firmware related.

Crucial BX500 firmware updates

Crucial BX500 firmware updates

www.crucial.com

Phison made some drives with their E12 controller that required updates to 12.3 firmware to run properly. I don't know the specifics about the BX500 but, it's worth checking with their utility.

Looks like it's using SM2258XT and that could be an issue as SM doesn't perform well.

https://cultists.network/3850/ssd-nov-21/ - showing DRAM-less worsens performance under sustained load

 

[Shmee]

> could you let me know the exact specs? Also, what capacity is the drive, and how full?
CPU: Core i3 6006U
Memory: 8GB
No graphics card, just an Intel HD Graphics 520
SSD: Crucial BX500 (98.6 GB free out of 222GB)
OS: Windows 10

> The article you linked mainly references TRIM and garbage collection
Yeah I tried to look into it more and found this: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-ensure-trim-enabled-windows-10-speed-ssd-performance
I tried whatever this article mentioned, but ssd still slowed down after few weeks. The slowdown is like a monthly occurence and like the crucial article states, keeping the laptop in its BIOS settings for 6-8 hours worked fine, but this time it isn't working

> Also, the BIOS should have the SATA controller set in AHCI mode, not IDE
I believe it is already in AHCI mode because I found this in the device manager settings: View attachment 67285
I cannot actually confirm this in any way because HP locks out many BIOS settings from users in their old laptops. Is this enough to confirm it is on AHCI?

Yeah, if that is an Intel 6th gen i3, the laptop should be using AHCI by default, and Windows 10 would support TRIM with that. I agree with Tech Junky, a firmware update might help, that was going to be another suggestion of mine. Unfortunately, the DRAMless SSDs won't be as fast as their counterparts with DRAM anyway, and if the drive has QLC that could further hinder performance and endurance. That said, still better than a spinning drive, especially for a basic laptop where you don't need tons of storage.

Another option is to contact Crucial support, for either a firmware update or something, or maybe RMA if it is still under warranty, which should be 3 years I think.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Steady-state performance of a DRAM-less QLC SATA SSD certainly leaves something to be desired, that's for sure.

 

[Shogun05]

Things like this are usually firmware related.

Phison made some drives with their E12 controller that required updates to 12.3 firmware to run properly. I don't know the specifics about the BX500 but, it's worth checking with their utility.
View attachment 67286

I checked out the link and there doesn't seem to be any new firmware update available for my ssd


And for the other part, Yeah I cheaped out on the ssd.

 

[Shogun05]

That said, still better than a spinning drive, especially for a basic laptop where you don't need tons of storage.

Another option is to contact Crucial support, for either a firmware update or something, or maybe RMA if it is still under warranty, which should be 3 years I think.

Exactly my thoughts when I got this ssd

I will be sure to contact crucial support, but I do want to mention that I ran "chkdsk /f /r" in the mean time and the issue still wasn't fixed

 

[Shogun05]

For now, I will just try putting the laptop in BIOS once again for 24 hours and get back with the results

 

[Tech Junky]

DRAMless SSDs

I actually get better results in my TB4 enclosure using one as the SN770 hits higher speeds than higher priced drives with dram for some odd reason. I tested a couple of phison drives as well as the SN850 and it was counterintuitive to see the performance difference. Where the 770 accels though is multitthread transfers vs single bulk.

@Shogun05 when it comes to these drives more RAM gets better performance.

 

[mikeymikec]

6-8 hours of enforced downtime with no way of knowing that the process is actually working is insane.

Furthermore, you can defrag a hard drive in that time, why on earth would it take so long for an SSD? - edit - ah, dramless SSD.

 

[Shogun05]

Finally fixed the issue. Kept the laptop plugged into charger for over 20 hours and the speeds seemed to have returned. Now that irc, before this, everytime I was supposed to keep the laptop in its BIOS, I left it overnight with the charger plugged in, but this time, I hadn't had it plugged in for quite a while in between so maybe the laptop didn't keep the ssd on to conserve battery life.

 

[Shmee]

Glad you got it working well again. If the slowdowns keep happening, I would contact Crucial support though.

 

[Tech Junky]

Glad you got it working well again. If the slowdowns keep happening, I would

get a WD SN770 instead and use the BX as additional storage.

@Shogun05

 

[Shogun05]

Glad you got it working well again. If the slowdowns keep happening, I would contact Crucial support though.

Their support in my country isn't that great, but if redacted hits the fan, I would have to do that

Please - no profanity in the tech subforums.
admin allisolm

 

[Shogun05]

get a WD SN770 instead and use the BX as additional storage.

@Shogun05

That thing costs almost the double of what I got the crucial one for, in my country x_x

But yeah, lesson learnt: Don't cheap out on SSD's and DYR