My first SSD a dud or working as intended?

[Triggered]

Hey fellas!

I recently purchased a Crucial MX200 250GB because I was starting to get fed up with relying on a mechanical drive.

Unfortunately, it seems like this MX200 may not be what I was expecting in terms of performance and it has come to my attention that there is a review on anandtech itself which I should have read first.

Here are two synthetic benchies:

AS SSD somewhat of an outlier but the 4k results are generally somewhat sucky but that could be due to the entry-level nature of this drive. With that being said, performance is generally lacking all around in real world application when compared to the synthetics... damn institute!

Examples:

If I transfer my Warcrat addons folder which is about ~117 MB spread across 6507 files, the transfer speed will range from ~500 KB/s and gradually work up to ~12 MB/s when it's 90% done before dropping like a stone to finish the transfer. I know that the 4k results are low but it seems as though real world goes through the floor.

If I transfer my Warcraft folder which is about 30 GB, it creates this sin wave where it'll reach a peak of 280 MB/s and a trough of 180 MB/s.

So, maybe I am misinterpreting the information, but it feels like it's not meeting my expectations as far as an SSD is concerned. The results seem incredibly inconsistent and downright awful but that may simply be what I paid for.

I have it running off SATA port 2 on a MSI 970 Gaming with AHCI enabled in the bios.

Thoughts? Should I be disgusted in myself with my choice? D:

 

[Elixer]

If I transfer my Warcrat addons folder which is about ~117 MB spread across 6507 files, the transfer speed will range from ~500 KB/s and gradually work up to ~12 MB/s when it's 90% done before dropping like a stone to finish the transfer. I know that the 4k results are low but it seems as though real world goes through the floor.

If I transfer my Warcraft folder which is about 30 GB, it creates this sin wave where it'll reach a peak of 280 MB/s and a trough of 180 MB/s.

So, maybe I am misinterpreting the information, but it feels like it's not meeting my expectations as far as an SSD is concerned. The results seem incredibly inconsistent and downright awful but that may simply be what I paid for.

I have it running off SATA port 2 on a MSI 970 Gaming with AHCI enabled in the bios.

Thoughts? Should I be disgusted in myself with my choice? D:

From HD to SSD, or from SSD to SSD?
As for your numbers, 'peak of 280 MB/s and a trough of 180 MB/s.' that is still WAY faster than most HDs.
SATA 2 ports are only 3Gb/s as well.

In short, I see nothing drastically wrong here.

 

[Triggered]

Ah, forgot to mention that it was transferred from and on to the same SSD but alternate location. In this case, going from C: Program Files (86x) right to the C: root as to avoid any permissions issues.

As for the numbers, I can certainly live with 280/180 and everything in between because that's smoking fast compared to my HDD but the smaller file transfers was a little discouraging. Everything else is fine though such as boot time and applications running off of it so maybe I simply need to curb my expectations.

Oh and it's not running on SATA 2, it's running off of the second port of SATA which, on this board, is III.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Your ssd is much faster than your hd's ever thought about being. My laptop only has sata 2 and they scream along compared to the original 5400rpm Seagate drive which took forever and a day to load win 7 home.

 

[Triggered]

Guys, I'm not doubting that it's a hell of a lot faster than my HDD. What I am saying is it absolutely tanks when transfering small files.

Is this honestly considered normal?

Again, this isn't about how much quicker the SSD is compared to an HDD or how it compares to yours but rather if these are 'good' / 'expected' values or if it's showing signs of being a defective drive and have it replaced.

 

[Kenmitch]

Guys, I'm not doubting that it's a hell of a lot faster than my HDD. What I am saying is it absolutely tanks when transfering small files.

Is this honestly considered normal?

Again, this isn't about how much quicker the SSD is compared to an HDD or how it compares to yours but rather if these are 'good' / 'expected' values or if it's showing signs of being a defective drive and have it replaced.

It's really hard to say without knowing what you are trying to copy over. A bunch of tiny little files will slow down both the read and write performance of the SSD.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Different drives have different rates depending on the file sizes and that transfer rate is horrible. My WD blacks usually swing between 30-90mb/s depending on the files and how fragmented they are. Are you in AHCI mode?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Your synthetics are fine - the drive is operating correctly.

Copying your WoW folder from and to the same drive will tend to cut your observed throughput in half. (You have to read and write at the same time.) There are any number of reasons it could be bouncing between 180-280MB/sec: ram cache limits, other running tasks, whether it's transferring a single big file or a bunch of little ones, etc.

Copying a crapload of very tiny files will tend to be limited by the OS and file system, not the storage device.

 

[MustISO]

Copying a crapload of very tiny files will tend to be limited by the OS and file system, not the storage device.

I see this on every drive. Lots of small files typically kills performance. Try a 2GB file and it'll fly.

 

[Deders]

Would have thought it would only go as low as 20MB/s in real world. I've never seen a SSD go that slow during a copy.

Can you upload the problem files somewhere so we can try this at home? (Remember to reset between tests so the data isn't in the ram cache.)

 

[Ranulf]

"If I transfer my Warcrat addons folder which is about ~117 MB spread across 6507 files, the transfer speed will range from ~500 KB/s and gradually work up to ~12 MB/s when it's 90% done before dropping like a stone to finish the transfer. I know that the 4k results are low but it seems as though real world goes through the floor."

Welcome to the world of transferring many small files, HDD or SSD. Get something like Teracopy and watch as it transfers your WoW directory towards the end especially with things like your addon folder or screenshots. Watch how fast the larger mpq/data type files go. If I remember right, it usually takes about 20 minutes to backup my WoW folder to an external HDD via usb3 from a MX100 ssd and the last couple of minutes are all the little files slowly copying, 60+ MB/s down to sub 20 MB/s or less.

Also, as was mentioned earlier, it will be faster when going to another drive and you're on sata2, so capped at 300 MB/s. Long story short, your drive is fine.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The SATA controller on the MSI 970 gaming isn't helping either.

Its not the SSDs fault.

MX200 500GB here, Copying ~320MB, 6800 files gives around 25MB/sec in average. The 250GB will be a tad slower due to less NAND channels. But you should get at least 10MB/sec average.

There is also a MU3 update for your SSD. Not about performance tho.

 

[Cerb]

I have it running off SATA port 2 on a MSI 970 Gaming with AHCI enabled in the bios.

Thoughts? Should I be disgusted in myself with my choice? D:

Those performance numbers are fine. If you want the same as reviewers get, and better real-world SATA performance, you'll want an FM2+, or better yet, an 8 series of newer Intel, chipset. Even the better optimized SB8xx-9xx implementations are lacking a bit, compared to Intels from the last 4+ years, and even the newer AMDs. I suspect most of the small file hit is from the controller and/or AHCI driver, plus Windows itself.

You're not likely to get too much better performance from another SSD, especially without going larger.