My X25-M G2 is slowing down... a lot...

[clasme]

I have a X25-M G2 160GB.
From what I've understood out of reviews on the X25-M G2, there should be any huge slowdowns in performance.

But it seems quite a huge slowdown on my unit after the first benchmarks I run and after been using it for a while.

The first time I ran PCMark Vantage on the unit I got about 35 000 points. I now get 13500 (empty drive).

My score in AS SSD Benchmark on write have gone down from 100 to 35. On the sequencial write test in AS SSD I'm down from 100 to 55 MB/sek. On the 4-to-64K-write test I'm down from 50 to 15 MB/sek. On the ISO-copy-test in AS SSD I'm down from 70 to 35 MB/sek.

Other tests also show the same decrease.

Running on a MSI P45 MB, AHCI on, Win7. Results with a OCZ Vertex is ok on the same system.

 

[Idontcare]

This really sounds like a potential hardware issue, either with the SSD itself or could even be something as mundane as a failing SATA cable (or possibly just loose) or PSU.

If you check the ATA mode is it in PIO by any chance?

 

[Rubycon]

How long have you had the drive and how much data has been copied to it and from it, etc?

 

[jimhsu]

How much free space was on the drive? Can you try a secure erase and see if that solves things?

If you don't want to erase, try writing and deleting large files (e.g. 7GB isos) to the drive enough to span the full disk (say, two dozen times).

 

[shabby]

Mine hasn't slowed down that much. Even though i only had it for a week i wrote around a 100gb to it already, and it has 110gb free now.

http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/373/ssdv.jpg after i got it
http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/2004/ssdsh.jpg currently

 

[clasme]

The drive was empty now when I ran benchmarks. Have been in use for a few weeks, and have at one point been almost completely full.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the cable - other stuff works great on the same cable. Read-speed is great. Avg. on over 220 MB/sek in HD Tune and almost 250 in Crystal.

I will try to fill it up with large files and see what happens. Does the drive need long time to "recover" after that has been done? Like the Samsung-based drives, that need a bit idle-time to "take out the garbage"?

 

[clasme]

Ok, I filled the drive up with some 5-8 GB files, deleted them, and at least with AS SSD the performance is back to what it used to be.

I earlier had a quite a lof of files extracted from so backup-archives on the drive - we are talking A LOT of small files. It seems to me that maybe this has caused the problem, and that the drive havn't "recovered" from this?

 

[biostud]

Sounds like the TRIM command hasn't worked properly on your drive:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3625

 

[clasme]

Hmm.. ok... this is strange... now I extracted one of the backup-files again to the drive and did some other small stuff... and the performance goes down again, and the whole drive havn't been filled. So, I fill ut up with large files, and delete them, and the performance is back to "new" again.

 

[clasme]

Talked to Intel - they suspect a defective drive...

 

[Mr Fox]

Originally posted by: shabby
Mine hasn't slowed down that much. Even though i only had it for a week i wrote around a 100gb to it already, and it has 110gb free now.

http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/373/ssdv.jpg after i got it
http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/2004/ssdsh.jpg currently

I've had my G1 for a Month now, and it has slowed almost none,,

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/9456/cmark.jpg

 

[IntelUser2000]

Have anyone thought that the X25-M drives have quite a bit of reports having problems??

 

[IntelUser2000]

Originally posted by: clasme
Hmm.. ok... this is strange... now I extracted one of the backup-files again to the drive and did some other small stuff... and the performance goes down again, and the whole drive havn't been filled. So, I fill ut up with large files, and delete them, and the performance is back to "new" again.

Unfortunately taltamir's claims(which I thought was nonsense in the beginning) that the G1 has more advanced GC(Garbage Collection) to compensate for lack of TRIM and G2 has less advanced GC for more random writes but TRIM could be right.

Now I like my G1 more now...

Like the Samsung-based drives, that need a bit idle-time to "take out the garbage"?

The X25 drives don't do idle GC which I suspect is to lower idle power on real world usage. They only do it on-the-fly with write time.

Only way to fix this is either do whatever you did to "recover" over the entire drive capacity(large file copying??), or do a HDDErase. Other thing that might help is TRIM, which isn't here yet.

Sounds like the TRIM command hasn't worked properly on your drive:

If you read the part on the article about TRIM, Intel drives won't have them until Windows 7 release which is October 22nd.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: IntelUser2000
Have anyone thought that the X25-M drives have quite a bit of reports having problems??

Unfortunately not too many folks take the time to create threads to report their having no problems with their purchases, be it x25m or OCZ Core. So going by the activity of reportings of issues doesn't exactly give the kind of data you'd need to make much of a conclusion with any confidence.