OCZ Vertex 4 - Extremely long login times

[Acidicheartburn]

I'm about at my wit's end. I've been struggling with extremely slow login times on my OCZ Vertex 4 128 GB (Windows is installed on this volume) that I bought about 3 years ago. Seemingly at random (but most of the time) my login times (from when I hit enter on my password until I see my desktop background) are between 12-30 seconds (I have timed it). There are times once in a while when my login times will be extremely quick, as they should be, at around 4 seconds. To put that into perspective, my laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit on a single 500GB Western Digital Black logs in at around 8-10 seconds on average. Once logged in to my desktop programs open extremely quickly as if the SSD was functioning normally. My Windows startup time seems to be unaffected, and from the end of POST until I see the login screen takes around 10-12 seconds. This seems somewhat slow to me considering the times I've seen other people report from their startup times.

The problem showed up after I upgraded to my (current) motherboard and processor. I could never tell if my login time was abnormally slow on my old motherboard (EVGA 790i Ultra SLI Deluxe) as it did not have AHCI mode, and programs didn't load as fast as they do on my new mobo with AHCI enabled. The problem persists even after more than one complete reformat and reinstallation of windows.

More information about the problem: Sometimes during the login process, the login screen will go away and I'll see a blank black screen for a while, and then my desktop will show up with everything ready to go, other times I simply see the login screen for a long duration until then my desktop showing up. According to ATTO Disk Benchmark my read and write speeds seem to be within normal values when my computer logs in at a normal speed. Here is a screenshot of an ATTO Benchmark after a long login:

As you can see, the speeds are a little lower than they should be. When my computer logs in normally, I see upwards of about 530-ish MB/s read speed on the 2048 KB test.

Here is a screenshot of the SMART data reported by the OCZ Toolbox Utility:

Strangely enough, in the "Drives" tab of OCZ Toolbox my SSD shows up as "Drive 2 - OCZ-VERTEX4".

I have included as much information as possible so that hopefully someone in the know might figure out what the heck is wrong.

System Specs:
SSD: OCZ Vertex 4 128 GB (Windows is installed on this volume) running Firmware 1.5 (up to date from the factory) connected via SATA 6 GBs to SATA port 0 on the intel SATA controller
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-z87x-UD4H
CPU: Intel i7 4770k
GPU: XFX 7870 Black Edition
RAM: 2x4GB G-Skill Sniper running @ 1333 Mhz dual channel (9-9-9-24)
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower XT 750w
OS: Windows 7 Pro 64bit Service Pack 1
Other Storage: 2x 1 TB Western Digital Black 1002FAEX HDDs, 1 160 GB Hitachi Deskstar, ASUS DVD+RW Optical Drive, all connected with SATA cables

Things I've already done:

• AHCI is already enabled
• TRIM is enabled
• My SSD is connected to SATA 0 on the Intel controller via a SATA 6 Gbps cable
• Only one of my secondary storage drives and my optical drive share the intel SATA controller, the other two storage drives are on the third party SATA controller.
• Intel Rapid Storage Technology is functioning on version 13.0.3.1001. Dynamic Storage Accelerator is currently turned OFF, and Link Power Management is turned ON.
• My motherboard is currently on BIOS F5. F7, F8, F9, and F10beta. The descriptions listed for each version don't mention anything about improving SSD or SATA performance. You can view them here: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4488#bios
• Because of this, and that I've read some users have experienced new bugs with the newer BIOS revisions, I have not yet updated my BIOS to a newer version, as I don't want to risk a failed BIOS flash.
• Windows power option is set to "High performance"
• My SSD is only about 29% full, so it should not be suffering from the 50% full slowdown feature introduced in revision 1.4.
• Windows is up to date with all of the latest updates and fixes, even the optional ones.
• I have run CCleaner (both the file and registry cleaner). This never seems to make a noticeable impact.
• Manually sending a TRIM command via OCZ Toolbox seems to sometimes make the next time I login work normally, but this never lasts past one login, nor does it work consistently (it may be totally ineffective and just up to random chance).

Here is a screenshot in CCleaner of my system startup programs, in case anyone can identify a program that may cause my issue:

Upon installation of windows, I have completed a number of Windows optimizations listed here, including turning off system restore, disabling drive indexing, moving the PAGE file completely off of my SSD to 3 other secondary HDD's, defrag is turned off for the SSD, Superfetch and Prefetch are disabled, and my Documents, Videos, Pictures, Music, and Downloads folders have all by moved to my secondary storage HDD where most of my programs are also installed.


I'm not sure if my SSD is bad or my motherboard is having an issue, or if I have a setting incorrect. Can anyone help me out with my problem?



I will update this post if anything else comes to mind.



Thanks,


~Alex

 

[Elixer]

Do a secure erase on the SSD, and then reclone (or reinstall) windows.

 

[Acidicheartburn]

Is that more of a blanket "it might fix your problem" suggestion or is this something you have encountered before? I've never considered doing a secure erase on the SSD, I've always figured a quick format would be fine as I've never had this issue on a HDD before. I would like to avoid reformatting if possible (I have a lot of software and settings just the way I like them), but if you believe this will solve my problem then I will certainly try it after seeing if anyone else has anything to say.

 

[Elixer]

Yes, I had to do that before, and it did fix the issue I was having.
So, this falls into the category of, yes, doing a secure erase can help, and can't hurt, so, it is another thing to try.
What I would actually do, is clone the SSD to a file, then, secure erase the SSD, and then re-image the SSD with the clone you made. (Note, this assumes that there was no corruption of files, or anything like that. If there was issues, or, you are not sure, then, it is better to do a fresh install, and see how it goes.)

If that don't work, then, it seems like it is either RMA time (If there is a warranty on that unit), or, just get a new Crucial MX100 256GB unit for $110 or whatever the price is now.
Then you can use the 128GB as a game / scratch drive.

 

[Acidicheartburn]

Can you recommend an easy to use free image program to do that? Back when I had Vista Home Premium (no image backup for that version) I used one in the past to replace one of my dieing 1 TB HDDs with a new one that had programs installed on it but I cannot remember what the program was called, and it took me ages of searching to find it. Or am I overthinking this, and using the built in windows image backup utility will work?

I have been considering getting one of those MX100's. The 256 GB unit is the same price I paid for my 128 GB Vertex. If secure wiping and reimaging my SSD doesn't work I think I'll RMA the Vertex, as it should have a year or two left on the 5 year warranty (part of why I chose this Vertex was the warranty), then go ahead and buy the MX100 anyway and use that as my OS drive, as I'm fed up with dealing with this headache. Ideally I'd rather wait until more 3d NAND SSDs come on the market/come down in price before I get a new SSD, though which is why I haven't just gotten the MX100 already. That, and I need to know if this is a problem with my MOBO and not my SSD.

I won't be doing the secure erase on the SSD until probably Sat or Sun I guess, so in the meantime I'm open to any other suggestions anyone has.

 

[HOSED]

Thanks to the experts here I am now using http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
I was recommending Paragon Backup and restore until it failed me on 2 different drives recently.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2387967&highlight=
Note I too am running Win 7 home

 

[Elixer]

Macrium, Acronis, and many other ones are available for free.
I have no preference, I use whatever I have available, which is usually Acronis, since both Seagate & WD offer a free version. (Crucial also offers a free version of Acronis true image)

 

[Acidicheartburn]

Okay so I used OCZ Toolbox to do the secure erase, and Macrium to re-image. The process actually went without a hiccup (my luck with this kind of stuff is usually never so good). I will update in a few days on if the problem is gone. It takes more than a couple of reboots to know for sure (sometimes I could get a lucky string of fast logins in a row).

 

[Acidicheartburn]

UPDATE: Seems like it hasn't been fixed entirely. Last night I did 5 logins from full off, and each time I logged in it was very fast (~4 seconds). Then this morning I checked it again and it took long to login again. Two more reboots from full off and they logged in quickly again. I'll keep checking, but the one long login leads me to believe the problem hasn't been solved. If it stays like this, where it logs in fast most of the time I'll probably just live with it, as I really want to wait for more cheaper 3D NAND SSDs to come on the market. The 3 year warranty on most SSD's including the MX100 is very off putting. My OCZ Vertex 4 came with a 5 year that's still in effect.

 

[bonehead123]

Use the process of elimination........

clone your SSD to another one, remove the old one & install the new one & see if the problem still exists....if it does, then most likely your windows install has some minor corruption somewhere..... if not then it is a mobo or other hdwr problem... or

do a fresh install onto a new SSD & boot from it..see if you get the same issue.....

 

[Ketchup]

UPDATE: Seems like it hasn't been fixed entirely. Last night I did 5 logins from full off, and each time I logged in it was very fast (~4 seconds). Then this morning I checked it again and it took long to login again. Two more reboots from full off and they logged in quickly again. I'll keep checking, but the one long login leads me to believe the problem hasn't been solved. If it stays like this, where it logs in fast most of the time I'll probably just live with it, as I really want to wait for more cheaper 3D NAND SSDs to come on the market. The 3 year warranty on most SSD's including the MX100 is very off putting. My OCZ Vertex 4 came with a 5 year that's still in effect.

Hello Acidicheartburn, I have read your other posts, but wanted to focus on this one, as it is your latest.

Login times do not solely rely on the hard drive. There are many things that play a part here, such as the time it takes devices to "start up" upon loading the driver. Many devices, such as the network card/adapter, can slow down a boot time at windows tries to start the connection process before the user enters the desktop.

Now, the question I would ask to that statement is "what do I do about it?". One good thing to check is your hard drive activity light, if you have one hooked up and it works with your OCZ drive. If it is really causing your slowness, you should see a solid light for a decent amount of time.

If you don't see a solid activity light durning the process, boot into safe mode and do it over and over. If the slowness doesn't come back, then a device/device driver could be at fault.

 

[Acidicheartburn]

Hello Acidicheartburn, I have read your other posts, but wanted to focus on this one, as it is your latest.

Login times do not solely rely on the hard drive. There are many things that play a part here, such as the time it takes devices to "start up" upon loading the driver. Many devices, such as the network card/adapter, can slow down a boot time at windows tries to start the connection process before the user enters the desktop.

Now, the question I would ask to that statement is "what do I do about it?". One good thing to check is your hard drive activity light, if you have one hooked up and it works with your OCZ drive. If it is really causing your slowness, you should see a solid light for a decent amount of time.

If you don't see a solid activity light durning the process, boot into safe mode and do it over and over. If the slowness doesn't come back, then a device/device driver could be at fault.

Thanks for your response. I'm sorry I didn't respond sooner but I wanted to be sure of the situation concerning my SSD. Other than two separate instances where I experienced a slow login, every other time (probably over 40 power on logins now) have been very fast. I'm comfortable saying that for the time being, my issue is solved. The secure erase seems to have drastically sped up the performance of my SSD, particularly login times.

 

[Ketchup]

Great! Appreciate the follow-up.