SSD - sudden drop in write performance

[thewhat]

This is what I got yesterday:

These are the results from today:

All I did was install Windows 8 on it. But after that I formatted the drive, later I even ran the clean command from diskpart, so I don't think that should have anything to do with it.
Also as you can see from HDTune it's the same jumpy performance all along the space on the drive.

Any ideas?

Intel 520 180GB, Gigabyte P55A-UD4, using the "native" SATA-2 controller, not Marvell.

 

[imagoon]

Did you align the partitions? Diskpart clean clears the disk partition table but does not do any disk wiping. Installing OS's might also require you let garbage collection occur with the drive on but some what idle. I am not sure how aggressive the 510 is with garbage collection.

 

[thewhat]

Yeah, the partitions are aligned. I didn't do it manually, but AS SSD says it's ok.
I did the HDTune write test without partitions, tho, because it wouldn't run otherwise.

Also, I later also ran 'clean all' just in case and it didn't change much.


AS SSD shows some of improvement for 4k, but a significant drop for sequential writes.
Before:

After:

 

[imagoon]

Did you install the system board drivers? You don't mention the chipset but getting the actual intel drives for intel chipsets is known to improve performance over the base windows ones. Make sure the SATA cables are latched also.

 

[thewhat]

Yes, I have installed the drivers and all.

 

[dmoney1980]

AHCI?

 

[tweakboy]

This is normal "IMO" that is what TRIM is for. It should have brought back your speed, how long has it been slow like that.

Show us your CrystalDiskinfo that will tell us at what percentage health your drive is at,, should be 100 percent and no errors....... This happened to my old mans cheapo a-data 128GB sata 3.0 but 375mbps ,, now crystal shows it at 97 percent and shows wear lifetime exptancy and it transfers now at 300mbps permanatly it has TRIM but that isnt doing.. thats what happens when you get a cheapo ssd... and its slow.......

 

[thewhat]

I also ran a test with Atto (which uses compressible data) and the speed is the same as it was at the beginning, no change in performance.

But after reading this it seems like this performance degradation might be perfectly normal after you write incompressible data on a 520 or an SSD with a similar controller.
And there's nothing that can bring that incompressible write performance back.
But I'm guessing it might not affect the real world usage too much.

If I'm wrong, though, let me know.

AHCI?

Of course.

Show us your CrystalDiskinfo

 

[imagoon]

This is normal "IMO" that is what TRIM is for. It should have brought back your speed, how long has it been slow like that.

Show us your CrystalDiskinfo that will tell us at what percentage health your drive is at,, should be 100 percent and no errors....... This happened to my old mans cheapo a-data 128GB sata 3.0 but 375mbps ,, now crystal shows it at 97 percent and shows wear lifetime exptancy and it transfers now at 300mbps permanatly it has TRIM but that isnt doing.. thats what happens when you get a cheapo ssd... and its slow.......

TRIM has nothing to with this. Your constant babbling about TRIM shows us all that you have no idea what it does. That drive has 12GB of spare area which is plenty to do the small 100MB tests it does.

 

[imagoon]

I also ran a test with Atto (which uses compressible data) and the speed is the same as it was at the beginning, no change in performance.

But after reading this it seems like this performance degradation might be perfectly normal after you write incompressible data on a 520 or an SSD with a similar controller.
And there's nothing that can bring that incompressible write performance back.
But I'm guessing it might not affect the real world usage too much.

If I'm wrong, though, let me know.



Of course.

This seems to confirm that:

http://www.anandtech.com/print/5817

Anand's own testing of the 520 showed pretty consistent numbers to what you are seeing. You might see an improvement if you use the Intel tools to clean up the empty space on the drives but the huge numbers seen in some of the testing require compressible data which makes sense since if you count say 2GB text file, compress it down to 1MB and send it over a 1MB/s line then decompress, a meter would show that you transferred a 2GB file in 1 sec and show 2GB/s as the transfer rate.