SSD death symptoms?

On startup my computer is really slow (it locks up) for a while until everything loads really quickly. It's almost as if it gets stuck on opening something, abandons it and then shoots through everything. (the hard disk led is solid through this time)
SSD is a Sandisk Extreme 2 128G. Has 100% write cycles left (total 48K gb written). (is about 6 years old i think). Still very fast and has around 9 GB free.

 

When was the last time you reimaged your system? That would be my guess... windows OS... Hope its really not your ssd!

 

have you tested write speed? with 9GB free it should plummet

 

oh yeah thats a point. Haven't for ages now. But only lately it has got much worse after the creators fall update (also broke a USB3.0 controller, has no driver). Over the weekend i will reimage.

Not too bad, but 4KiB Q1T1 READ is a bit low, or is that just a carachteristic. Odd to see the write higher than the read.

 

I found this..... And the Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB is a fast drive....

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/7dd1s8/ssd_speed_high_enough/?st=jci1om33&sh=b117271d

(Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB)

READ WRITE

Seq Q32T1 |543.4||511.5

4KiB Q8T8 |399.1||360.9

4KiB Q32T1 |398.4||350.7

4KiB Q1T1 |48.72||142.3

I think 34.73 is ok....

 

OK thanks. Will just need a reimage.

 

Could be Windows, you'd really have to test it with software outside of Windows.
That being said, re-imaging the drive always can help.

SSD's can get slow if:
There's a corruption with the file allocation table bitmap (that's a master file, a graphic like file that says where all the data is, what is where and so forth). This can be fixed by running an ADMINISTRATOR command prompt (right click when it comes up in the start menu, can get to it by either finding it manually or typing COMMAND in at RUN box), and typing in the following: Chkdsk /f c: (this is if c: is your Windows drive, if it's not, input the letter it shows for Windows in My Computer). Symptom is with a non-full drive, reads are almost normal speed, writes are 25~50% speed - otherwise works.
This can happen when you have a power failure or other unplanned shutdown/system hard-lock (reset pushed to fix) happen.

SSD's can appear to lock up for up to 1~3 minutes:
There is an issue between the firmware and controller, or issue with firmware itself. You'll need to update the firmware, not always an easy this as this can run the possibility of bricking the drive or wiping the data from the drive. In either case you'll be glad if you backed up your data first. Check forums for SSD's especially on the manufacturer's site in the even to predict your chances of bricking the thing. Bad flash drives or SSD's can also lock the computer for a small time, especially when opening 'my computer'; no worries generally if it says 'it's healthy' in drive diagnostic tools though.
Strongly consider trying to fix the drive other ways besides flashing it if it's out of warranty. A slow drive is better than a brick.

q1t1 isn't generally a high number. q32t1 is higher because it's asking for 32 things at once and there's no latency involved in waiting for a single file like q1t1 is. On hard drives, q1t1 isn't generally over 1 mb if I remember correctly.

If you can't seem to fix this, consider buying a new SSD; due to the fact that mainstream 3D TLC NAND processes have dropped prices down decently enough and done away with the problems common to 2D TLC NAND processes (slow speed, problems with being prone to wear). MLC lasts longer, but buget drives with 2D MLC may be outright slower than the newest, highest-performing 3D TLC NAND in them. Go figure. New drives can be *sometimes* noticeably faster than a 5~6 year old SSD, but only when loading games, etc, and possibly knock a second off your boot time (don't even expect that). Otherwise, 90% of the difference between a hard disk drive and a BRAND NEW cutting-edge SSD can be had by just using your old one (don't expect the same performance jump, in other words, it's not happening).

--Wish you the best!

 

I guess I'm having normal performance?

 

If that's an samsung M2 NVME drive that's normal good performance.
If that's a samsung Sata drive it's for-sure using RAPID mode.
Good and bad about rapid:
It uses volatile memory as a buffer to increase performance, this is good for a gaming machine or one you don't do work on otherwise.
If you DO WORK on the machine, or CONTENT CREATION (like me) you disable buffers and such, so that you don't lose work if the volatile memory (system ram, drive buffer etc) lose power. You will lose performance on benchmarks, but the system shouldn't feel slow - NO system with an SSD should feel SLOW.

If I use buffers on mine I peak on c: at 6000+ mb/s, due to super-fast low-latency system RAM and also due to the RAID array having good use for sequential read/writes (though it hits a bit on random 4k at 1 queue depth - 4kq1, or q1t1 IIRC).
Sequential read/writes is good for reading and writing large zips (Like Roane County), or working with several-hundred MB sized graphic files, such as the overlay to Tail of The Dragon (which is 300+mb, ouch).
I generally keep things like that OFF though so that (with proper capacitance engineered into the drive itself), I don't lose data when the system is running and doing something if a power loss occurs. If you're hooked to a UPS system (power backup), then you're fine, but I don't use those as one was sabotaged about 12~13 years back and almost burned down my house (I had to run out of the house with burning equipment in my hands, not fun!). I just won't trust those things now because of it.
Using better-brand drives (not that yours is not - looks good here!) with power-loss protection and not using buffers involving system RAM will protect your data, however, if you get a power-loss situation then you should always run CHKDSK /F on your system drive (and any others you were using at the time) when you start back up to make sure your file-system journal's images match up.

For those reading this, the Crucial MX500 SSD looks to be a super-sweet drive, it wrote 18.8GB of files at over 500 (!) MB a second the WHOLE way through the transfer. That's AWESOME. That totally DOESN'T suck. I really recommend the 500gb model at only 139.99$ USD price shipped on Amazon (if you have prime).

So looks like you're up to snuff, enjoy your performance. If it's a just a gaming machine, email reader, web browser or netflix box, you're good to go. If you have rapid mode on and do content creation, it may be wise to shut it off if you do it often and DON'T have it hooked to a UPS system.

--Cheers & Enjoy the awesome system performance. May the HDD users chug with envy

 

No RABID modes here, test performance is of course just test performance, American road loads in 2 minutes and 50 seconds, that is real world performance level, don't know how long it loads for other people, but you know how long it will load for you and can then estimate how well double per GB price tag is worth itself.
Boot time with fresh windows was 7 seconds. Another good point is that this does not slow much when drive is full. I don't keep HDD usually connected because of it's noise, so sometimes I manage to get drive quite full until purging some stuff to storage on HDD.

OEM versions of these are not so expensive if you know where to look.



I have been eyeing MX500 that way for a while now, I hope to make a move on that soon, but let's see how funding evolves. I could of course get 2nd NVME, as I have over 9400 hours and 5TB worth of writes on this, but then again should last few years still without an issue.

After 2 years or maybe even more, whenever 1070 Ti and alike are previous generation stuff, I hope to get such from used market, also by then probably to have 2nd NVME bought as new OS drive and enough SSD storage for not to need HDD anymore, saving just takes time.