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    Dell XPS 15 (L501X) - Slow SSD speeds

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by neilnpatel, May 17, 2013.

  1. neilnpatel

    neilnpatel Notebook Evangelist

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    Hi, i have a l501x and have been disappointed with the speeds. I bought an SSD and have found the performance is better but not vastly.

    It is a samsung 840 in a sata 2 port.

    I have updated the drivers (ICHM 8 i think) and uninstalled them to use the default windows 8 drivers. It has a i3 370m 2.4ghz cpu with 6gb ram. It is correctly aligned

    The results are attached below.

    [​IMG]
    how to take screenshots

    I'm not sure whether this would affect it but I have replaced the DVD-drive with the SSD using a caddy. I have checked in the intel software and the samsung software to confirm that it is sata 2.
     
    neilnpatel, May 17, 2013
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  2. Skareem2

    Skareem2 Notebook Evangelist

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    possibly because ur system does not support sata 3 6GB/s .... cuz here is mine with a sandisk 128 gb ssd
    1223.jpg
     
    Skareem2, May 19, 2013
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  3. spidey180

    spidey180 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Try replacing the HDD in your system with the SSD, and put the HDD in the caddy. Hope this helps. Report back how it goes. I always thought the DVD drive ran at 1.5Gbps. Thanks for clearing that up!
     
    spidey180, May 21, 2013
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  4. SAiLO

    SAiLO Notebook Evangelist

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    Your results sound about right for SATA-2 and 120GB Samsung 840 SSD.
    Max read hits the SATA-2 speed limit max write hits the limit of 120GB Samsung 840 write speed.
     
    SAiLO, May 22, 2013
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  5. spidey180

    spidey180 Notebook Enthusiast

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    You should be able to achieve much better sequential write speeds once you put the SSD in the main slot not the caddy.
    Here is my 830 for reference.
    900x900px-LL-b6b35bf9_as-ssd-benchSAMSUNGSSD8302.1.20127-26-59PM.png
     
    spidey180, May 22, 2013
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  6. neilnpatel

    neilnpatel Notebook Evangelist

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    ok so i put it in the main hdd slot but it didnt change anything. I was under the presumption that i would be getting write speeds close to 250 but according to the box (which i should have checked before i bought it ) the max speed of the drive is 150mb which is close to what i am getting. TBH pretty disappointed with the performance, i was reading reviews for the 512gb drive which has good speeds and i assumed it would be the same for all drives. At the same time I'm not going to bother returning it. Can write speeds change my computer's speed that much. It is noticeably faster at loading than on my hdd.

    Strange problem the computer doesnt want to boot with the hdd in the caddy.. It throws up an error which i've forgotten. Ive put it back in its original position and the ssd in the caddy and all is well.

    Cheers for the help guys
     
    neilnpatel, May 22, 2013
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  7. SAiLO

    SAiLO Notebook Evangelist

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    120GB Samsung 840 has got a poor write performance. It goes up with the capacity due to number of the NAND chips.
     
    SAiLO, May 23, 2013
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