Intel X-25M and slow write speeds

I just picked up an SSD for my x200tablet. It is an Intel X-25M 80gb model. The x200tablet IIRC is built upon the Intel 4 series chipset and is rated at SATA II. The problem I have is that I do not feel it is particularly snappy. I do not have very many programs installed so essentially my install is W7-64 bit SP1 and programs such as FF, VLC, Foxit Reader, CCleaner, Malwarebytes, MSE, and my pick of proprietary Lenovo programs that I find beneficial.

I ran WEI and my HDD score was 5.9 the first time (my 7200 rpm platter drive scores the same). I then downloaded the latest Intel Toolbox and ran the assessment. It reports that my SSD is in 'Good' shape with 806 powered on hours. With a suggestion from a friend from the thinkpads forums I ran Crystal Mark. I have attached an img of my results. I had a Patriot Torqx ~2 years ago that would get a 7.4 in WEI and the snapiness and instantaneous opening of programs was nice! The Patriot Torqx was used in a T400 (with same chipset as this x200t) so I feel something is amiss with my install. With this SSD I click on FF and there is a noticeable delay in opening up the program. I click on other programs and that delay is present once again. Not sure what is going on? Any ideas? TIA

 

That is about as good as it gets for that ~5 year old technology (yeah; I know the drive is only 4 years old).

That is why I never bought one.

How much RAM do you have on your system? Is MSE and Malwarebytes running concurrently? Do you have the latest drivers installed for your Lenovo (not necessarily the 'official' Lenovo branded ones)?

Do you have an space left on the SSD as 'unallocated'?

A client in a similar position as yours saw massive performance improvements when he upgraded to Win8x64 Pro and left ~30% of his SSD as 'unallocated'. How 'massive' of a difference? He was about to junk the 7-8 year old desktop workstation and get a modern platform when he finally listened to me and installed Win8x64 AND left 30% of his Intel SSD as 'unallocated'. He has not upgraded it since (and he hasn't seen that system run so fast ever).

On your current system, you could try the latest Intel RST driver (10.8) and see if it makes any improvements for you.

Forget running benchmarks that will only tank your real world performance (no matter what they show...) - just install the latest IRST (if you can on your system) and see how the performance is over the next few days.

Oh - set your system to never sleep or hibernate... and let it sit there idle for at least over night (allowing the GC routines to run as they need to) - you don't have to 'not use' the system - just make sure that you don't turn it off for a couple of days.


Good luck.

 

Intel's older SSDs are known for their uninspiring write performance.

Max sequential read is specced at 250MB/s and max sequential write is specced at 70MB/s so you're right on the money there. Remember this is a 2nd gen MLC ssd, very old tech.

AnandTech | Intel X25-M SSD: Intel Delivers One of the World's Fastest Drives

 

Unallocated? This is an screenshot of disk management. Should I have created a smaller partition during installation to put W7 on? I do not have a problem with what may seem like such a small space. I put all my music on SDHC cards and primarily use this to take to classes, the library, and for when I need small form factor. My priority is not storage space in the SSD. It is mainly for systems files and small programs that I use for day-to-day school centered activities. My avg W7 install on my tablet has been averaging ~28gb.

Intel Series 4 chipset is not supported by Intel RST as well.

 

See:
Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) — Supported chipsets and controller hubs


Seems like your chipset is supported? Have you tried installing IRST and it fails to install?


With ~28GB W7 install size - I would leave and additional ~25GB and say you need (rounded down) ~50GB for your uses. That means that you can have the remaining capacity as 'unallocated' (which will put it very close to 30% of the nominal capacity of the drive; the value I have found through testing various systems and configurations to be the 'sweet spot' between capacity lost and performance (sustained, over time) gained).


To do this properly on your already running system:

Right click on your C: drive in the image you have attached and select 'Shrink'.

Adjust the 'amount to shrink' value until the 'total size after shrink' equals 50GB (50x1024=51200 MB + 200MB=51400MB). If it shrinks to the size you want it too, great! If not, download a trial version of PerfectDisk Professional 12.5 and do a 'prepare to shrink' run and possibly an offline run too - now the above steps should complete properly.

With the C: drive partition sized where you want it to be, create a new partition on the full, remaining capacity. Just do a 'quick format' as usual and this will force the drive to perform TRIM on those nand cells. Do not use the computer for at least half an hour (making sure once again it will not go to sleep/hibernate either) - I would leave it at this point for at least 2-4 hours (the internal GC/TRIM for different SSD's varies a lot, especially on the older models and the more time you can give it, the better chance ALL the free nand will be erased and ready to perform at top speed).

With that step (above) finished, finally; remove the partition you created (completely) and once again, leave the system sitting idle for as long as you can (minimum half an hour).

This procedure will give you almost he same performance advantage as doing a 30% 'unallocated' setup from when the drive was brand new. It may have taken a few hours (waiting for GC/TRIM to finish) - but you should now be seeing 'real' SSD performance from your system.


And I can't stress how important it is to get (almost 'any' version) of IRST running for the most benefits from your SSD.

Or even better: Windows 8 x64 Pro.


Hope I've helped a little.

Good luck.

 

When you say lag in FireFox, I have a similar drive in my SATA II Asus G73 and it takes about 3-4 seconds to open with ad-ons enabled (IE 9 opens in about 1 second). I get very similar Crystal Mark results, but my 512K writes are 84 MB/s and 4K QD32 83 MB/s
In contol panel IRST product version is 12.8.0.1016 .. Note I am using 32 GB & have 10% unallocated. I also have indexing turned off in Win 7.
Personally when I shrank my partition I did a full system image to an external HDD just in case of issues.
After 2+ years I an very happy with my performance and the Crystal numbers have not changes significantly.
My power on hours are 115 and host writes are 1.4 TB (or = to 1 nanosecond of NSA capacity)

~~~ TQG - when you installed Win 7 did you do a clean install?

 

Hi peeps. I actually got fed up with the state of the SSD and decided to issue an hdparm command to initiate a secure erase and start over. I then reinstalled W7 and installed only the Intel graphics driver, power manager, and then ran the WEI just to see if the platter-drive equivalent score would surface again. This time it displayed 7.8. I knew that something was wrong from the beginning! I have since updated Windows and added programs I use consistently . WEI still shows a 7.8 score for the hard drive. Much much better

I do appreciate your suggestions tilleroftheearth, JOSEA, and Quix Omega. :thumbsup:

A round of reps for you all

ps. I also left 20% of the drive as unallocated. Also just added another image of the score I was getting before the secure erase and a reinstall using the same benchmark program. The one with the low score is obviously what I was getting on my first installation. The higher score is the one I have now.

 

Hmm, the lag that you were experiencing must have been associated with something that you installed. The benchmark numbers are the same. Glad that you figured it out and got it working though!

 

No they aren't the same. Write speed more than doubled and read access time doubled as well.

Great that you got it working, HDPARM to the rescue! Unallocated space on that drive won't help a whole lot, but it won't hurt either. I still have an 80GB X25-M going strong, in addition to two 120GB X25-M G2 drives.

 

Oops, didn't see that there was a second attachment.

HUGGEEE difference in write speeds.