What's wrong with my OCZ Agility 60GB?

Hi, so I ran some Crystal Disk benchmarks just to see how fast my SSD is. Then I noticed that there is something seriously wrong with its write speeds. I have no idea what's wrong with it. Does the sequential read speed look normal? Looks a little bit low for me.

I run Kaspersky Internet Security 2010, Daemon tools, Rightmark CPU Clock Utility, and LCD Hype at startup.

The AV shouldn't be the problem right? Since I ran the benchmark in safe mode too. Please help! My laptop's spec is in my sig.

EDIT: I have the SATA operation mode at ENHANCED. This is AHCI right? The other two options are compatible(IDE) and Raid.

 

It does look a bit slow, did you install the Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers by any chance? - link

 

Thanks for the response. I did not have the driver installed. I just downloaded it and installed. Restarted the laptop as requested and ran a quick crystal bench 2 passes. Got similar results...

It was a clean install from the Windows Disc. Should I do a re-install of the OS with F6 loading the drivers? Will it help? How to check if my SSD is degrading? Could it be degrading? I owned it since the end of February.

 

Unless you constantly write on the disk, it would take a lot to degrade your SSD if you got it in February this year, use CrystalDiskInfo to check the health status but most likely it should be OK.

Check if TRIM is on, you can check if TRIM mode is set correctly by typing (no quotes) "fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify" on Windows. A response of "DisableDeleteNotify = 0" means its enabled. Otherwise type in "fsutil behavior set disabledeletenotify 0" to turn it on.

Otherwise check if your partitions are aligned on the SSD using techPower's online utility - link. Instructions are on the "How to get" link. If it's misaligned then it's best to do a re-install of Windows, make sure you load the Intel drivers first before install. Save the drivers on a USB stick then during install, go to Drive Options (Advanced) and then load the rapid storage drivers.

 

TRIM is on. Alignment is aligned. Crystal Disk Info shows 75%(Good) health though. Maybe the SSD's health is the problem? Only 6 months of use and it is 25% bad already . This could be the reason of the slow write speed? I will try a new OS install as soon as I backed up everything.

 

Wow 25% is quite a bit of wear, what's the mileage on the SSD? I read people with 1800 hours worth of use only has around 3% of wear. It probably would've contributed to some of the poor read/write times you're getting as the cells do wear out over time thus performance degredation.

If you have any services that caches on the disk I suggest you should turn them off to prolong the life of your SSD drive. Have a read on this site which advises which services to turn on or off. - link.

 

Disk Caching was on. Crap that could have been the culprit of so much SSD wear. Thanks for the link. I just did all that for my new OS except I don't use firefox

Power on hours is only 1756 hours
Power on count: 518

 

My write caching is enabled. So I should disable it?

 

Uhm.. I don't know.. I disabled it, and my Crystal Disk Mark was not affected. I had it enabled for 6 months and my SSD shows only 75% health in Crystal Disk Info. According to Hearst555, it should have only 3% wear after 1800 hours of use. If my SSD wears down at this rate, it would die in 2 years? sounds really quick to me.

 

just out of curiosity, how do you take the numbers from crystal disk, decide that they represent '25%' bad, and apply that to the health of your SSD???

Exactly how does that work. In hard technical terms, please.

I don't see the connection.

 

Well.. I don't trust this reading as 100% accurate but just some extra information I can know about my drive.

I think the program calculates the drive's health according to the S.M.A.R.T. data on the drive. It also tells you how many times the drive was turned on and how long it has been on for.

Another software called "Indilinx SSD Status" also tells me the cell wearing level and how many data I have read and written to/off the drive. This software may be designed for Indilinx drives so I'm not sure if it works for others or not. This program also tells me that my SSD is at 75% health

 

Hmmm this is actually quite a muddy area, I heard some SSD's don't have onboard cache to have any benefit of using write cache at all while others insist that they get better speeds with the write cache on. I'm currently using my SSD with the cache off and felt no real world performance penalties of doing so (maybe my 4GB RAM also helps on this).

As Microsoft says on write caching:

“Write caching” in a storage device refers to the use of high-speed volatile memory to collect write commands sent to data storage devices and cache them until the slower storage media (either physical disks or low-cost flash memory) can accommodate them."

Don't forget these cache will borrow your drive as temporary storage of certain data until it can flush it out, so over time while it's little, it's still can wear out the drive with its small read/writes.

Generally the main worry of the SSD is its life span. At the moment I think it's early to know the true optimal way of taking care of your SSD, but given the price of an average SSD today I think most people want to maximise their SSD to the fullest since I doubt people constantly have deep pockets to buy a new SSD every year!

One guy said he had 3% wear after 1800 hrs usage on his Intel SSD ( blog here) but that doesn't necessary mean it's a golden marker for all to reach. People use their computers differently so we all going to get some different results (i.e. some people download lots of stuff which mean more read/write). Intel SSD's have a "Media Wearout Indicator" which can be viewed on CrystalDiskInfo and mine is 99 at the moment, not all SSD's have this indicator however as it isn't a recognised standard for all manufacturers. So i'm not sure if OCZ has a different reading compared that of the Intel drives.

 

without knowing exactly how a software utility (most especially one that hasn't been written/released by the drive maker themselves!) calculates a vague number for 'health' all you've got is ill-defined numbers and blinking lights.