Why is my SSD so slow?

I have the Intel G2 in my X200. Everyone keeps telling me it's the best thing since the silicon chip, but honestly, I can't tell much of a difference between it and my old Seagate drive. The main benefit to me is it's quite as my notebook doesn't shield much noise. Anyone got any tips for speeding things up? Thanks for any help.

 

What OS are you using? Did you clone or fresh install? OOPs. I just saw the end of your sig. Vista. Do as Phil said. I would venture a possible misalignment. I should learn to actually read siggys. Time for bed.

 

Lol. Can you post a Crystal Disk Mark screen shot?

 

It's a clean install of Vista. Here my CDM screen:



On the whole, I just thought it'd be a little more snappy than my 7200RPM drive, but it doesn't seem to be that way. Perhaps I'm not doing something right.

 

4K random reads do seem low. Have you tried installing Intel Rapid Storage driver?

 

Do you have a link?

 

Your 4KB QD32 benchmark are higher than the IDE ones below so you must be running AHCI but fall short of the 163MB/s achieved. Your noticably slower writes would indicate that it's likely misaligned partitions.

Drive	IDE mode​	AHCI mode​
Intel X25M G2 SSD from here

 

So how does one align it?

 

Support for the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (Intel RST)

 

You know, I'm going to throw it out there and say that I think the SSD is working properly, and that it isn't the problem.

I think it's just a matter of perception. Some people are sensitive to those corner cases in normal day-to-day use where an SSD crushes a traditional HDD in read/write performance. Some people just aren't. It's just like how some people can tell the difference between $100 speakers and $500 speakers, while most people are quite satisfied with the cheap iPod buds.

I personally notice an appreciable difference between a first-gen Samsung SSD and a traditional hard drive, but I can't tell the difference between that and my X25-M. Is that to say there isn't a tangible difference? Probably not, it's just beyond what I can perceive in normal use.

Well, something like that. Just my two cents.

 

True it is a matter of perception but.. his 4k random reads should be higher imo.

 

Here's my after, after installing the rapid restore driver:

 

best idea might be clean install and wipe out all partitions and make none..

 

It already is a clean install.

 

Can I ask...can u do a Crystal test in Safe Mode? This will answer any questions regarding whether it is hardware or software.

 

Indeed, I even noticed a difference when I had the OCZ Apex. At first I only planned to test and resell it, but the improvement was noticeable enough for me to keep it.

Even with the lower 4K scores, the G2 is still miles ahead of HDD's.

 

I didn't really notice a difference between my Seagate and my Agility in the first place, maybe slightly here and there. I thought maybe I set it up wrong, but on OCZ's site they said you shouldn't need to do anything for Vista or Win 7.

The only reason I really like my SSD is it's quiet. I had about four or five drivers in my X200. All made noticeable sound in a quiet environ. Maybe I'm just going OCD. Then the question become why pay two or three times as much for half or third of the space. If I had a notebook better suited to blocking sound like my old R60, I probably wouldn't.

Les, I will run a safe mode test later today. Hopefully that'll shed some light on the issue. My notebook has no other issues I can tell. Would it matter if I ran it on battery or not?

Thanks for the help so far.

 

Is write caching enabled?
Have you tried Windows 7? I read it's better for SSDs.

 

Thank you guys. I feel the exact same way. I'm impressed at first with the performance, but paying top dollar for one with faster benchmarks just doesn't render real world difference in my world at least. Another main reason I got one in my notebook and netbook is the vibration typically puts my hand to sleep while typing. At least I don't have that with an SSD.

 

I'm not surprised. The momentus XT performs close to an SSD in common tasks.

 

Ummm off hand I cant be 100% positive but I believe it does affect it much the same as when you test in balanced vice high performance mode...

Should be plugged in in HP

 

Disregard...

 

I don't find the 4K speeds on my SSD that stellar either. Loaded the Intel Rapid Storage drivers during Windows 7 install.

Thing is I normally turn my Write Cache off as I heard SSD's don't have caches to have any sort of performance benefit anyway?

 

Those are some fine performance numbers there. Compare that with my Samsung 256GB and Intels:

First is Envy 14 Samsung 256GB
Second is Desktop with Intel 80GB G2
Third is Netbook with Intel 40GB G2

 

OK, here's the Crystal DisK Mark in safe mode while plugged in:

 

That's pretty meaty. Weird you say you don't see much difference. For me, it's night and day. Makes windows much smoother. If you do lots of HD intensive tasks, you should see a big improvement. Especially once your system gets bloated by all sorts.

And the most important apect of a SSD over a HD is the access time. That's where you get a major leap against current gen hard drives in normal usage.

 

Yeah, I'm just not seeing it. Photoshop and iTunes seem slightly faster, but I thought it'd be more snappy, which, again, I'm just not seeing.

 

I thought Vista has no support for TRIM. So over time as the drive fills up, it'll slow down? No?

 

I'm happy that I don't have to wait for anything to load anymore. Apps load instantaneously for me.

 

I felt the same way. But then I realized its one of those things that you kind of notice at first, and after you use it a while if you go back to a mechanical drive, the lack of response is much more noticable than noticing the improvement with an SSD. If that makes any sense?

 

I really notice the difference on my SSD. Whenever I go to a family members non-SSD hard drive there's that little blue circle that indicates loading going on. Whenever I click on on any program I want to use on my laptop they open up pretty much instantaneously

 

Forgive me as I just browsed through...but just want to say if it wasn't said already. IMHO SSDs, the controllers used, the computer you are using (supported SATA speed by computer system; whether I, II, III), OS used all go hand in hand and factor in on the speed limiting and feel of the system. I for one know that I am not getting my SSDs fullest potential since my Netbooks' MoBo i'm sure does not support full SATA II.

But to be honest ZaZ, your CDsk speeds looks dang good. So i'm not sure what could be the issue here.

 

For some reason the apps do not open instantly on his system with SSD installed, which makes the experience similar to a system with HDD installed.

I strongly think there's something else going on.

 

Make sure your Vista is updated to SP2 + updates.

 

I think so too, but the question remains, what's missing. The numbers on the benchmark seem pretty good, but it is just not very quick I guess would be the way to describe it. It was the same way when I had the Agility drive, so there must be something in the install that's messing things up or something is left out. My drive only has 20GB on it, so I don't think it too full and I in fact re-cloned it the other day.

 

Re-cloned it? Do you mean it was not a clean install originally on the SSD?

I think the next step is to try Windows 7.

The difference between SSD and HDD is very clear to me. Apps load about three times as fast and the whole Windows interface is much smoother.

 

I don't like Windows 7. If push comes to shove, I'll keep what I got. What's this misalignment thing? That seems the only plausible thing I've heard so far.

 

I still don't understand, did you do the clean install originally on the X25-M?

Or was it an image of a clean install coming from another HDD?

 

Clean install on the X25-M. I imaged the original install, which I put back a few days ago.

I wonder if I do a clean install with Windows 7, then put my Vista Image back on there that would fix the alignment issue.

 

What AV are you running Zaz?

 

Don't use AV.

 

Can you run boottimer?

That would be a good way to establish if your setup is performing like it should.

 

I don't really the boot times that I want to be better cause how often do you boot, but I'd like the snappiness SSDs are supposed to provide. So far mine is not. Here's my BootTimer screen:

 

I understand you're not interested in the boottime, I'm just using it as a way of gauging if your system is performing like normal.

53 seconds on a clean install with X25-M and 2.4 GHz CPU doesn't sound normal to me. But then again I have limited experience with Vista. Maybe some others can comment on it.

 

Check you partition alignment. If checks out, then do a Tony Trim to fresh blocks. You should be seeing > 150MB/s 4kb-Q32 reads with CrystalDiskMark with a Intel X25 G2, which will improve your bootup time.

 

His last Crystal looked ok.

 

According to the link, Vista and Win 7 will make the proper alignment when creating a partition. I'm pretty sure I used the Vista DVD to make the partition before I threw the image back on there, but even if I didn't, it was this way when I did the clean install, which I know I used the Vista DVD to make the partition. I posted over in the Intel forums. Maybe someone over there has a brilliant idea.

 

Maybe you've installed quite a lot of applications? That might be causing a high number of background processes which causes the long boot time and not so snappy feeling.

Btw, Stamatisx says 64K cluster size should be faster. Might be worth trying.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-boot-time-tweaks-allowed-37.html#post6518062

 

I run a pretty tight ship. I don't install stuff unless I use them. Right now I've got 52 processes running on my machine, that uncludeds all the windows stuff.

 

Yeah that doesn't sound bad. Then it's strange you get a 53 seconds boot.