X200s with 256gb SSD but terrible benchmark results

Hi.

I have owned my X200s for 2 years now.
About a year ago I replaced the drive with a brand new Samsung 256Gb SSD drive. (mfg.date 03.2010).

I gave up benchmarks years ago when I noticed I spent too much time on benchmarks and less time on actually being productive.

Yet I decided today to run a benchmark on my X200s as I was never sure if the HD performs optimally.

I attached a snapshot of the AS SSD Benchmark 1.5.3784.37609 tool.

How are these results typical of a 1 yr. old tech Samsung 256gb SSD drive ?

 

I would avoid AS SSD benchmark and post your Crystal Disk Mark benchmarks instead. Also are you on the latest IRST driver?

 

If you could give some more hardware info it might be useful. I attached a copy of mine as well, but it's probably comparing apples to oranges since we have different systems and drives. It's interesting to note though that you have great random reads but something seems to be off with your writes.

View attachment 66712

That's with slight truecrypt overheard, p9600 and 8gb of ram. Our devices are the same generation. Maybe someone with a similar drive can post?

 

Your AS-SSD screenshot says "BAD 31k" which means the partitions are not aligned to NAND block sizes. That will hit your write performance. Your sequential read/writes are terrible.

I'd suggest backup your data, boot another drive, create a new partition in Win7, NULL out the whole drive (0xFF) using AS-CLEANER as described here. Then reboot to Win7 setup, allow it to create new install partitions, install Win7, restore data and enjoy the best performance you'll see from that SSD.

 

Thanks, my configuration is X200s with L9400 1.87Ghz, 8Gb RAM. Win 7 64 SP1 and whole drive encryption.

See what I am talking about your results are much faster by long a shot.

 

Hey nando appreciate the reply about the Non aligment thing. That's very strange, when I created my machine I had a virgin drive which I booted the Win7,64 from CD and the setup partitioned the drive. I'm unsure why the hell it didn't create it for the SSD.

There's a problem, my machine is extremely sophisticated with many tweaks dozens of complex hard to setup programs, development environment etc.. etc.. and sql server etc..etc.. It's not just about the Data. For me to create the drive from scratch would mean a week or two of no work and hardly any sleep to bring it to the condition it is today.

I can't believe the only way out is to go through this nightmare ? Isn't there any other solution? I don't mind paying even a $100 for a program like Partition Magic style or whatever that would save me from reinstalling my whole computer.

 

Do you have another computer (or a friend's computer) which you might be able use to image the drive?

If so, you could try use Macrium Reflect (free edition) to image the drive to another hard drive and then back. That should align the drive.

 

Thanks sounds cool. What about R-Drive Image or other imaging programs? Would they all do this ? I already have several HD as well as an Ultrabay which I can put the drive there.

 

I've used easus and acronis software to successfully re-image an OCZ SSD before, when it was misaligned on an XP installation. It's odd though because that was XP, and on XP you had to manually align it with the old vertex drives. However I thought win7 was supposed to do that for you? I didn't do anything special on my installation for alignment.

 

Yes, this is the first virgin Win 7 install I have seen that is misaligned.

But it is and needs to be corrected. What backup and restore software do you use? That should work. Simply follow the erase directions after backing up completely and restore from CD/DVD.

Win 7 really should give you good alignment to start with.

Edit, be really careful, which partitions are "active" and which are "boot". For a complete BU and R the new partitions need to be set up properly. The unlettered System_Drv is the active drive and the boot drive is the Windows OS drive (normally C).

 

Paragon Alignment tool is $30 and will fix the partitions for you. Some talk of this problem and fixes is at AS SSD says "31 K - Bad" Offset/Alignment @ 4K Bad - AnandTech Forums .